When Test Scores/GPA differ

Parents Forum
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<p>Just got the PSAT scores for my kid, and it remained the same from sophomore to junior year. He had hoped to improve a bit from last year and at least get a commended score, but that didn't even happen (he was close, though).</p>

<p>His score went down hugely in one section, balanced out by modest gains in the other two. He even did some significant practice the week before. </p>

<p>What is frustrating for me is that he is at one of the most difficult high schools in our area. The school sends students to very good colleges. And he is doing very, very well--top of his class. He is the one who gets all the math/science answers that no one else gets. His teachers love his essays. He's taking very rigorous AP courses.</p>

<p>But whenever he practices, the scores vary wildly--from the 500s on one practice to high 700s on another--in the same section. </p>

<p>If you just looked at his grades and what he can do from his classes, it would look like he could make a good candidate for a top-tier, very selective college. But if you looked at his test scores, at least from the two rounds of PSATs and practice SATs, he does well, but wouldn't really be considered good enough at the same colleges.</p>

<p>I know it is still early, and he hasn't taken the official SAT yet, so there is time to get those test scores higher. But given the trend in both the PSAT and practice SAT, it looks like he might continue to get the same types of scores.</p>

<p>I guess I have two questions.</p>

<p>One: Have any of you been in the same boat? What have you done or what results have your children had?</p>

<p>Two: It makes it difficult for me to gauge what type of school would be a match for him. I know we will talk to his guidance counselor, but any advice from here would be good as well.</p>

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<p>That's going to be my 10th grader. She gets great grades in hard courses, but her PSAT was at about the 72nd percentile (for Juniors). Even a fair leap up next year will leave her lots of points below my Son's. (Son was the opposite - great SATs, mostly Bs.)</p>

<p>Subscribing to hear the words of wisdom others have.</p>

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<p>Have you looked at the question and answer service for the SAT and PSAT? What sort of mistakes is he making? Both my kids occasionally misread a question, my younger son doesn't read quite as ridiculously fast as older brother and is more likely to get rushed at the end - that brought down his writing score this year though it didn't seem to hurt his CR score at all. My older son had a different high score for each of the PSAT and neither high score corresponded to his SAT high score. There are a bunch of good SAT optional schools. If different sections of the SAT are low at different times - perhaps he just needs to take it more than once and count on superscoring to get him the total scores he needs. If he's close to commended, his scores probably aren't that bad.</p>

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<p>There are some kids that do not standardize test well. Some suggestions: See what the ACT score is. It is a different test that emphasizes different strengths. For the SAT either go to a class or to a private tutor. There are some "tricks" (not guessing, but knowing when to not answer a question etc.). And yes, there are plenty of kids who don't standardize test well.</p>

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<p>Read the xiggi method sticky in the SAT forum when he takes practice tests. There is a lot of "data" that will be made available when you utilize xig's review of (paraphrasing) "how you got the question wrong, and how you got the question right". Wild fluctuations suggest to me a problem with the format of some sections i.e. does well when that format is not present, does poorly when it is (or vice-versa). This can be most likely be fixed.</p>

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<p>I have not been in exactly the same boat but my D is in the top 10% of her class and couldn't seem to get above the high 600s in any of the three areas however her admissions result so far have been great. 5 acceptances out of 5 schools and some really wonderful merit aid offers. Granted she is not applying to the top CC schools but has three top 15 (I think) Western Masters University acceptances so far. Just wanted to reassure you that whatever your child's profile there are some wonderful well respected schools out there that are looking at the whole picture and know that underperforming on the SAT is not always an indicator of student success.</p>

<p>Also wanted to put a plug in for the ACT. My other D did significantly better on the ACT and hasn't used her SAT1 scores at all. She has had similar admissions results.</p>

<p>Re. your last question: plug your info into the "how do I stack up?" feature on collegeboard.com and take note of how high the scores need to come up to be at least in mid range. Use that as a goal but don't let it be a determiner of if he appplies or not. I also liked petersons SAT prep online course it helped my D bring her first set of scores up close to 200 points.</p>

<p>Good Luck!</p>

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<p>Consider SAT optional schools.</p>

<p>Since some of these require SAT IIs instead, plan ahead to take subject tests as necessary.</p>

<p>Personally I think schools set more score by GPA, so it is better to have a good GPA with lesser SAT than the reverse (also no schools are "GPA optional").</p>

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<p>That sounds exactly like me. I had great rank and GPA, but 10th and early 11th grade my PSAT and SAT scores were not great. My soph PSAT was around 170. I basically spent a lot of time working on it. I looked over the Ziggi method. Also I think I started a thread a while back on it, if you want to do a search. Ended up getting a 2280 on my SAT. Tell your kid to work hard, but if they are not motivated it won't make a difference.</p>

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<p>I guess it was a post and not a thread anyways here it is:</p>

<p>So you say you are depressed so I will tell you a story that Ive told many that scored lower than they expected. In my sophomore year I thought I would dominate PSAT, however to my surprise i got 49 CR, 71 M, 49 W. I was starstruck and disappointed. So I decided to try to work on CR and W over the summer between soph. and junior year however even with all the work my scores barely increased 59 CR 71 M 67 W. I was aiming for NMSF, but I wasn't even close to the cutoff, in fact I wasn't even commended. Therefore I worked even harder on my SAT that I wanted to take in March. I got 700 CR 770 M 630 W with a 6 essay. I was happy with the 700 CR but I really thought I could get 800 M and 700+ in W so I tried again in June I ended up with 670 CR 790 M 780 W with 12 essay.</p>

<p>Now I am going to describe my prep.</p>

<p>Math: I only did practice tests. I usually made a couple dumb mistakes or didn't read the question, so all that i needed to do was pace my self. You might want to look at whether you make dumb mistakes or don't know the question. If you don't know the concepts then I would suggest using rocket review and barrons math prep along with QAS from the Google Groups CC-SAT prep.</p>

<p>CR: I thought studying vocabulary would be a waste because when you study 3000 words 20 might show up on the SAT, therefore I learned all the roots that the barrons prep book had, it was very useful to help find SC answers. Other than that I did numerous sections. Also I picked up a little trick on CC where you look at the line numbers then bracket those line numbers in the passage, read the passage, and once you reach the end of a bracket you answer the question, and then answer the remaining questions. I think I got that off the Xiggi SAT prep advice. Grammatix was also a helpful guide for SC and passage answers.</p>

<p>Writing: I first realized that the problem was I didn't understand a lot of the rules. I read over Rocket Review a few times. The essay writing techniques were also really helpful.</p>

<p>I would aim for 2-4 practice tests a week, but usually did one. Hope this helps, if you need anything else please feel free to PM me.</p>

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<p>As I posted in another thread, recently I spent an hour looking at Naviance scattergrams from one of the top academic high schools in my area. Apart from the HYPS-level colleges, where nothing was good enough to show a pattern, except that some small percentage of practically perfect students were admitted, it was striking how little attention famously selective colleges paid to the SAT scores of this school's students. Above, say, the 1900 level, with very few exceptions they admitted the students with good grades and didn't admit those with weaker grades, no matter how high their SATs. That's only one school, but it may be emblematic of how selective colleges address the students at strong high schools.</p>

<p>A student who consistently outperforms his or her standardized testing, in a good school with strong competition, is considerably more attractive in the college market than a student who consistently finds a way to get Bs or Cs despite superior cognitive skills.</p>

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<p>JHS- your theory only holds up when kids apply to schools where the adcoms know the HS and the curriculum. If the school is known to be rigorous, with solid teaching and high standards, then for sure.... if the school is an unknown, all those A's combined with an ok SAT score reads "grade inflation". I think that high SAT scores are used to validate grades when the HS isn't on the college's radar screen.</p>

<p>To the OP- is your kid a reader? Not too late.... we found the best SAT prep to be daily reading.... Op-eds in the WSJ; articles from Week in Review of the NY Times, even stories from the Economist which tend to have graphs and charts in support of the material. If your kid can learn to breeze through the editorial section of a a newspaper (not one written to a third grade reading level however) I bet those scores will shoot up with no boring test prep involved. </p>

<p>Get thee to a library!</p>

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<p>Wow, the sscattergrams from my kid's 3 very competitive schools show a much different story than JHS's. At our schools, if both GPA and SAT were not in place, no dice, even for legacies.</p>

<p>If you have a kid that is getting mixed scores, practice is probably all that's needed to consistently score high.</p>

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<p>blossom -- Yes, of course. I tried to make it clear that I wasn't talking about a universal principle. Although it is a universal principle to this extent: All the elite colleges have a much wider distribution of test scores among their students than they would have if they considered test scores important other than as a very rough first screen.</p>

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<ol>
<li><p>Try the ACT -- sometimes kids who have problems with the SAT do better on the ACT.</p></li>
<li><p>You didn't say what the scores were -- my daughter's test scores put her between 85th-90th percentile, class rank top 4% - she was accepted to several reach colleges, including U of Chicago. (Now at Barnard, but that's not an option for your son) My feeling is that good grades/ weak scores is a much better position to be in than weak grades/ good scores. </p></li>
<li><p>Encourage your son to do his best, but don't dwell on the test scores. Keep a broad look at college choices, including some SAT optional schools and some safeties, but also whatever reaches HE wants -- but don't push for a more selective college because YOU think he ought to reach or challenge himself if he has more modest ambitions. If he has good grades in high school, he will definitely be able to get into a college that will offer a great education, even though the name of the college might not be instantly recognizable to all of your friends. But the test scores are not nearly as important as people think -- they are used by college ad coms to shed light on the rest of the package.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>Thanks for all the suggestions. I think he will practice more and go over more about what kinds of mistakes he makes. He did say that he thinks he overanalyzes the questions too much. I'm a bit worried that the practice will make him more overly analytical; I also think with enough practice that should go away.</p>

<p>He is a reader-mostly fun books--though I don't think it can hurt to go over shorter non-fiction passages and opinion pieces.</p>

<p>I also think he will do better on the ACT. So we will see how that goes.</p>

<p>We will cast a wide net here for college, but of course, he has that special school in mind. I know he'll go somewhere great for him, but it would be wonderful to get into that top choice.</p>

<p>Thanks again.</p>

16

<p>We have the opposite problem. S scored a 227 on the PSAT but refused to study for this week's midterms, "We went over everything in class." :eek:</p>

<p>His class rank was barely in the top 10% at the end of sophomore year. His GPA is getting lower each semester. </p>

<p>I think colleges are looking for diligence and hard work and we're not seeing any of that. It's very frustrating to say the least.</p>

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<p>MaryTN - My D has a friend that she has known all her life (boy) who was like your S. He has been in all the highly gifted programs with my D all through school and would always score the highest grades on every test and never study. But his grades were not great because he wouldn't bother with homework. </p>

<p>Last year when he was a sophomore he was riding to school in my car and talking to my D and he said to her, I am going to "play the game" so that I can get into the college of my choice. My D says he is now doing all homework and projects and still getting top scores on the tests. I think this kid has been pretty board in school, but he realizes that if he wants a choice in college he will have to play by the rules.</p>

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<p>Yeah, some kids are almost too smart for their own good. A friend of Son's is a NMSF and is near the top of a very competitive class. Son said, "He'd be number 1 if he wasn't so lazy."</p>

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<p>JHS</p>

<p>My similar review of a top suburban NY (4 into Harvard - 20+ into Ivies out of class of 300) school yielded precisely the opposite result.</p>

<p>While SATs and GPS tended to correlate, where they differed, the most predictive number was the SAT - in particular the 1600 SAT score.</p>

<p>Number 12 in class (SATs under 2000) - all state musician - honors/APs - good ECs - ended up in safety</p>

<p>Number 40 something (SATs over 2200) ended up at MIT</p>

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<p>OTigger: That may very well be true. There were some qualifications on what I wrote, too. One was that the SATs had to be above a certain level, and that level is pretty close to 2000 (probably, more accurately, 1350/1600). Second, I explicitly wasn't talking about MIT. It was more places like Vassar, Oberlin, Wesleyan where that pattern showed up.</p>