When should your child take his or her first SAT or ACT? This month’s blog is technical, so beware; however, its content is critically important. If your child is not yet facing standardized testing, consider clipping this article for later consumption.
When students enter the tenth or eleventh grade, many parents feel the urge to rush into standardized testing. Parents, anxious to get a “benchmark score” on the SAT or ACT that will perhaps guide the college selection process, register their children for test dates, often with little understanding of the stakes or of the importance of timing. Here are a few reasons to give parents and students pause.
Take Practice Tests
Parents and their children can get that benchmark score by simulating standardized-testing conditions and administering an ACT and/or SAT either at home or at Arbor Road Academy. I recommend that all students practice before their first official test days with a full-length, timed test. Using actual answer sheets is critically important as well. Scoring the test is a little tedious, and fully understanding the score probably will require some professional guidance, but taking a full-length, timed practice test for both the SAT and the ACT yields several benefits.
· Protect Your Child’s Score Record
First, the parents and children obtain the desired benchmark score without the risk of a low score or low sub-score blemishing the students’ record. Many colleges require that applicants send all their posted scores. Parents and children sometimes misunderstand that they do not always get to choose which scores they send to colleges. Indeed, even when invoking score choice by sending the student’s highest scores only, the entire report from the testing day is sent to the college, not just a selected subsection score. While parents can consult the up-to-date list on College Board’s website (https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-score-use-practices-participating-institutions.pdf) to consider which schools require all scores to be sent (the University of South Carolina, the University of North Carolina – Charlotte, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, and Yale, to name a few), this list changes from year-to-year, so what you read when your child is in the tenth grade may change by the time he or she is a senior.
· Find the “Best” Test for your Child to Save Money and Time
Second, a comparative analysis of the two benchmark scores can help the student understand for which test he or she is better suited. If a student clearly performs better on one test than the other, the parent can save a lot of money and the student can save a lot of time by singularly focusing on that test.
Standardized testing is a big dollar industry. The costs of registering for, preparing for, and sending scores for each test mounts quickly. If you can narrow your focus, as appropriate, to just one test, you can save a tremendous amount of money.
Testing also consumes a lot of time, between prep, which is a necessity, and the testing day itself. While students attempt to build impressive records of extracurricular activities and community service, time frequently becomes even more precious than money.
Admittedly, often there is no clear front-runner for a student in terms of his or her performance on the ACT versus the SAT, but practice test results can be meaningful indicators of directed prep as well. Perhaps the ACT science section is your child’s nemesis, or the SAT reading comprehension section needs a boost; then, targeted prep yields the highest cost-benefit payoff.
Identify When Your Child Will Peak
Usually, students achieve their peak scores during the spring semester of their junior year and the fall semester of their senior year. By early spring in eleventh grade, depending on math placement, students should have been exposed to most of the math concepts covered on the SAT and the ACT. Parents assume, though, that if the student is on an accelerated math track, then beginning standardized testing earlier will be beneficial; after all, the critical math content will be more proximal. The problem with this reasoning is that most students – almost all – have not matured to the point of readiness to synthesize the information and to perform optimally.
Recognized exceptions to the spring of the junior year start date are (1) when students show potential to post a near-perfect score as a sophomore, because such a score makes a significant statement on a college application, and (2) when students are seriously targeted for NCAA-Division I recruiting.
Consider Whether to Register for the Essay
The essay for the ACT and the SAT is optional, available to students for an additional fee and, of course, adding to the length of the test. Most parents and students do not realize, unless they have received professional guidance, that the essay is not broadly required or even recommended by colleges, a change that has occurred over the last decade. Students unknowingly register for either the SAT or ACT with the essay only to receive a score report that is tainted by a low essay score. The essays for each test are completely different and require special preparation. Both the SAT and ACT have come under some fire in recent year for the scoring of their essays: http://www.chronicle.com/article/Let-s-Ax-the-SAT-Essay/235619 and https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/02/12/act-essay-scores-are-inexplicably-low-causing-uproar-among-college-bound-students/?utm_term=.9787e2f35997. Accordingly, parents should carefully consider, in conjunction with a college counselor, whether registering for the essay is prudent.
Avoid Sending Free Score Reports
When registering for the SAT and ACT, parents and their children have the option to send free reports to four colleges. They should resist the urge to do so in almost all circumstances. Although this option may appear to save the family money, it strips the applicant of the opportunity to examine score reports carefully and to consider which scores he or she plans to send and to which colleges. Applicants should never assume that all colleges should receive the same testing reports; this decision also must be weighed, preferably in consultation with a college counselor. Families can, though, take advantage of the “free” option during the senior year when students have already applied to a college requiring the submission of all scores.
The standardized testing world is overwhelming and complex. Most families would benefit from professional guidance and prep to ease the stress that accompanies this process. Errors in the decision-making process can be costly, so proceed deliberately and cautiously.