SAT score not commensurate with GPA/ AP scores / academic rigor despite prepping and tutoring

[Anonymous]

My daughter is an excellent student taking on the most rigorous classes offered at her DMV private . As a junior, she’s already in AP Calculus BC and AP Lang and excelling in both. Based on the honors list numbers at her school , she’s around the top 10-15% of her class. She took 3 AP classes as a sophomore and scored 5’s on all three.

Here’s the issue: she just can’t seem to do well on the SAT in spite of studying hard for it and having excellent tutors.
She scored a 1460 on the first benchmark blue book practice test with zero prep back in June , so we thought it would be easy to get past the 1500 with some tutoring.
Fast forward 6 months, some 20 tutoring sessions, hours of studying on her own and her December SAT came in at 1440.
Kids at her school who are around her level have mostly scored 1530+.

Granted a 1440 is somewhere around the 96 percentile but it’s not even in the ball park of the schools she was hoping to apply for next year.

She’ll retake the test in the Spring but we are just perplexed at why this is happening. We are also doubtful that her score will go up much in the next 3 months if it hasn’t budged in the last 6 months. How can a student who is clearly capable, prepped so much, not be able to do well on the test?

Has anyone had this experience with their child before ? Would love to hear your thoughts.

No mean comments please.

TIA

[Anonymous]

What’s the breakdown in scores? Nearly all schools super score, so if the scores are very lopsided (nearly 800 in one section), just focus entirely on the other section.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What’s the breakdown in scores? Nearly all schools super score, so if the scores are very lopsided (nearly 800 in one section), just focus entirely on the other section.

770 in Math, 670 in English

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What’s the breakdown in scores? Nearly all schools super score, so if the scores are very lopsided (nearly 800 in one section), just focus entirely on the other section.

770 in Math, 670 in English

So, stop studying Math and focus entirely on English. It literally doesn’t matter if after the next test, she score a 770 in English and a 500 in math…she will tell colleges she scored a 1540.

[Anonymous]

My perfect GPA with rigorous courseload, tons of leadership and community service and fantastic essay kid couldn’t get higehr than 1430. It’s fine, she will go where she is meant to go. She isn’t shooting for HYP.

FWIW if you freak about this your kid will think she’s a failure when she’s far from it. It’s going to be ok, she’s already better than 96% of the country. Keep some perspective.

[Anonymous]

What are her scores in practice tests?

[Anonymous]

Have her try the ACT, some kids just do better on one vs the other. Also, don’t sweat it- there are hundreds of fantastic schools that are test optional. My oldest is a strong test taker, 35 ACT, younger sibling took a practice ACT & SAT, scores were meh. Trust me, my oldest is not way more intelligent than his sister, he just tests better. Younger sibling has OCD which causes her to overthink material on tests- someday she’ll be an amazing scientist because of her attention to detail, it doesn’t serve her well on those tests. Standardized tests measure processing speed, GPA measures executive function. Some kids just think and process information differently, and that’s ok. D26 decided not to pursue test prep and instead focus on her grades and ECs, she’s already been accepted to her EA schools with Presidential scholarships and is excited about college. Talk with your DD’s counselor about whether it’s worth trying to nudge scores up a relatively small amount while also focusing on apps and grades, your DD already has very strong stats.

[Anonymous]

“She just can’t seem to do well” makes it sound like she’s been banging her head against this repeatedly. She’s taken ONE official test. It might have been an off day. It might have been a test where she got unlucky with the distribution of questions and they skewed to her weaknesses. Give it at least three official attempts before you declare she “just can’t seem” to get anywhere.

Agree with pp. Focus on the superscore and work on the English.

[Anonymous]

Sounds similar to my DD. Her English score improved after taking AP Lit. There was also a book she used that broke down all the types of questions on SAT so she could focus on her weaknesses (can't remember the name right now). Also used videos from YouTube on "how I got an 800 in the English SAT". Start reading and discussing articles from a variety of magazines, Wired, The Atlantic, The New Yorker.

[Anonymous]

Who is the tutor? Is she prepping using real test questions? Or is she doing made up test questions? How many 1550+ scorers have the tutors worked with?

[Anonymous]

Sounds like the first one was a fluke and that maybe this is just her level. To me, SAT is more of an intelligence test and less something that you can prepare for. You can prepare, but only to your potential which might not be any higher for your daughter.

[Anonymous]

Mine too. They will continue with tutoring and keep trying. We aren’t looking at ivys so it will be fine. Worst case test optional.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have her try the ACT, some kids just do better on one vs the other. Also, don’t sweat it- there are hundreds of fantastic schools that are test optional. My oldest is a strong test taker, 35 ACT, younger sibling took a practice ACT & SAT, scores were meh. Trust me, my oldest is not way more intelligent than his sister, he just tests better. Younger sibling has OCD which causes her to overthink material on tests- someday she’ll be an amazing scientist because of her attention to detail, it doesn’t serve her well on those tests. Standardized tests measure processing speed, GPA measures executive function. Some kids just think and process information differently, and that’s ok. D26 decided not to pursue test prep and instead focus on her grades and ECs, she’s already been accepted to her EA schools with Presidential scholarships and is excited about college. Talk with your DD’s counselor about whether it’s worth trying to nudge scores up a relatively small amount while also focusing on apps and grades, your DD already has very strong stats.

This. Both of my kids did better on the ACT. Your high school counselor should have already tested her on both and provided guidance. Ask.

[Anonymous]

Verbal part is more difficult to prep. I see that you have taken AP lang. So maybe ACT is the alternative.

[Anonymous]

Echo above comments on being hard to improve reading. Similar experience with DD. Tried all kinds of methods including studying most frequent 1000 SAT words over 3 months, perfecting punctuations, getting 5 on AP lang at end of junior year (too late for lit), etc. Her reading bounces between 670 and 730 in 4 attempts over 9 months. She did get 800 on math so my uneducated guess is perhaps she's grown up on tik tok and "teenager texting style" too much and hardly read anything serious.