Anonymous wrote:I worked in college admissions.
CS and Econ are crazily cutthroat and nearly impossible to get admitted for nowadays. Furthermore, a 760 Math will put him at disadvantage if he's applying for CS now at competitive colleges.
My recommendation would be to pivot to niche humanities subjects like Art History, Ethnic Studies, Linguistics, History, etc. Most schools are looking to beef up their humanities classrooms, because they are struggling to get students to enroll in them.
Once he's admitted, then he can swap subjects to whichever he wants.
If the OP’s son really wants to play this game and wants to take the test again, this approach may make sense for that particular kid.
For most students, and even for great students, the best strategy is probably to back away from schools that think a 760 math score is a low score.
If the students who go to that school are either that brilliant or that competitive, studying economics or CS probably won’t be much fun. The odds of being weeded out could be high, even for a smart, hard-working, organized kid.
If the kid is that competitive and wants that challenge, fine, but parents shouldn’t be pushing their kids into that kind of meat chopper.
This is especially true for parents who’ve never taken a STEM class for majors at an R1 university. They likely have no idea what taking a class like that is like and, when they post here, tend to indicate that they have unreasonable expectations about grades.