How did your sophomore do on the PSATs?
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Anonymous
If you have thorough and recent evaluations documenting the disability and a history of needing and using the accommodations in high school regularly you shouldn't have a hard time getting them from the College Board. Your child's IEP coordinator (or guidance counselor for a 504) will help but have them start early. If the College Board wants more data (updated testing, information from classroom teachers) you don't want to be scrambling at the last minute. |
Anonymous
+1 Plan to get updated testing done in the middle of 8th grade so you can submit it to the 9th grade SSD at high school, in time for the PSAT in October. It takes roughly 11 weeks to hear back from the College Board once the school submits the accommodations request. |
Anonymous
I think that's pretty good for a sophomore especially if there was no prep and your DC hadn't completed Algebra 2. I would just make sure that he/she looks at the questions that he/she missed - there really is plenty of time to get them up to speed before they have to take the SAT. I think that with a little prep work they could expect to increase their SAT score by a couple hundred points (maybe more). That would be a significant improvement. Has anyone tried the Khan Academy prep? I'm thinking of doing that for my son. |
Anonymous
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I have a freshman who took the PSAT 8/9 and I'm still trying to grasp the new scoring (what was wrong with the 800 being the top score per section, again?). His score came back 98-99% for 9th graders, but since this is a new test (I think), I'm not sure how well it will actually predict future success on the PSAT/SAT.
My older DC (a senior) actually did better on the sophomore PSAT than on the junior PSAT, and her SAT scores didn't improve much with some Kaplan prep. It's possible she was an outlier, but I don't know if it can be assumed that kids will have a huge leap in scores just by virtue of getting older. Fortunately, she did better on the ACT (30 with no prep vs. high 1700s on SAT). If you think your kid's scores are really low, you might want to have them take a practice ACT over the summer and see if they should be taking that test instead. |
Anonymous
| Is there a difference between the PSAT that a sophomore takes vs the PSAT that a junior takes? I thought it was the same test. |
Anonymous
It is the same test, however last year's test was based on the old SAT, this year's is based on the new version. |
Anonymous
From what I have read the new PSAT has a lot more Algebra 2 on it. So a kid that hasn't had Algebra 2 can expect to get a higher score on the PSAT (and SAT) once they complete 2 years of Algebra. |
Anonymous
| 1720 combined. |
Anonymous
| Sorry total typo above - 1470 combined. 750 math plus 720 RW |
Anonymous
It only took two weeks to hear back for us and the accommodations cover all college board exams for HS- PSATs, SATs, Subject Tests and APs. I dropped it off at school on. Friday and heard through the mail two weeks later. I had heard of the long turn a rounds, but did not experience it. We did it in April/May fwiw. So far, he has used them twice for PSATs (10th and 11th grade) and for AP stats (10th grade). |
Anonymous
On what test? |
Anonymous
Oops. Just saw that was a typo. |
Anonymous
I'm the top PP here. If you get your child's testing done in 8th grade, you'll need to have it redone before college, as colleges only give accommodations for students who have testing using adult tests, given after their 16th birthday and within 3 years of enrolling. In my child's case, we knew that the scores on the PSAT wouldn't put him into National Merit range. He's just not that kind of student. Therefore, we chose to take the 10th grade test without accommodations, (added bonus: 3 hours of stress instead of 4.5), and delay the neuropsych until the spring of 10th. He'll still have time for a PSAT, and a couple rounds of SAT or ACT with accommodations, and I won't have to pay thousands of extra dollars for double neurospychs. If we had had other reasons to do updated testing, then we might have gone ahead and submitted it, but we didn't. |
Anonymous
| No prep. 1390 out of a possible 1520. |
Anonymous
Why isn't it out of 1600? |