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June 1 SAT


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Did anyone else dc take the SAT today?  What did they think about it?

DS took it and he thinks he did ok.  He sounded much more positive than the last one he took (the one with the controversy).  He finished the English portion 15 min early. He finished the math a couple of minutes before the buzzer chimed.

Only 2 high schools in the county were offering the test today, so we had to drive across the county and it was packed and lots of drop off traffic.  

We needed to take today, because hopefully he won't need to take again in the fall when his schedule is packed.

edited: typo

Edited by Mbelle
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My dd took it. It was her first time.  She also finished early which surprised her bc she’s had trouble finishing the math on her practice tests. She’s worked very hard preparing ( even though this is just supposed to be her baseline.) I’m a bit concerned it will end up being one of those easier ones with the brutal curve. We’ll see. I hate that we have to wait so long for the scores!

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My DD did. It was an important experience for her b/c she likes to learn all her lessons the hard way. This experience required an unscheduled midnight trip to Walmart to replace the calculator she left at school, a frantic combing of her room for the admission ticket, and assorted visits to my room to ask questions answered by the documents she ultimately found. I am soooo glad it’s over. Lol.

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13 minutes ago, freesia said:

My dd took it. It was her first time.  She also finished early which surprised her bc she’s had trouble finishing the math on her practice tests. She’s worked very hard preparing ( even though this is just supposed to be her baseline.) I’m a bit concerned it will end up being one of those easier ones with the brutal curve. We’ll see. I hate that we have to wait so long for the scores!

I hate waiting too!  We are waiting on AP scores in addition to the SAT! 

Hope your dd did well!  

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16 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

My DD did. It was an important experience for her b/c she likes to learn all her lessons the hard way. This experience required an unscheduled midnight trip to Walmart to replace the calculator she left at school, a frantic combing of her room for the admission ticket, and assorted visits to my room to ask questions answered by the documents she ultimately found. I am soooo glad it’s over. Lol.

Oh, my!  This brings back memories of my oldest! I actually said to dh last night that it was so strange and restful to have a child who had actually gathered everything together two nights before ( including extra batteries.)

We have done the night before SAT missing calculator, the night before AP Stats no battery thing, too. 

If it helps, he did get into college with a great scholarship and just rocked his freshman year. The big bonus for me is I am no longer part of the last minute missing items.(oh, wait! In January, two weeks before he did a semester in London, I asked him to fill out a form with his passport number, where upon he discovered he’d lost his passport, requiring a frantic trip to the passport agency. Ack!). But most of the time now, I just don’t see it!!!!  

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Just now, freesia said:

Oh, my!  This brings back memories of my oldest! I actually said to dh last night that it was so strange and restful to have a child who had actually gathered everything together two nights before ( including extra batteries.)

We have done the night before SAT missing calculator, the night before AP Stats no battery thing, too. 

If it helps, he did get into college with a great scholarship and just rocked his freshman year. The big bonus for me is I am no longer part of the last minute missing items.(oh, wait! In January, two weeks before he did a semester in London, I asked him to fill out a form with his passport number, where upon he discovered he’d lost his passport, requiring a frantic trip to the passport agency. Ack!). But most of the time now, I just don’t see it!!!!  

I am looking forward to being a retired problem solver!

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27 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

i just realized it takes 6 weeks to get results for subject tests for June test. 😨

 

June test results has always been the slowest out of the six test dates. The results do start coming out four days after the AP exams results come out for California.  DS13 took the chemistry test today and since he now has an account, we can finally check online instead of calling CollegeBoard hotline when the results are released. 

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Took it here! From my kids' reactions, I'm predicting a harsh curve. (they both said it felt "easy," which is worrisome...)

We shall see! In JULY, I just learned after reading this thread! WTH!?!???!?!!? How on earth can it take six week to score multiple-choice tests?

Egads.

 

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12 hours ago, easypeasy said:

Took it here! From my kids' reactions, I'm predicting a harsh curve. (they both said it felt "easy," which is worrisome...)

We shall see! In JULY, I just learned after reading this thread! WTH!?!???!?!!? How on earth can it take six week to score multiple-choice tests?

Egads.

 

Yeah! I have no idea.

and like I said upthread—I’m concerned about the curve, too 😞

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This was dd's first SAT.  She thinks she scored very high on the English section  -which is what we were predicting based on the practice tests.  I must've done something right in our homeschool's English department, because all of my teens are only missing a couple of questions on English practice tests.  She ran out of time on the Essay section, but she said she wrote a good essay.  She's a very good writer and she knows how to play the SAT essay game (lol - we practiced), so I think she did fine.  

Math...oh...my...  She thinks she bombed the math.  She said it was math she did like in middle school and hadn't seen in years.  She said there was no higher math on there.  All the higher math she studied on the Khan Academy SAT prep was a waste - circle theorems, trigonometry...  Nothing from her Saxon.  She was very shocked and upset. 

I was afraid this would happen.  She's taking Statistics this year instead of Calculus, but apparently, neither of those show up on the SAT anyway.  Hoping she did better on the math than she felt like she did...  *cringe*

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My son took it.  Regarding the math curve--he is the sort of kid who has the potential to get a perfect score, and along with taking a real SAT last fall, he has taken several of the practice tests.  He seems to be able to sense how the curve is going to be at the upper end (I know this because I asked him each time he took a practice test).

He says it felt a tad harder than the November administration (which he described at the time as a "joke test") because there were some problems that required him to actually write things down.  I'm hoping that this means that they really were difficult and not that he simply didn't see a way to do them that didn't require writing.

I don't know about the other sections. 

Anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a decent curve.  It would be really nice if they could make the test have a higher ceiling and floor.  I mean, what's the point of having total scores between 400 and 680 when those percentiles are all 1 or less?  There is no need to distinguish between scores at the bottom end, but there is at the top.  They should make 1400 the 99th percentile instead of 1500, and simply remove most of the ridiculously easy questions.  Or perhaps they need a two test system, sort of like the two math subject tests.

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1 hour ago, EKS said:

My son took it.  Regarding the math curve--he is the sort of kid who has the potential to get a perfect score, and along with taking a real SAT last fall, he has taken several of the practice tests.  He seems to be able to sense how the curve is going to be at the upper end (I know this because I asked him each time he took a practice test).

He says it felt a tad harder than the November administration (which he described at the time as a "joke test") because there were some problems that required him to actually write things down.  I'm hoping that this means that they really were difficult and not that he simply didn't see a way to do them that didn't require writing.

I don't know about the other sections. 

Anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a decent curve.  It would be really nice if they could make the test have a higher ceiling and floor.  I mean, what's the point of having total scores between 400 and 680 when those percentiles are all 1 or less?  There is no need to distinguish between scores at the bottom end, but there is at the top.  They should make 1400 the 99th percentile instead of 1500, and simply remove most of the ridiculously easy questions.  Or perhaps they need a two test system, sort of like the two math subject tests.

 

Preach it. This is a consequence of making the test more "learnable." A consequence that was easily predictable. But College Board. 🙄

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1 hour ago, JoJosMom said:

Preach it. This is a consequence of making the test more "learnable." A consequence that was easily predictable. But College Board. 🙄

That and having a cap at the Algebra II level.  If the material on the test is learnable, why not test precalculus, real trig, and calculus?

Of course, I have the same question about the GRE--why is the math in the quantitive section fixed at the middle school level?

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21 hours ago, Roadrunner said:

I think between the unpredictability of SAT curves and it’s new adversity index, I might just steer my kid to ACT when the time comes. 

 

Yep, we're done with the SAT.  My other kids will be taking the ACT.

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22 hours ago, Roadrunner said:

I think between the unpredictability of SAT curves and it’s new adversity index, I might just steer my kid to ACT when the time comes. 

 

ACT feels like 3/4 English 1/4 Math as well as a time crunch to my “slow worker”. SAT being 1/2 English 1/2 Math and not as speed demanding help boost his composite score. For a kid who is a strong and fast reader, ACT would be great. 

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23 hours ago, Roadrunner said:

I think between the unpredictability of SAT curves and it’s new adversity index, I might just steer my kid to ACT when the time comes. 

 

I don't disagree with you, but the National Merit program provides access to scholarship money, so there's that (although they now accept ACT confirming scores.) Also, some students test better with the SAT format.

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47 minutes ago, JoJosMom said:

 

I don't disagree with you, but the National Merit program provides access to scholarship money, so there's that (although they now accept ACT confirming scores.) Also, some students test better with the SAT format.

 

Yes for PSAT, no espace from this for kids who have a chance at national merit. I don’t think we do especially since we are in CA. 

 

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DS17 took it.  He was nervous about it, but he generally thinks he's failed everything so it's tough to tell.  He was tight on time for the non-calculator math part, but had extra on the calculator bit.  And he took the essay part, despite my telling him 'do not take the essay part. nothing good can come of this', because....I don't know. we don't learn, apparently.

re: making the test harder to distinguish the top - it seems like they do for the overall scores, no?  1550's and above are relatively rare. On the ACT a 35/36 is only .75% and the 36/36 isn't all that rare either <shrug>.  I agree it seems odd that the math is more about how accurately you can handle mid-level AlgII than anything more complex.

 

 

 

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On 6/3/2019 at 10:20 AM, Roadrunner said:

I think between the unpredictability of SAT curves and it’s new adversity index, I might just steer my kid to ACT when the time comes. 

 

We're sticking with SAT for ds through the PSAT this fall - then we'll switch it up to the ACT and see how he does there.

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My daughter will be sitting her first SAT in October.

Can any of you please give me an idea about how important a graphics calculator is?

My daughter has been doing just fine on practice tests using a Casio scientific calculator, so I'm wondering if it's even worth her trying to learn to use a new calculator.

Thoughts?

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14 minutes ago, chocolate-chip chooky said:

My daughter will be sitting her first SAT in October.

Can any of you please give me an idea about how important a graphics calculator is?

My daughter has been doing just fine on practice tests using a Casio scientific calculator, so I'm wondering if it's even worth her trying to learn to use a new calculator.

Thoughts?

My dd said that it isn’t necessary.  She said she only used the graphing function to check one answer she wasn’t sure about. However, that’s just a sample of one child on one sitting of the test. She is a strong math student, completing Alg 2 this year.  She’s not extraordinarily gifted at math or anything—but she doesn’t struggle.

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13 minutes ago, chocolate-chip chooky said:

My daughter has been doing just fine on practice tests using a Casio scientific calculator, so I'm wondering if it's even worth her trying to learn to use a new calculator.

 

A scientific calculator is all she needs. Both my kids find using their Casio FX-15ES Plus (https://www.amazon.com/Casio-fx-115ES-Engineering-Scientific-Calculator/dp/B007W7SGLO) scientific calculator faster for SAT (including the Math 2 subject test) than their TI graphing calculator. DS14 said he didn’t need to use his calculator for the SAT math calculator section and he did get a very decent math score 😉 DS13 loves to use his calculator but said it wasn’t really necessary both times he took the SAT.

Another advantage of the scientific calculator besides faster computation speed is that it is solar powered as well as battery powered while the graphing calculator runs solely on rechargeable battery and you have to remember to charge it up.

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This is round two for me and my son took the SAT for the first time on the 1st. He didn't say good or bad.  It was giving me a hard time because he has it in his head he don't need a SAT score to determine his future.  He was given many opportunities to prepare but he didn't take any of it seriously.  Then again he is only 15 and just finished up his Freshman year of high school.  I am personally not too concern at this time but since I have to test every year I decided to have him take the SAT instead of me testing him at home.

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