Test Optional. Don’t waste your time. Do activities he loves instead. |
| Agree with TO and maybe this will help inspire him to get some better study skills and habits in place for when he goes to school. Don’t spend time on the SAT/ACT, spend time on the execthive function and study skills that may help him now and long term. |
Seriously, in the current environment?
I would be encouraging community college to start with, or a trade program. |
Yes, it is a bad score. |
You obviously have a lot more spare income than I do - I am not the PP. I'm not sure my son will be ready for college in two years. We plan on having him apply, but if our conclusion is that he is not ready to handle living away and the academics of a 4 year school, he can do 2 years at NOVA and transfer in the future if he still wants. |
The average ACT score in the USA is 19.4 |
And majority of kids that graduate high school do not graduate college with a bachelor’s degree. Kids are dumber than ever and scores are lower than ever in reading and math- vast majority of kids graduating high school do not have basic proficiency in math and reading https://abcnews.go.com/amp/GMA/Living/us-students-reading-math-scores-historic-lows-devastating/story?id=125392421 Additionally, these are the benchmark scores the ACT exam recommends having to be successful in entry level college courses. https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/pdfs/R1670-college-readiness-benchmarks-2017-11.pdf 18 English- Eng composition I 22 math- college algebra 22 reading- 101 history courses/social sciences 23 science- biology |
| DS has a slightly higher GPA 3.2 and scored 22 on the initial ACT before any prep. Our college counselor told us not to waste time and money on prep- it wouldn’t get his score high enough to where we’d submit it. He’s only applying to TO colleges. |
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I would have your child take a paper practice test with no time limit section by section (doesn't have to even be in one sitting) to determine whether it's an issue of not being able to answer the questions versus the test anxiety of a lengthy timed test. Is he doing better on one section than another? If he truly doesn't know the content, you might want to consider a regular tutor (not necessarily a test tutor) as that is the type of content entering college students should know.
If its really more test anxiety related, try the SAT (fewer/deeper questions) or start taking a practice test/week--repetitive practice may help him learn what to expect, to not panic when he doesn't quickly recognize what to do, etc. Ultimately if he does a bunch of practice tests, he'll see they tend to test the same concepts, just with different numbers or wording. Once he figures out how to recognize and handle a certain concept it may be less stressful. |
| One more thought, you can get more score detail from the ACT if you ordered it when you signed up for the test--might be interesting to see if he starts off fine and trails off the longer the test takes. Test fatigue is a thing and made even trickier with ADHD. |
I think k you can actually order the score detail up to 6 months after the test date (for the three dates that offer it), so you could still get it even if you didn’t request it when you registered. Could give useful insight. |