Questions for my Amerifriends...

[kellifer]

I swear these aren't for my SPN/HP story that I'm not writing because I have dozens of other things I should be writing.

*looks shifty*

So:

What age do you (approximately):-
- sit your SATs
- Apply for college
- Get accepted for college
- Are a senior in high school

I'm not really sure because in Australia people can be a year older/younger depending on when they started school and I also started thinking that maybe you guys get all your college stuff before you finish your senior year unlike us who apply after we get our results and then apply to Uni. I was always a little confused because it seemed like people had their college acceptances and were still going to classes?

ETA: Wow - you are all very awesome. I'm going to mem this as a reference for US school stuff because there is a *LOT* of info here.

Comments

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

(I graduated high school in 2000, for reference)

(parenthesis are standard ages - people sometimes vary a little)
Took PSAT's Sophomore year (15/16)
SATs and ACTs Spring of Junior year (16/17)
SAT II's Spring of junior year / fall of senior year (17/18)
College applications are usually do Fall of senior year. I did some "early application" which was due October 15th or November 15th and the rest were due January 15th.

Acceptances could arrive as early as January/December if you apply early, but most of the regular ones arrived early April of senior year. It all depended. If you didn't hear by high school graduation, you probably didn't get in.

[beatrice_otter]

Really? I graduated in 2000, as well.

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

Hee. Go double zeroes!

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

Actually, trying to remember.
I think the Sophomore year fall test was the PLAN (which...meant something?) and the PSAT for National Merit was fall of Junior year. Though even that seems crazy since I don't think I learned I was a National Merit finalist until the summer after. Maybe. It's all a bit hazy now.

(as for ACT vs. SAT. I went to high school in the Midwest - outside Chicago - and pretty much everyone took both tests. I applied to two colleges in California, two in Pennsylvania, one in Chicago, and one in Ohio and the ones on the coast only took SATs (I think) and the ones in the Midwest would take either. Since I was applying to more selective schools, they generally all required SAT II's which were more in depth subject tests. I had to take Math II and Writing and a third of my choice (they had physics and chemistry and biology and history and literature and maybe some others - since I was going to science programs I was supposed to take a science one, but I took the history for "fun")

And sometimes the early applications are binding (if you get in you have to go to that school) and sometimes not. It's...all rather complicated.