After reading all this, I am assuming that my daughter (11), DD11 will not get invited to this years award. She is in 5th grade and got English 22, Reading 21, Maths 20 and Science 25 so a composite of 88. Percentile of 97.50. Anyhow, please let me know how different ACT is compared to this. Also, what tips to improve scores for next year please?
My kids generally did similarly on the ACT and Explore, in terms of percentiles. For your dd, I don't think it makes sense to have her take the EXPLORE next year again. Her scores indicate only a couple wrong and I wouldn't be surprised if she got the exact same, lower or higher next year. For math, it's likely she'd do better, and that's always the easiest to improve, in my opinion, but for the others, it's very easy to miss one or two simply because the questions aren't well worded, she reads one quickly, etc... She may have gotten a few wrong, but she's pretty much topped out on the EXPLORE.
Personally, the awards ceremony didn't provide ANY incentive to my kids to study, and we don't study for these types of tests anyway(exception being in HS when it really counts, or I suppose if they wanted to apply to a HS or a scholarship or something where their score mattered). This year neither of my younger kids wanted to take an out-of-level test and that was fine with me. If you really want to track your dd's progress, I'd definitely have her take the ACT/SAT in 6th grade and just see where she is at. My ds took the SAT in 6th and didn't find it frustrating or particularly difficult and he didn't study at all in advance (this is NOT to say he knew eveything, because he didn't, but he found it interesting and didn't mind that he just randomly guessed on some!)
