USNA goes "Test Flexible"

[Dr. Strange Love]

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SAT/ACT .... the great Equalizer.

I am convinced DD made it into the USNA because of her 1 “Very Decent” SAT score, taken 1 time .... and her Piano skills are immaculate too. I really only care about Chopin. She has always been good at the standardized tests. She knew how much the score was worth.

They sent her to NAPS to pay more attention to her school work ... and grades. We were never concerned about grades ... and my wife happens to be a teacher, and I am a PhD Electrical Engineer. So she was Ok with C’s in HS calculus, physics, chemistry and so on. Personally, I think those grades are fine. She is taught never give up on anything.

NAPS did her a lot of good.
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[clutky]

There’s a lot of excellent BGO advice on this thread.

My DS is home-schooled, so this SAT/ACT problem is of a much greater magnitude for him. Therefore, we absolutely, positively had to do something about it.

This is how my DS and I are looking at this: The greater the effort, the more valuable the achievement. As frustrating as this situation has been for my DS, he no longer sees it as a roadblock to success, but as an opportunity to stand out.

DS took both tests back in December and got OK scores (1330 SAT / 28 ACT), but then had eight tests (four of each) cancelled on him through August. His proctored-practice tests were scoring much higher than his December scores, but he was being denied his chance to prove it. With all of the effort he’d put out prepping for these tests he was becoming apoplectic. But then he decided to distil all of that exasperation into positive energy, and start attacking this problem with a new strategy.

After securing my support for his plan, he set out to find the closest place that was still testing, and had seats available. He spent hours searching zip-codes in a circular pattern starting at a 75-mile radius and working outward. It took a while, but eventually he found a tiny HS in a very rural area, across the state line, several hours away, that had a seat still available. He grabbed the seat, and I reserved him a cheap hotel room nearby. After the test, he jumped back across the state-line and spent the rest of the day smashing smallmouth bass on a river running through a state park.

It is obvious that USNA is doing this out of both fairness and necessity. They want as large a pool of top-notch young people to choose from as they can get, and COVID-19 is throwing all kinds of anchors at the process. But, I believe that those who and are willing to take this adversity and flop it over to an advantage by adjusting their perspective to see this as an occasion to glow in the dark, will have an even greater advantage than they would have had if the coronavirus had never been.

I know it’s not easy……but that’s kind of the point.

For my DD it would be a long, long expensive flight and on return the whole family would have to do a 14 day quarantine. Luckily she has a score from last year (though it's not very good). She has signed up for every test date through February so hopefully will be able to take again. Unfortunately many potential applicants in our area are in the same boat.