What is a 504 plan?

A 504 plan is a document that provides assistance to students with disabilities. The name is derived from Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The section states that no individual with a disability shall be denied the benefits of or excluded from participation in any activity that receives federal funding by reason of their disability. It goes on to define a person with a disability as someone with a mental or physical disability that substantially limits a major life activity.

That is more or less the legal background on 504 plans and that extends beyond schools. 504 plans are probably best known in the realm of education though and it is important for parents to understand just what they are. In layman’s terms, I describe 504 plans as a mechanism to level the playing field for a disabled student. The document usually provides accommodations that are intended to compensate for the disability. These accommodations can vary greatly and are entirely dictated by the disability.

What confuses parents most about 504 plans is their difference from an IEP plan. Perhaps detailing an IEP plan is a topic for another time, but in short, IEP plans provide accommodations for individuals who might have a disability in one of 13 specific areas. Thus, a 504 plan is a wider umbrella and might cover some things an IEP plan would not.

At my school, most 504 plans cover students with ADD or ADHD (which is usually not covered by IEPs) or with physical disabilities such as diabetes or temporary issues like broken limbs. Indeed, 504 plans are often issued temporarily for disabilities that might go away in time. Again, the plan’s functions might officially allow a student with torn knee ligaments to leave class a minute early in order to beat the rush to the next class while they remain in a wheelchair or a student with diabetes the opportunity to frequently visit a school nurse in order to check insulin levels. It can provide the opportunity to eat a snack in class, if needed for medical purposes or give extended time on a test for a student who has difficulty focusing.

It is important to note that a 504 plan cannot be put in place just because a parent thinks it might help out. A doctor or some professional needs to provide an official diagnosis and recommended a student be evaluated by a team at the school for a 504 plan. There is a process and a parent can’t just show up at school and say “I want a 504 plan right now.” I think it’s important for a parent to remember too that even if a student might qualify for a 504 plan in some cases, it might not be needed. If a student has a bad ankle sprain and is going to be on crutches for a while, talk to the school. You’ll probably find they are pretty willing to be accommodating even if there is a not paperwork in place that says they absolutely have to be.

As is the case with anything, communicating with the school is key. Counselors are well versed in 504 plans and can help point you in the direction for them if needed.  

Transfer Students

              When students begin high school, the path they will take through senior year is somewhat predictable. There are graduation requirements and schools have protocols that are designed to meet those requirements. In addition, schools understand the varying goals students and their families have so there is room built into those protocols to meet those goals which are often college acceptance. However, sometimes families need to change schools in the middle of high school and that can mean switching from one school’s graduation requirements to another’s.

           This can throw even a great student a little off course for graduation and towards meeting their goal, but rest assured all is not lost. To begin, this is a fairly common occurrence and any guidance counselor or registrar worth their salt is going to be able put a student back on track. However, that doesn’t always come without some speed bumps. This often means taking something out of sequence. At my school, for example, freshman typically take biology and it’s a graduation requirement in my state. If a junior or senior transfer in without it, I’m going to enroll them in biology. That will mean that the junior or senior will participate in a class otherwise full of freshman. That can be a little awkward but it’s one of those speedbumps a transfer student must endure.

           I find that these types of things are often quite alarming to students and families. The path they were on is suddenly flipped upside down. “What do you mean I have to take biology with a bunch of freshmen? I was supposed to take AP Physics this year at my old school. Now I’ll never get into college!”

The new school might not even offer the classes a student was “supposed” to take. The job first and foremost is to make sure the student can graduate high school then those post-high school goals can come into play. Sometimes a new school doesn’t even offer a whole program a student was involved in. I enrolled a student this summer who came from an International Baccalaureate (IB) program and was devastated to learn we did not offer IB. Families need to understand that school transfers are survivable. Life happens, people need to move, and it throws off the schedule. Colleges understand this. Frankly, it happens all the time and colleges are very used to seeing it.

In that regard, the key is to communicate with the colleges about the transfer. You might be able to do this within an admissions essay or a letter of support from your school. If all else fails, pick up the phone and call the college. Remember, real human beings make admission decisions. Just call and say, “Hey, I just wanted to let you know there is a good reason my transcript looks like I changed direction halfway through high school.” They’ll understand and will make a note in your file.

When I talked to my student who could not continue in her IB program I explained it to her like this. In some ballparks a home run is 400 feet, in other ballparks, it’s 350 feet. Don’t worry about your home runs being discounted in a shorter ballpark. Just hit home runs in the park you’re in, and you’re going to be just fine.

The New FAFSA

In September of 2015, President Obama announced some significant changes to the FAFSA that will go into effect in the fall of 2016. If you’re new to the college admissions process, FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid through which all financial aid is funneled. The change here relates to the timing of when the FAFSA needs to be filed.

In the past, the FAFSA was filed using a family’s financial information from the calendar year prior to a student’s high school graduation. So a student who graduated in 2016 would have used their family’s 2015 tax return to complete the FAFSA. This created a time crunch for many people. Colleges liked to see the FAFSA filed as early as possible, sometimes as early February, in order to process the information and turn it around into the financial aid packages they awarded their students. This meant that between January 1st when the prior year had ended and those early priority financial aid deadlines, families had just a few short weeks to collect all the required information required to complete their tax return and get it done.

The new FAFSA rules allow a family to use what they are calling the “prior prior” year’s financial information. Besides this confusing moniker, this is great news for families with high school seniors. It means that a 2017 graduate will be able to use their 2015 tax return to complete the FAFSA. No more sweating out it in January waiting to get all those little forms in the mail and from work so you can rush through your tax return in order to get the FAFSA filed.

The FAFSA now opens October 1st and you can use the information you should have finished up by last April.

I am still seeing a short window by the colleges to get the FAFSA filed. I’ve heard several colleges communicate that they would like the FAFSA filed by October 31, leaving just a month to get it all done. If there is a downside to this new rule, it’s that FAFSA now coincides with students working to complete their college admissions applications. I used to tell families that we would spend the fall of senior year filling out applications and getting students into college and we’d spend the spring working on the FAFSA and figuring out how to pay for college. I need to adjust my tune going forward.

There’s no doubt that the pros outweigh cons with this new rule though. An earlier FAFSA filing will translate into the colleges sending out financial aid packages to their accepted students earlier. That financial aid package can be a very important tool for a student to use as they select which college to attend. This will allow more time for them to deliberate over that decision. Of course, if a family’s finances have changed significantly between the prior prior year and the beginning of college due to circumstances like the loss of a job, a family can always pick up the phone and contact a school’s financial aid office to explain those special cases.  

The Gap Year

As high school draws to a close, many students are interested in pursuing further educational interests but only after a gap year. A gap year is time spent away from school--an extended break between high school and college. Students choose to take a gap year for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that the student is simply burned out. They’ve been in an academic setting essentially their whole lives and while they recognize the value of furthering their education, they just need some time on the sidelines before they do that. Some students see a gap year as a way to find themselves. They want to take some time contemplating careers and opportunities before they commit to one at the college level. There are also students who want to spend a year working full time in order to save money and build a nest egg before beginning more school.

I can see the rationale in each of these, but I am not personally a fan of the gap year. I think they are momentum killers. For most students, graduating high school is the biggest lifestyle change they have faced in their lives. Graduation often means moving, it means increased work expectations and responsibilities, and it means more “adulting” in the form of paying bills, cooking, and just generally taking care of one’s self the way a parent might have done before. For a new graduate, it takes a little work, mental and physical, to get those things sorted out and to get to a point where they are comfortable doing all those things. So to me, graduating high school and transitioning to adult life, then just a year later uprooting and going through another major lifestyle change by starting college sounds like an incredible expenditure of emotional energy as a doubling of the same effort.

Many of students will work during this gap year too. In that case, it’s pretty easy to become a slave to the almighty dollar. Maybe now they’ve got a car payment, or rent, or an insurance bill, or credit card debt, or feel like they can actually afford to go out to dinner on Friday night. Maybe they say they’ll work one more semester then start school in the spring. It’s the same scenario in the spring and they wait until fall. One gap year turns into two, or three, or four. It’s just so hard to pick again and go back to school when you’ve stopped.

Finally, it’s worth noting that most high school students have pretty sharp student skills. They are used to writing papers, listing off the parts of a cell, and deriving quadratic equations. They’ll need to do these types of things in college but those skills will grow rusty as they’re not used.

There are certain students with some special circumstances for whom I think a gap year is a great fit. However, I’ve come across too many former students who just wanted a little time off after high school and are still trying to get back to school. I think most of those students would have fared far better if they had gone straight into college. If you’re committed to a gap year, make sure you have a firm plan in place to return to school after your year off and do what you can to keep some momentum for your future.   

Freshman Year Counts

As I watched the Olympics, I was struck but how critical a good start was. In races that were decided at the end by hundredths of seconds, getting off to get a good start seemed so important. I suppose the same can be said for high school.

For high school, that start means freshman year. That sounds obvious, but I think it is lost on many of them. To a 14-year-old, graduation four years later can seem so far away. It’s nearly a third of their lifetime over again. They may feel like they can screw around a little longer then kick their post-high school plans into gear down the road. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

The key underlying principle I want my freshman to understand is that freshman year counts and here is the reason I give for that. Students apply for college in the fall of their senior year. That is before they’ve earned any senior grades of substance that actually factor into their GPA. Thus, the grades a college reviews for a student in determining their admission is from their freshman, sophomore, and junior year. Therefore, freshman year is a third of the determining factor in what decides a student’s college fate and is really more important than senior year. I tell my students as long as you have a 2.0 GPA which is the minimum required to graduate at my school, I don’t really care what your GPA is when you graduate. The single most important GPA you’ll have in high school is the one you’ll have at the end of your junior year. That will be the one you present to colleges the following fall and will be the one that represents you on your applications.Do you understand now why that freshman year is so important?

For the record, colleges do expect a final transcript upon graduation and do expect that you had a senior year with an outcome similar to your other three years. Stumbling at the finish line could result in a letter of recension where a college reverses their admission decision and denies your acceptance. In truth, those are not very common and most students hold up to where they have been. That just makes my point further that getting off to a good start and creating good habits during freshman year is quite valuable.

I should note too that the transition to high school is not easy. I never expect it to be

seamless. Adolescents have a lot of things they’re dealing with outside of school, the format is usually a little different than middle school, the subject matter is harder. It’s different and it’s normal for there to be some bumps in the road in the early goings of high school.

Usain Bolt was off the lead in the early goings of that 100 meter dash. He probably expected that though. He didn’t panic and knew his start was good enough that once he really got going, he was going to win. Still, he only won by less than a tenth of a second. If his start had been much worse he would not have had time to catch up before the finish line, not matter how fast he is. The start counts, make sure your freshman is in the blocks and ready to run.

What do Redesigned SAT Scores Mean?

In March of 2016, the CollegeBoard launched a redesigned SAT test. This test has many changes over the previous version and I’ve written about those previously. Another big change to the SAT is the results and scores that are issued. After a student takes a test, they’ll receive one Total Score, two Section Scores, two Cross-Test Scores, three Test Scores, and seven Subscores. Yeah, it’s complicated.

Let’s start with the Section Scores. These are easy and are what people are used to with the SAT. Evidence Based Reading and Writing (what some used to call verbal) is scored on a scale of 200-800, Math is the same, scored 200-800. What’s your SAT Math Score? I got a 550. Simple, right? The Total Score is just the sum of the two section scores. What’s your SAT Score? Well, I got a 550 in Math and 600 in Evidence Based Reading and Writing, so an 1150. Okay, those are the easy scores and most people are familiar with those.

Now it gets more complicated. Within both the Evidence Based Reading and Writing and Math there are select questions that are designed to not only evaluate a student’s verbal and math skills but also their Analysis of Science and Analysis of History/Social Studies. These special questions pull double duty and cross two areas. Thus two Cross-Test Scores in Science and History/Social Studies are presented on a scale of 10-40.

Next there are Test Scores. These are presented on a scale of 10-40 as well. The Math score here is really the same as the Math Section Score, just on a different scale. However, The Evidence Based Reading and Writing is separated here into Reading and Writing & Language. This lets a student see where they stand just in Reading and just in Writing & Language.

Lastly, we have Subscores. These further break down the Test Scores into little pieces. Math is broken into Problem Solving & Data Analysis, Passport to Advanced Mathematics, and Heart of Algebra.The Evidence Based Reading and Writing is broken into Words in Context, Command of Evidence, Expression of Ideas, and Standard English Conventions. These seven Subscores are presented on a scale of 1-15 and they really do help a student pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses.

It’s worth noting that the SAT also offers an optional essay. The essay scores do not factor into the above scores whatsoever. They are completely separate. The essay score has three components; reading, analysis, and writing. Each component is graded on a scale of 2-8.

It’s yet to be seen how individual colleges and universities will use these various scores or whether they will at all. Whatever the case, these detailed score reports provide more insight into a student’s academic abilities. This level of detail can be a great asset to a student looking to improve weak areas or even one who is trying to find a career field that might be a good fit. This information is going to be there on future SAT score reports. Make sure it’s put to good use.

Don't Force Career Decisions Too Soon: Part 2

Last month I began a discussion on students and choosing a career. Actually, I made the argument that it was okay for a high school student to be pretty hazy in the specifics of the direction they might take towards a career. This month, I want to discuss why I think it is okay for a senior headed off to college to be in the same boat.

        As a student applies to college, they are usually
asked to select a major on their application. Most colleges list undecided as
an option, but I think it’s bad form to select that. I would hope that students
have some inkling of what they might want to do and I think that choosing
undecided can demonstrate a lack of ambition to the college to which the
student is applying. What the student needs to understand, however, is that
checking this box in the fall of their senior year does not necessarily seal
their fate. I mentioned previously that colleges report that as many as 60% of
their sophomores are in different majors than what they applied to. It’s okay to
change and changing is actually more common than sticking to what you applied
to.

        Sometimes this change will happen over the course
of senior year, sometimes it will happen at orientation when it’s time for a
student to choose classes that they realize are going to be over their head.
For other students, the change happens after the student has been on campus and
had the opportunity to take some introductory classes in a given field. To this
point, I want to tell parents that your child might want to take a class in two
completely unrelated fields during their freshman year. If that is the case, it
is very likely one of those classes will be a complete waste in that it doesn’t
end up counting towards the major they end up in. However, if through those "wasted"
classes a student learns they really like or don’t like a particular field of
study, that lesson is immensely valuable.

        Sure, you shelled out a lot of money to learn that
but if it means your child learns in their first semester what path they should
be on, or shouldn't be on, isn’t that money well spent? Isn’t it better to find
that out after one or two semesters rather than 3 years or even a career in an
unfulfilling job? Give your child, the freedom to do a little academic
wandering (not a lot, just a little) during their freshman year.

        With that being said, be aware of too many dual enrollment or AP credits from high school. Both of those programs can be great and I think taking some of them in high school is generally a good idea. However, they do effectively work to chop off the front end of college. If you do too much of that, you chop off that opportunity for academic exploration. You’re expected to hit the ground running, sometimes starting college at junior year, at 18-years-old. I do not believe the vast majority of 18-year-olds just aren’t ready to get serious about majors and careers quite yet.

        Don’t get lost in the dollar signs and college costs at the expense of giving a
student the chance to make an informed choice. Let them make a choice they feel
at peace with and one that comes from their heart. If you do this, you’re
setting your children up to be happy, working people throughout their adult
lives and you can’t put a price on that.

Don't force career decisions too soon

Lately, I’ve started to notice a trend. As I meet with students and parents and we discuss life after high school I often sense that many parents are placing a lot of pressure on their children to identify a career path early in high school. While I believe forward thinking is valuable and students do need to be conscious of that gigantic looming decision, making that decision in the 9th or 10th grade is probably overkill.

When I say this in meetings with parents and children I usually sense some relief on the student’s part and a bit of surprise on the parent’s. So, that tells me this pressure parents place on students might be the cause of a lot of anxiety in students. The fact of that the matter is that leaving home and heading off into the wide world is scary. One’s career is at the forefront of the big wide world so talk of career forces a student to face those fears. However, that is not really my point here.

Instead, I mean to say that I’m not sure a 15-year-old is emotionally equipped to select the career they’ll be doing every day for the rest of their lives. An adolescence is still trying to find themselves as a human being and forcing them to choose a career on top of that, when there are so many over variables still in play, compounds that internal strife.

Colleges and universities tell us that as many as 60% of their sophomores are in a different major than they would they applied to. That means that most college students changed their major between their senior year of high school when they applied to college and their sophomore year of college. That’s okay!

I do think that college majors and careers need to enter a high school student’s thought process from time to time, but constantly badgering a student with questions along the lines of “What are you going to be when you grow up?” are fruitless.  There are more subtle ways to get a student to think about these things. Moreover, parents and students need to start with a mutual understanding that it is okay for these conversations, the external ones and internals ones, to be full of doubt and uneasiness. Part of that comes with the fact that students often don’t fully understand what someone in a given profession truly does on a day to day basis or the education required to get there.

That’s not a call to make your child shadow everyone in town--that’s an ordeal that most teenagers aren’t going to be up for. However, it is an opportunity for a parent to say something like the following. “I’m glad you’re enjoying your world history class so much. You know, one way you could translate a class like that into a career is through anthropology or archeology. There are people who go out and find old things from these old cultures and times you are studying about. Of course, sometimes you might have to spend three months away from your family digging around in the desert for them, but it’s pretty cool if you discover something really big.” Then just leave it at that. If the subject comes back around later, you can add to it then. Or, the issue might be a dead horse not worth beating. The point is to give your child little pieces of information and give them the opportunity to learn and explore about a variety of careers without forcing them down their throat. More importantly, don’t make them choke on the need to make that decision before they even leave high school in the first place. I’ll continue this topic with a discussion more centered on life in college next month.   

College Housing Options

   As seniors finalize their decisions and choose the colleges they'll be attending, an

important component to consider is housing. Gone are the days of freshman being limited to tiny dorms with a bunk bed, two desks, and a roommate they don't meet until they move in. Today's college students are offered a myriad of housing options both on campus and off. Picking the right choice can be maddening.

  Let's start with the on campus options. I should say that I'm a huge proponent of students starting their college experience living on campus. Indeed, many schools require it. The colleges have increasingly used plush dorms as a recruiting tools so those 400 square foot rooms that many parents stayed in their first year in college are rarely built any more and are slowly being replaced but larger, suite-style dorms. These are larger and the bathroom situation is much improved---sinks in room, toilets and shower shared by two to four people instead of an entire floor. The nicest dorms can be hard for freshman to get into, upper classmen usually have first choice. However, these days there are enough options to go around that freshman are seldom completely shut out.

   Most colleges also have some online mechanism now where students can interact as they pair up as roommates. This is different than the old days when they colleges loosely matched two students together and that was that. I'm also a big fan of students matching themselves up with someone they don't know. I think it broadens their perspective and provides for friends beyond their high school and local circle. They'll survive the experience and will be better for it. I promise.

Many students will opt for off-campus housing. Just as the colleges have built more and more elaborate and high end residences, the apartment complexes have followed suit. Fine furnishings, extravagant pools, and other amenities can translate to student living that is significantly more luxurious than what many parents have at home. It is more common for a student to live with a friend or person they already know in an apartment than in a dorm, but the apartments are generally willing to match you with a random person as well. This is particularly true in 3 or 4 bedroom apartments where maybe two people know each other but need someone else to fill out the apartment.

Apartments are often more expensive than dorms and that is the first thing to consider. Another is location. Often, the most opulent apartment complexes are the ones that are farthest away from campus. Parents and students must be realistic about how that can affect a student’s attendance in class. How difficult is it to park on campus? Is public transportation a hassle? What is the commute time? What happens if a the student ends up with one, two, or three hours between classes? It is easy to explain the answers to these questions away but families to need think deeply and honestly about how these problems can be handled on an everyday basis.

Families also need to carefully consider leases. In some cases, if one roommate flakes out and has to leave school, the other roommates are on the hook for that portion of the rent. The same can be true for utilities. There are generally more protections built into a dorm lease so students would be wise to have some understanding of their lease as it relates to roommates before they sign.

What is a Weighted GPA?

A student’s GPA is actually a complicated little number. He or she often has a single number that they consider to be their GPA, but in reality there are significant variations to that number depending on who is looking at it and in what context. The most common variation to a GPA revolves around the concept of weight.

In short, a weighted GPA is a way to look at student’s overall academic performance through the lens of the rigor of their course selection or schedule. It’s a quick way of comparing students against each other with the inclusion of how they’ve challenged themselves. Remember, a GPA in and of itself is sort of like a credit score for students. Just as a credit score is one-stop-shop way of describing the many factors that evaluate a person’s credit, the GPA quickly says how a student performs in the classroom. However, what happens in one classroom can very greatly from another. For example, you can’t really compare a person who successfully pays off a $50 credit card charge at the end of each month with a person who is successfully making a $2000 mortgage each month. Both are being financially responsible, but the weight of the accomplishment of the person making the mortgage payment is much more significant. In the same way, a student who takes the most basic science curriculum a school offers is not really on par with a student who takes a series of rigorous  AP classes within the science department. The unweighted GPA doesn’t tell us that. If both students make all A’s in their classes, they have the same unweighted GPA. However, if we can assume the AP classes are harder than the regular ones the weighted GPA tells us, “Ah, this student has challenged themselves and performed well in tough classes.”

Here is how weighting works. GPA calculation can vary sometimes from school to school, but the most common practice is to assign a 4 to letter grades of A, a 3 to letter grades of B, a 2 to letter grades of C, and so on. However, weighted courses receive a boost or a bonus. So a weighted A might equal a 5, A B might equal a 4, etc.Sometimes there are different tiers of weighting so maybe a honors class gets a half point and an AP or dual enrollment course gets a full point. Either way, when we compare students by their weighted GPA we are offered more differentiation between them as we have insight into the types of of classes they took.

Weighting is only one form of a GPA. Colleges, one of the most important end users of this number, usually recalculate a GPA with their own standards and their approach to weighting can be different from one another. Discussing that is beyond the scope of what I want to convey here. Nevertheless, it’s important to understand what a weighted GPA is and to have at least a general idea of how they are calculated. It’s an important little number that goes along towards deciding a student’s fate.

FAFSA and the Modern Family

One of the financial aid questions I get more than any other revolves around students from nontraditional families. Nontraditional families come in many different forms. Most commonly, that term means that a child’s biological mother and father are not married and/or do not live in the same household. When that happens it results in various financial circumstances and arrangements. In that case, trying to figure out how to file the FAFSA can be maddening.

The most foundational of rules a nontraditional family should use when completing the FAFSA is that the family should use the financial information from the parent the student spends the most time with. So if a student lives with mom during the week and stays with dad maybe every other weekend, the student will file their FAFSA with mom, without regard to either parent’s income.

What to do when mom or dad are remarried though? Well, the step parent’s income is also going to be factored into the FAFSA. Regardless of how long the biological parent and stepparent have been married, regardless of whether or not the stepparent has legally adopted the child, if the student spends most of the time in the home of the parent who is married to a stepparent the parent and stepparent’s income should be put on the FAFSA. Actually, FAFSA changed their 2014 to include unmarried couples. So, for example, if mom lives with her boyfriend who she is not even married to, FAFSA expects the boyfriend’s income to be reported. All of these rules now apply to same sex relationships too, by the way.

So what if the students doesn’t live with mom or dad? Maybe they live with a grandparent, or uncle, or even a friend. The first thing you have to do here is to look more closely at the student’s situation. Has the student been declared homeless by their school? Are both parents deceased? Is the student a foster child? Have they been fully emancipated? If any of those are the case, the child is considered independent and should file their own FAFSA using their own income. My experience, however, is that these situations are less common. What is a more likely scenario is that living with someone like a grandparent, who is not a parent, is just a better situation for the child. In that case, a parent or both parents are still around and the parent’s income should be used on the FAFSA, even if they don’t see the student a whole lot or provide any support. If the parents are truly deadbeats, the student hasn’t seen them in years, or they flat out refuse to complete the FAFSA--that’s when a student needs to start considering whether or not they should be declared homeless. They can discuss that with their high school officials.

The definition of a family can be complicated. There are endless possibilities and each can create a different set of circumstance when it comes to FAFSA. When in doubt, a student’s best recourse is to discuss their situation with a financial aid officer at the schools they are interested in. That’s what those people are there for and they are financial aid experts. At the end of the day, as a high school counselor, the best advice I can give when questions like any of the above come up is to pick up the phone and call the college.

Testing During Senior Year

Generally, a high school student should do most of their standardized testing during their junior year. In fact, that’s probably the biggest part of the college planning process that should occur during junior year. It’s often a good idea, however, to take one more shot at the SAT or ACT during the earliest available tests of senior year. This is usually September for the ACT and October for SAT.

The next step during the fall of senior year is to apply to the colleges a student is interested in. That most commonly happens in the months of September, October, and November. So, once all those applications are in, it stands to reason that there is no need to continue testing for throughout senior year. That is generally true, but there are a handful of reasons why a senior might want to continue to take standardized tests all the way up to graduation.

The first of these is simply to increase a score for admission purposes. Indeed, often a decision letter from a school will be a deferment that calls for more testing. In this case, the college sending the letter probably likes the student but wishes to see a score or sub-score  (often writing) come in just a little higher. If the college asks you to test again, test again!

This sort of goes hand in hand with the need to hit certain benchmarks. Some schools have minimum scores they need to see before they choose to accept you. You can usually find these scores on a school’s admissions website. If you don’t meet the minimum numbers, you need to keep testing. Others schools, particularly at the community college level, may admit you but will require you to take remediation classes if you don’t meet minimum standards. These are classes you’d have to pay tuition for and they wouldn’t count towards your degree, but you would be required to take them. Thus, it’s generally much cheaper and a more efficient use of time to try to meet the minimum score on a test before you get to college.

To this end, some colleges will use standardized tests for placement. A student with a high math score, for example, might be placed in a higher level math class which essentially accelerates their curriculum. Other colleges might ask a senior to take a SAT Subject Test for placement. Again, always closely follow the instructions and recommendations of the colleges you’re interested in.

Lastly, there are some scholarships that a student may become eligible for if certain scores are made. You need to be aware of the application deadlines of these types of scholarships but many are available through the spring. For example The Bright Futures Scholarship in Florida, where I live, takes scores from seniors all the way up to the June test.

Again, for most seniors there is no need to take a SAT or ACT deep into senior year, i.e. the spring. However, there are some instances when a senior might need to do just that. Taking those tests is never fun and for most students it’s a big relief to know testing is complete, but there might be some big advantages to trying it one more time.