Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment ACT score

Hi all, I have posted about my 7 year old a few times, but this is about my 12 year old 7th grader.

She is gifted, although not to the degree that my son is. We had her take the ACT for practice and I just got her scores.

She got a 20 composite score.
English 24
Math 16
Reading 19
Science 19

They have ranks compared to high school graduates, but nothing about kids her age.

It's interesting, she thought the Reading was easiest, and she scored higher on the English. She said she the Math and Science were both really hard.

Any thoughts on these? Thank you!

Take a look at the Duke TIP results to get an idea of where she stands relative to other gifted 7th graders.

http://tip.duke.edu/downloads/ts/7/summary.pdf

Thanks. I looked at all the regional talent searches and she would qualify for all but TIP, their cut off is higher. Her best score, English, was higher than 74% of high school seniors. Pretty good with no prep whatsoever. Worst was math, which was not surprising since she has had no high school math. My kids are funny, they like taking standardized tests. Too bad they are discontinuing the EXPLORE, my son will be in 3rd next year and I bet he would have loved it.

I think a perfect score is 36 on each part.

Well my older daughter took the ACT in her junior & senior year but I don't feel like revealing her scores here so it's hard for me to comment on the scores. If she was a gifted high school junior, these would be low. But are fairly impressive for a 7th grader.

I am not surprised that she found the Math & Science really hard. The ACT tests more on what students KNOW & learn in school, than necessary their ability. The Math tests through Algebra II, has your daughter finished Algebra II? It tests higher level math than the SAT, but less deductive reasoning. If one has done well in regular high school math, one should be able to do well. And the science section is mostly reading graphs & paragraphs and being able to analyze them. It expects that students have experience reading high school level science texts and analyzing them.

Just curious why you had your daughter take the ACT?

I would expect the ACT math to be harder than the SAT for a 7th grader, though I expect the reverse is true for an 11th grader. ACT math is straightforward, but it covers math that most 7th graders haven't had yet. The SAT math has trickier questions, but most problems can be solved with Algebra I. I know it is supposed to cover geometry and Algebra II, but it is mainly simple concepts that kids may know by 7th grade (such as when you add the angles in a triangle, it is 180 degrees).

If you are more familiar with the SAT, take a look at an ACT-SAT concordance table. It gives you the equivalent score. My kids took the SAT in 7th and I looked up the equivalent ACT composite. Eldest had a score equivalent to 19, middle kid had 24. (Youngest is in 4th grade.).

Don't worry about the math. Eldest took both the SAT and ACT. Prepped for the SAT vocab, but nothing for the ACT. Had a 35 in math with plenty of time to check answers. Math is just a matter of learning the material. Science isn't difficult, but you need to keep moving through that section. Lots of kids have time issues on Science.

My 8th grader took ACT as well (he took SAT last year), for the purpose of going to summer programs. Given the scores he got, we are scrambling right now to apply for talent searches, mainly because we are wondering if he could get scholarships for summer programs... We are pretty set in terms of which schools to go to, what local resources we can get, what summer programs are out there, etc, so we are not really looking at talent searches as a way to get information. For middle schoolers' parents out there, if you entered your kids in talent searches in middle school, did you feel that it was a useful program?

What talent searches would you apply to to get scholarships? Were you successful? I saw an article online about a girl who got a scholarship to a summer program, and her ACT scores were lower than my daughter's scores. Does anyone have any information about this? I'm sure it's too late for this summer, but I would appreciate any info...