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Is the SAT worth the sacrifice?
17/f
I'm in a very demanding school environment where everyone strives to achieve the minimum 2100. I'm not aiming for ivy league, but I'd like to think that a high SAT score is an essential factor to college acceptance. I've never had any prep, and I'm pretty confident that my mathematic skills are significantly lacking when it comes to the SAT.
I was considering requesting to take extensive test prep summer (programs like Elite, etc.); however, that conflicts with my summer plans for fulfilling my community service requirements and other credentials. I know it would be a commitment of five hours per day, along with the allotted test taking time excluded from the actual courses and extra time spent outside the class studying. I don't feel as though I could accomplish that and all my community service plans. I'm not even sure my parents could afford to pay for it.
I just don't know what I'm supposed to do from here? Should I spend the entirety of my free time (weekends, breaks, summer) studying for the SAT score or dedicate my time to a plethora of community service projects to list on my applications?
Advice would be greatly appreciated.
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The SAT is a scam and is not a predictor of college performance. I never took it and graduated with honors And why are you wasting your time with all that community service horsecrap? Go to a state school like I did, where I got a perfectly fine education, and then get on with life. Do not go into debt to go to school because it is NOT worth it unless you're going to be an MD or something. Then once you graduate, go live overseas for a while. That is a valuable education in itself.
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Balance is key here. Harvard will not accept a perfect score with no extracurriculars. So I say find a community service project that you can help out with each week to show your commitment, and get an SAT tutor. Mine was a life saver, meeting with him twice a week really helped me. The five hours a day thing seems CRAZY. The way my tutor explained it was all of the questions are going to be similiar, it's just about you learning to strategize and how to take the test.
To be honest it isn't worth all the stress. Look at the college you are aiming for. Collegeboard.com shows what they put importance on. My school didn't have really high standards for SATs so I wasn't too concerned. Besides, once you get to college you can work on your grades for a year and transfer to a school thats more difficult to get into, and then they will look only at your GPA and extra activities, and not a score.
Best of luck,
-Abby
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Yeah, SAT scores are fairly important for college acceptance, but a great score alone would not get you into those top tier schools. They will also look at community service, extracurricular activities, and generally how mature and well-rounded you are as a person (this is where your essay comes in). I was in your place two years ago, and the only specific preparation I did for the SAT was take the PSAT twice. Have you taken the PSAT? Taking it and studying the type of questions you missed is one of the best ways you can prepare.
If you get decent grades and are at the proper level for students at your school, then you'll do fine. If you want to practice, there's no need to drop hundreds of dollars on private tutoring. Buy a book with practice problems for math, potential vocabulary words, and tricky grammar concepts. They sell books specifically for the SAT that shouldn't cost more than 30 dollars or so. If you still have trouble with math, check to see if your school offers free tutoring, or talk to your math teacher outside of class.
Be sure to practice writing essays in a short amount of time. I didn't practice and was accustomed to writing longer essays in 50 minutes, so when they gave me 20 minutes to write something short I did terribly.
I barely studied and I got a 1940, which is a bit lower than what you're aiming for. But with my good grades and history of volunteering and extracurricular activities, I still got into a very prestigious school and nabbed a 25k per year scholarship. Just remember that your SAT score is just a number, and 200-300 points of difference around 2000 wont make or break your admission chances unless you're aiming for the extremely selective colleges like the ivies. All colleges want to see extracurricular activities that can distinguish you from other students and suggest skills going beyond 'book smarts'. The really selective colleges must strongly consider both scores and extracurricular activities because most of their applicants excel in both areas. At that point, choosing one person over five others can come down to something weird, like picking a tuba player because they need one for the band.
In a nutshell, you will get much more out of volunteering than studying and, considering your current level, volunteering will probably look much more impressive than a 250 point score boost with no footnote showing how hard you worked. Some people achieve great scores without ever practicing, and unless you awkwardly shoehorn it into your essay, the college will never know that you sacrificed an entire summer to reach that same score others achieve effortlessly.
Also, there's no need to have a "plethora" of community service projects, as you described it. Colleges prefer to see long time dedication to a few specific projects, rather than spending a few hours or days of time on 15 different ones. I only had three things to put down for organized volunteering/extracurricular activities, but I stuck with two of those for all of high school and achieved leadership positions in one. Three is a small number, but I enjoyed those things and stuck with them, and that did make a difference.
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