Demystifying Standardized Testing 2014

Thank you to everyone who braved the cold to attend 'Demystifying Standardized Testing' last night. I hope the information was useful toward better understanding college admission tests.

One thing we, for some reason, always run out of time to cover is the fact that there ARE testing optional colleges where ACT and SAT scores are not required to be submitted in order to attend. These include highly selective schools like Bowdoin and Connecticut College, so if a student ends up not being satisfied with their test scores and feels that their transcript alone puts them in a better light, testing optional schools are always available to consider. For a full list of testing optional schools, go to www.fairtest.org.

But, if you are going to take and submit standardized tests, how does it work? I recommend students explore BOTH the SAT and the ACT. This comparison will allow you to discover if you are naturally more skilled on one exam. Then you should take that exam two times to maximize your score. Data indicates that taking the exam more than two times does not lead to a score increase.

A lot of energy is sometimes spent worrying about sending the scores and using score choice. Neither of these things is worth much time, in my opinion. Just send everything everywhere and your life will be easier. If you have an extreme outlier that you are able to suppress and it makes you feel better, go ahead and do that. But most of these schools have computer systems that automatically super score for the reader, so losing your mind deciding if it is ok for a school to see your 680 in math is a whole lot of stress for not a lot of gain.

All schools will welcome both the ACT and SAT, so it is in your best interest to take the exam that you can score highest on. For a comparison of the scores on these two tests, see this chart.

For more information about how the SAT and ACT differ, see this webpage.

There was also a question during the meeting that I spoke to the parent afterwards and got clarification that that I'd like to share here. The question that was intended to be asked was: in what range should a student be testing on the SAT I to be a viable candidate at colleges that require SAT Subject Tests. I would say that the best candidates at highly selective colleges have a 700 or above on each section of both the SAT and the Subject Tests. That is definitely just a ball park, so plenty of students are admitted with a 690 or a 650 or even less than that on one section, but the majority of admitted students will be starting with a 2000+ on the SAT. 

I'm excited for next Tuesday, when I will be having the Junior College Kick Off for 11th grade students on Tuesday afternoon. After that, junior meetings will begin and the Class of 2015 will be in the thick of it!

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