Well, for me, junior year is almost done, and with the closing out of junior year means the closing out of standardized college entrance exams. This year has been filled with quite a number of tests of various things, from PSAT to SAT to ACT to Subject Tests to AP exams to all of these other things. However, one of the more contentious debates between tests of this class is between the SAT and the ACT. Both are general-subject standardized college entrance exams, and are often said to “compete” between each other to be the test of choice. Well, now that I’ve prepared for, taken, and gotten scores for each of these exams, I thought that I’d take the opportunity to review them and offer my opinion on the one that I like better. (I do promise that although my scores differ a bit between the two exams, I am not considering how I scored on each exam in this review.)
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Tags: ACT, College Board, College Entrance Exam, English, essay, exam, math, reading, review, SAT, science, test, Writing

Well, here I go again. You probably don’t even really care much about all my travel itineraries, but I find that it satisfies myself to spend the time writing them up anyways. (If it turns out that you actually like my travel itineraries, let me know in the comments.) However, this week will be the California State PTA Convention again, my fourth one in a row. The difference about this year’s (other than the fact that it’s in Long Beach) is that as a student representative on the State PTA Board of Managers, I now get to be a part of running the thing, which therefore makes me more committed during the Convention and means that I have to show up two days earlier. Want to see what I mean? Here we go…
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Tags: California State PTA, Convention, events, itinerary, Long Beach, meetings, PTA, SAT, Subject Tests, trip, workshops

Hello everyone,

This is just to let you know that I will be having little-to-no activity on my blog over the next few weeks, as I have a very busy couple of weeks coming up, between preparing for two AP tests (along with associated practice tests) and SAT Subject Tests, missing 4-5 days of school for a State PTA Convention that I’m working at, etc. Therefore I will be forcefully diverting my attention away from blogging and many of my frequent internet activities until things calm down for a little bit. I appreciate your understanding.

Tags: announcement, AP exams, Blogging, busy, Convention, hiatus, PTA, SAT, SAT Subject Tests, School, tests

Junior year is the year of the standardized test. It’s the year of PSAT, ACT, SAT, AP, and many other jumbled non-acronymic letters that float around there, and I’ve had (and still have yet) to go through every single one of them. I took the PSAT last October, the SAT on March 1st, and the ACT today. I have SAT Subject Tests coming on May 3rd and another SAT run-through this fall. I took one AP test last year and have two more coming up in May, as well as one more during senior year.

However, there’s definitely one thing about all this that I’ve learned that I would have flat out refused to accept this time a year ago. Doing well on one of these tests doesn’t just depend on you knowing the academics, it requires you to learn how to take the test. Doesn’t that kind of sound like those video games where the only way to win is to buy the book that tells you how to win? Yeah, it’s kind of like that.
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Tags: ACT, Advanced Placement, AP US History, article, colleges, Kaplan, preparation, PSAT, SAT, standardized, testing, The Princeton Review, thoughts, tips

On Saturday, March 1st, I took my very first full-length SAT. (Technically called the SAT Reasoning Test.) I thought that I had done okay on it, though it is a very long (and stressful) test, particularly once you get to around section 7 or 8 and your brain starts to say “Enough already!”

However, my scores came out this morning at 8 AM Eastern time (a time which I’ve been counting down to over the past few days in anticipation), and so here they are (note that all scores fall within the 200-800 range):

Critical Reading: 630 (85th percentile)
Math: 710 (95th percentile)
Writing: 670 (93rd percentile)
–>In the Writing category, I receive subscores for multiple choice questions (between 20-80) and the 25-minute essay (between 2-12), in which I got 68 and 8 respectively.

This adds up to a cumulative sum of 2010 for the test (on the 600-2400 scale), which is a pretty good score, although not as high as I was hoping. Except for math, the scores are somewhat below the average scores for some of the top colleges that I’m looking at, although they’re not too far off. I’ll have to decide later whether I want to give this test another shot or not in the fall.

I do have some more tests on the way. I’ll be taking the ACT exam on Saturday, April 12th, and then two SAT Subject Tests on Saturday, May 3rd. We’ll see how well I do on those…

Tags: colleges, Critical Reading, essay, math, Reasoning, SAT, scores, test, Writing