1520 sat score and 4.2 gpa

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bates in Maine -- fantastic school, and test optional.

This is a school for kids with quirky personalities. OP, needs to prep for the SAT and subject tests.

[Anonymous]

Check out Colleges That Change Lives. Started as a book; it's now a movement.

[Anonymous]

Get all the test prep books you can find - they all offer different tests, so there shouldn't be repeats. Six or seven would be a good number. Spend this summer doing every practice test in the books.

Work on perfecting the other college app components.

Lastly, it's important to be realistic about where you apply to college, given your previous test scores. Hopefully, if you practice relentlessly this summer you'll be able to improve them, but don't expect perfect scores even then.

[Anonymous]

I don't recommend "practicing relentlessly." What an awful way to spend your last summer home. Go to a test optional college! You'll get into a great place that's a good fit for you.

[Anonymous]

OP, is that a weighted or unweighted GPA? Colleges look at the unweighted GPA, and some of them actually re-weight your unweighted grades to meet criteria of their own.

Have you tried the ACT? Some kids do a lot better on the ACT than on the SAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't recommend "practicing relentlessly." What an awful way to spend your last summer home. Go to a test optional college! You'll get into a great place that's a good fit for you.

Whether to "practice relentlessly" (and I'm not that PP) is a decision OP needs to make depending on his/her priorities, right? If OP thinks getting into a dream college is more important than 10 weeks of watching Glee reruns, unless you have better summer options, then go for it, OP. And it's not your last summer home, next summer is. I think it would be realistic to shoot for colleges that take 1800 SATs, not 2200 SATs, and there's obviously no guarantee your scores will improve dramatically. But you're old enough to make these trade-offs yourself, OP.

Test-optional colleges are a good choice too, like PP said.

That, or try the ACT. I think it's really true that certain types of test takers do better on the ACT.

Re SAT test prep, some of the test prep companies do a "diagnostic" test first thing. This can help you focus your prep time on the sub-subjects you really need to improve -- geometry or algebra or fractions or polynomials or english grammar or reading comprehension. I think one of the online test prep companies (Princeton??) does the diagnostic too for about $600, which can be cheaper than some of the group classes run by local test prep companies. Or, your school may offer test prep at a discount although, if you're thinking of retaking the SATs in September, that may be too late.

[Anonymous]

So give OP some suggestions for quality test prep companies. There are tons of them out there and some are a lot better than others. Which one is the most likely to give OP the best the advice and training?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bates in Maine -- fantastic school, and test optional.

This is a school for kids with quirky personalities. OP, needs to prep for the SAT and subject tests.

Huh? It's a top 20 LAC, offering many of the same things that other top LAC's offer. They just don't believe the standardized tests are the be all and end all.

I'm sure there are quirky kids there, there are everywhere. Not sure what that has to do with OP applying.

[Anonymous]

I was also wondering about some undiagnosed LD issue. That kind of disparity could be a sign of something.

[Anonymous]

or it could be the result of a student who hasn't paid enough attention to non-STEM subjects.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bates in Maine -- fantastic school, and test optional.

This is a school for kids with quirky personalities. OP, needs to prep for the SAT and subject tests.

My cousin went to Bates and he's about as straight-laced as they come. Quirky is Reed or Oberlin or so many other schools besides Bates.

[Anonymous]

Try to figure out why your scores are so low. Do you run out of time? Which questions do you have problems with? And yes, is there a chance that you have a learning disability? Or perhaps problems with bubble sheets, visual tracking, small motor coordination?

[Anonymous]

I got great grades, went to a good private, and I had terrible SAT scores. I didn't know how to take standardized tests. I don't have a learning disability. Sometimes it's not about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I got great grades, went to a good private, and I had terrible SAT scores. I didn't know how to take standardized tests. I don't have a learning disability. Sometimes it's not about that.

Hey OP - My math + verbal SAT was 1030 on the old 400-1600 scale (this is going back 25 years ago), and I wound up going to one of my home state's smaller public universities. I worked really hard, had a 3.6 at the end of my 2nd year, and was accepted as a transfer into a top 25 university. I know it's tough to deal with now but just so you know a less than stellar SAT doesn't necessarily mean an academic death sentence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I got great grades, went to a good private, and I had terrible SAT scores. I didn't know how to take standardized tests. I don't have a learning disability. Sometimes it's not about that.

Hey OP - My math + verbal SAT was 1030 on the old 400-1600 scale (this is going back 25 years ago), and I wound up going to one of my home state's smaller public universities. I worked really hard, had a 3.6 at the end of my 2nd year, and was accepted as a transfer into a top 25 university. I know it's tough to deal with now but just so you know a less than stellar SAT doesn't necessarily mean an academic death sentence.

although I agree with the last sentence, getting into college now is nothing like it was 25 years ago. I go into our state's flagship university with a 2.6 gpa. No way could anyone do that today.