Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment ACT/SAT Early?

My husband has been on admission committee for a small college (this college is listed as moderately competitive--they don't take students that they don't think can do the work, but they also don't start each year with a completely full freshman class, so if you meet their standards, you will get in). He says that in his experience, when students take the SAT multiple times, it is surprising how similar their scores are. Of course, there are exceptions, where a kid was sick or had some reason to have an off day. But usually the scores are all in the same ballpark.

From this perspective, he said, it looked like it was a waste of time, money and energy to take them multiple times. That is just the experience of one professor at one college who was on a committee for 3 years--so it's hardly a scientific study and I'm not sure what people think at the really competitive colleges where they aren't taking everyone who qualifies.

<shrug> My scores improved the more I took it.

OK - here's a warning for any parents of underachievers. I did not take the SAT at all, because i didn't really have to and I was lazy. Our state had just started post-secondary enrollment, and I ended up taking all of my classes at the University instead of going to high school my senior year. Since I was already taking classes there, the U would admit me without requiring me to even fill out an application. So, instead of applying at all, anywhere, (and I probably would have gotten scholarship money), I chose to just be lazy and go where I was already "accepted." I wonder how I would have done...

Somewhat off topic, but most colleges also have a back door if you arent' accepted. You just take classes as a non-admitted student. If you can demonstrate you can cut it for a quarter or semester, you can usually then be admitted.
A good friend of mine was upset because she was turned down for admittance to the University of Chicago. I told her about that plan and she now has an economics MBA from th University of Chicago, a pretty valuable degree to have.
One caveat, that was 10 years ago, not sure if that method would still work.

I guess my point was that people who take it several times and people who take it only once can be both successful. People get so stressed these days about doing everything right so that their kids get into college. But like so many other things, there is not one right approach. Both students who take it only once and ones who take it many times can get into a good college. There just isn't a single right way to do it.

And since I know you like a good discussion, let me bring up another point. While I wouldn't argue that your scores went up, there isn't any way to know that your scores went up because you took it every year. Maybe they would have gone up anyway. I took the GRE first in the mid-80's and again 20 years later and my verbal went up 70 points. I didn't study or take the GRE in between. So either I got smarter or the test got easier. But my score definitely didn't go up because I had been taking tests in those 2 decades, because I hadn't.

Of course. I certainly wasn't arguing cause there.

But you said that in your husband's experience people's scores didn't go up with multiple testings, and I am one data point that demonstrates that scores *can* go up the more you take it.

The only leveling off for me came between the PSAT and the last time I took the SAT. Every other time I took it, my score went up 50-100 points or so. The PSAT was my peak, and my scores dropped 50 points or so the next (and last) time I took the SAT. Even so, that last time I took the SAT, my score was still higher then the previous time I took the SAT by 50-100 points. (I just did really well on the PSAT.)

As I said, <shrug>. I'm not suggesting everyone has to take it lots of times. I definitely don't think that's necessary. But I do think that taking the SAT multiple times helped me to do better, and I certainly don't think people should be discouraged from taking it more than once if they want to. Aside from the money and the time, I don't think there's a downside. It was good practice for me, the above-level testing helped my parents to see where I was operating, and I thought it was kind of fun.

To each his/her own.

I'm guessing that most of the multiple testing he saw was a cluster in the Jr. and Sr. years, rather than what you were doing which was one each year. Your experience with the leveling off may support that.


Well, that's not a bad one to do well on. My DS got a national merit scholarship out of his that paid for half is college tuition!

Indeed. I was a National Merit Scholar, too, but I made the mistake of naming a school I hadn't visited yet, and it turned out that I didn't like it. So I basically tossed away all that free money by going somewhere else.

I still can't believe my parents didn't have a conniption over that! It was a seriously stupid move on our parts!

Many colleges give full tuition scholarships for NMF these days and offer special programs for them.

Edit:

Read the other posts.

I was a NMF and got a free ride just for this at college.

My scores on the PSAT were a bolt out of the blue for the HS I was at. They were not really high, but as high than the "top" students in the district. They made me take the SAT test a a few weeks later just to correlate the PSAT. Which it did.

My second SAT score a year later was MUCH (+120 ) higher than it was the year before. I took the ACT a few months after the second SAT and did as well as you could.

I thought the ACT was much easier than the SAT as the answers were more clear cut.

On prep:

The SAT verbal had several questions where a good case could be made for two or even three responses. I flipped through some prep books and noted this and this helped to figure out what the test authors wanted. IMHO the SAT authors try to be clever and a really smart kid will see things they don't.

For this reason, alone, a few prep books are good as the student can analyze their "mistakes" and calibrate their response.

To be more exact, the actual award money given by National Merit is small. The prestige factor though, can lead to more lucrative offers from various institutions. Is that better, Austin?

I was a lowly commended student. Too weak in math, and I took the SAT with a hangover.