I was signing up to take the SAT and ACT tests, and...

Someone needs to be beaten.

The SAT reg server gave me a 500: internal server error as I was finishing, and the ACT took over an hour.

Why God, why?

Sorry, needed to complain.

ooh... I remember those.

So do I... I had a miserable cold and a horrid cough that day. It was almost impossible to concentrate, but I managed to pull off an 1100, sick and cold-medication riddles as I was.

I did well enough on my PSATs, and I was in no mood to concentrate, either (long story, won't go into it).

Got in the 88th percentile, which is pretty good when I was thinking about something else.

Of course, sorta sucks when that same problem causes you to get a 4 on an essay in AP...The anger was immense.

I've known actually quite a few people who were sick on ACT days and consequently got a lower score than they felt they deserve(I think stress can sometimes bring on sickness) What I don't understand is why they let this be a big deal. The ACT can be taken as many times as you want. I think it's so strange all the people I know who waited until the last minute to take the ACT in their senior year and then weren't happy with the results. My advice is take it early and take it often so that you learn how to take those kinds of tests and know what you're getting in to and how to pace yourself. And you don't need to report any test to any colleges. You can always wait until you get the results and then pay to have them sent to the college of your choice if you like them.

First time I took the ACT was when I was a sophomore, I got a damn 29 because I could hardly understand the science section. That test didn't get reported anywhere. What did get reported was the 34 the next year. I just got offered full tuition at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and of course, the 32 and 31 I got after the 34 when I was trying to get one more point I kept to myself also. Worked out great.

Hmmm... We get to do exams at the end of our 6th year in secondary school. I had 11 of them. 3 hours long each.

If the results aren't what you like you have to redo the entire year of school, the exams can only be done in June.

I never botherd much when I took my SAT's I got a 900 random guessing through half of the test.

dont they give you like 100 points for spelling your name correctly ?

Yea, you definitely have a point. I've been "academically driven," until this year, anyway, so I started with the ACT in seventh grade. I'm a senior in High School now and I've take the ACT 4 times and the SAT twice, and plan on taking both once more before the end of this year. I want so much to get over a 1500 on the SAT! It requires a lot of luck though...

i think it's 200 points.

That's actually just the joke of it, its more like you get 200 points for just showing up.. you can't make below a 200, unless you don't put your name down then it just counts as you just didn't show up to take the test and you don't get a score.....

So you can go in, put your name down, not answer any questions and still get a 200.

...yeah, but a 200 won't be recognized very well... I have found the US test standards to be written that its hard to get very low, but also hard to get very high. (For example, in school: anything below 60% is considered very bad - not much of a 100 scale if you ask me). On the other hand, many European tests create a much wider scale of scores (ie. the scores ARE stretched out more generally from lower to higher)

I know that these are huge generalizations, but I've found it interesting the different cultural approaches: europeans seem to be more prone to use the whole scale, while US seems to only use the top fourth.

I remember taking the SATs in this other High School in Maryland, not the one I went to, just another in the same county. I was suffering from a mild hangover, but the coffee and doughnuts I had picked up before heading over there straightened me out. They had overbooked in error and had about 200 of us in the cafeteria of the school, 2 to a table, with 6 proctors watching (read: nosed into newspapers). About 3/4 the way through my table partner, a maniac I had known from many years of sitting alphabetically opposite him, stand up in the middle of one of the test sessions and yells at the top of his lungs: "YOUR MOTHER!!!", and then promptly sits down. The whole damn room jumped, no one noticed who it was...

I think I did the best on that turn at the SATs, it was hard not to giggling through the rest of it.

Cheers,

Finegan