We got ours yesterday too. Given the number of questions DD10 (5th grade) had told me that she left blank in each section, I was prepared for a lot of much lower scores (she never got to, and therefore left completely blank, the last 5 in math, 5 or 6 in english and--she thinks--7 in science. I thought she had said 9 in science, but that seems unlikely...). Her reading she finished, but it did go down a bit. She was close to ceiling last year though, so I knew that that was a possibility.

This has been a valuable experience for her. It's clear that the test taking skills are still an issue for her, so we'll look at doing this again. She is in general a slow worker--I've never seen her able to rush through something, even when she is motivated by what she gets to do next. Not surprisingly, time management is a major skill she still needs to acquire, as is learning to work differently than IRL. For instance, she told me that she rechecked each problem as she went, rather than waiting and re-checking at the end. Also, she didn't want to use her calculator if she thought she could figure it out on her own. She is apparently quite accurate, since she didn't get to the last five problems and still came out with an 18 in math, but if she was using recommended test taking strategies, it is likely that that score would have been higher.

The biggest surprise to me has been her difficulty with the science part. She doesn't love science, but she is such a strong reader, that it surprised me that she had so much difficulty with it and had so many questions she never even got to read. It ended up being her lowest score and, looking at my NUMATS from last year, the only one in which she wasn't well above the mean in her grade-level group (she is actually slightly below the mean for fifth graders). That makes me curious about the science test. For the many of you who had DCs with high scores on science, would you say that it is a topic they generally enjoy? Are they big non-fiction readers? I'm also wondering if they're in science programs )at home or school) that consist of a few topics explored in depth, or in programs with a lot of breadth? (I'm a bit of an assessment junkie blush I always want to understand what kind of skills/talents a test actually draws upon).