Testing Dates
With the beginning of the school year, there’s also a new SAT schedule. Test dates this year are:
October 9, 2010
November 6, 2010
December 4, 2010
January 22, 2011
March 12, 2011
May 7, 2011
June 4, 2011
You can still register for all these dates, but you will have to register late for the October date. The fee for regular registration is $47, while the fee for late registration is $71.
SAT Scores
The College Board, which administers the SAT, released the average US scores for 2010 College Bound Seniors. These did not change much from last year, with the Critical Reading average score staying at 501, the Math average score going up one point to 516, and the Writing average score dropping one point to 492. So what does that mean in terms of your student?
Well, if your student fancies Harvard, hitting the average scores won’t help him or her get there. According to Harvard’s admission data for the class admitted in 2009, the middle 50% of those who enrolled had Critical Reading scores between 690 – 780, Math scores between 690 – 790, and Writing scores between 690 – 780. These figures don’t include the lowest and highest 25% of those who enrolled, but it still gives you an idea of the kind of SAT scores needed to get into Harvard.
By contrast, the class admitted to the University of Texas in 2009 had far lower scores. The middle 50% of those who enrolled were Critical Reading: 530 – 660, Math: 570 – 690, and Reading: 530 -660. Of course in Texas you get accepted to UT if you are in the top 10% of your class, regardless of your SAT score. There’s even a rumor that some parents are taking their students out of good high schools and putting them into poorer high schools so they will qualify for UT. Seems like that would ultimately backfire since the student would be less prepared for college work that way and might not graduate.
If you’re curious what the SAT scores are for the university that your student is interested in, the easiest way to find that information is to put the name of the college followed by “SAT scores” into Google or another search engine. Of course, SAT scores are not the only criteria that schools judge by, but it is one of them. Also, some schools award academic scholarships based on SAT scores.
What Parents Can Do To Help
When the SAT average scores were released they were also broken down by sex, race, type of high school, family background, and what courses the students took in high school. Private school students tended to do better than public school students. The higher the education level and income parents have, the better their children do on the SAT. At this point parents probably can’t do anything about their education and income, but they can encourage their children to take more years of English and Math classes. The more years students take English and Math classes, the higher their scores are. Taking AP/Honors classes gave students the highest scores. The more classes a student took in English the higher that student’s score was in Critical Reading, Writing, and even Math. The same held true for the math classes — the more math classes, the higher the scores for all subjects.
One last way of helping - I think that expecting your children to do well in school and giving them the encouragement to do well is another factor in helping your children do well on the SAT and in school. Letting them know that you value education is an important step in helping them do their best.
Blessings,
Bonnie