
PSAT scores are back — just in time for the holidays!
I have possessed a few frantic phone calls from friends, curious about simply how much an SAT score can improve from the PSAT.
I’ll start with this n-of-1 research:
My son’s junior SAT score went up 590 points from his sophomore PSAT.
Ideally that will make a complete great deal of you feel better. He beat the chances, many times over.
According to the College Board, the PSAT that is average differ from sophomore to junior year is 106 points. My son’s score went up 400 points that year. He started learning in August (i.e. 2.5 months before his junior year PSAT).
The school Board also states that juniors taking the PSAT in October and the SAT the spring that is followingmy son’s plan) will score an average of 55 points greater on the SAT. My son’s score went up 190 points during that same period.
Below is an excerpt from my book that is upcoming that Ethan’s path to SAT score improvement:
The SAT Hand
We blocked off every Saturday for full, timed training tests, which Ethan took at the dining-room dining table while I worked in my cellar office just below. At the five-minute breaks he’d bring the sections down he’d finished, and I also would correct them while he worked on the following set.
Sometimes shmoop website to write essays, we’d see patterns to his mistakes and I also’d peek my head into the dining room.
‘Ethan, stop the clock for an extra.’
He’d lookup attentively. He was serious; he wanted to reach his goal so he could put the test behind him and move ahead. ‘You’re rushing at the end associated with sections,’ I’d simply tell him. ‘ Pay attention to the relevant questions at the end.’ Or: ‘Read every word into the answer choices.’
‘Okay Mom,’ he’d say, and go back working, making an adjustment that is small and there.
By April he wanted me personally to break the charts out we’d made of their scores, the people he’d cracked jokes about just a couple of months before. Now I was asked by him to update the charts to see if he’d made any progress and he had! We’d collected enough data to manage to see the line moving in the direction that is right slowly but unmistakably. That line in the graph was definitely a motivator.
So was the girl who lived down the street. She and Ethan had known each other into it, taking those practice tests on the weekends, too since they were little, and she was. She was an improved student than Ethan—in the way girls often are (better organized and more focused)—and the two of them were neck and neck in their practice scores. She also happened to become a tennis that is competitive and some of that fierce athletic energy visited the image, which kept Ethan on his toes because he desired to beat her.
In the end she overcome him, but not by much, in which he exceeded his goal by thirty points.
Good enough for Ethan to call it a time and feel good about moving on.
We, having said that, wanted him to take another crack during the test because there had been three snafus that are eleventh-hour just two of that we can write about, that had to own depressed his scores, We thought.
The first, just a days that are few the test, was Ethan’s hand. His remaining hand, the hand that is SAT. (Ethan’s a lefty.) He broke his hand horsing around on a soccer field and came home from school requiring a cast. I have never had a broken bone in my life, and also this was most likely Ethan’s 5th break, and he had been only sixteen years old. Only sixteen and taking his second SAT. Having a broken hand.
Needless to say, we’d never factored broken SAT hand into our test prep, and even though Ethan could go his fingers I happened to be nervous he’dn’t be able to bubble precisely. Meanwhile Ethan had been insisting that the test be taken by him as planned, cast and all.
‘Let me see you bubble,’ we’d state, and he’d practice, but I could hear little whimpers of discomfort as he colored in the circles. He didn’t care. He’d had his standardized test strategy all mapped out for months in advance—the SAT, the AP exam, the SAT Subject Tests—and as far as he was concerned, there was no space in his spring-of-junior year schedule to make any test-date that is last-minute. He may have postponed the test till the fall, which is what the school Board told me personally once I called and tried to persuade them to provide my son a personal bubbler as a ‘special situation accommodation.’ They said no. The College Board won’t join up with the medical issues of juniors since the kids can still take the fall that is SAT of year.
The night before the test, I spotted Ethan playing Halo, which we took to be a sign that is good. I figured he could bubble if he could work a video game controller.