These Are The Most Important Questions To Answer When Thinking about the “Best Time” for Your Child To Study in the US

How would you answer each of these questions? And what do they mean for at what age is best for studying abroad?

Each student and family’s situation is different so we recommend that you consider and evaluate your unique situation with an expert. The answers to the following questions might start to give a sense of one of the questions we hear most often when first meeting families: when is the best time to go study abroad?

Is your child mature enough to be successful abroad?

Everyone grows up and matures at different speeds and ages, some early and steadily, others are slow “late bloomers,” and still others delay and “all of a sudden” mature. Students’ abilities to handle different kinds of situations on their own may impact when parents think it’s appropriate for their children to consider study abroad.

There is no single right or wrong answer.

It will be whenever your child can grasp what will be involved when they’re “ready” and willing to take part in the hard work to prepare to apply for schools as well as to live apart from family. While there are many adults in a student’s life while at a junior boarding or boarding school, students must be capable of age-appropriate self-sufficiency and self-advocacy. Parents may find it difficult to be objective about their own child’s maturity and readiness: some parents want to protect their kids for a very long time from the world, so it’s important to be honest and think about getting other perspectives on your child’s maturity level. How does your child act in classes at school and what feedback do you receive when they aren’t with you? How does their maturity compare to their peer group?

How much time can you spend supporting and overseeing your child, their schoolwork and development each week?

Each family’s home and work situation is different, and one phase of life may require a 9/9/6 work schedule, while other families can have one parent stay home to focus on overseeing children. If parents are extremely busy with their work travel schedules and cannot dedicate a lot of time each week to supporting a student after school or on the weekends, it may make sense to consider boarding school earlier.

Boarding school offers an environment where there are parents everywhere! I remember when I went to boarding school, I went from having one set of parents to two dorm parent families, an advisor and a whole group of teachers who were deeply invested in my well-being, and also looking out to make sure I was on top of everything!

If the time you can now invest in your child’s education is very limited, you may consider study abroad earlier. If you have at least one parent home all the time and can dedicate a lot of time and resources to supporting and overseeing your child’s progress, going abroad later may be more appealing. In addition to actual time and resources, do you have the experience and expertise to give your child valuable advice and support? Additionally, will your child listen to you?

As middle schoolers become high schoolers, some parents find what they say to their child goes in one ear and out the other! Whether or not you select for your child to study abroad earlier or later, it’s important to consider how to make sure that your child maintains open communication with you and has a network of supportive adults guiding them in a positive direction.

Can your child not just survive, but thrive, in a fully English-language learning environment?

Without an immersive English environment, it will be very hard for a student to make substantial progress in English and also achieve academic success in any English-language school. The “Catch 22” is that in order to improve your English, you need an immersive English environment, but your English needs to be of a high-enough level in order to survive in an English language school! How to beat this cycle? If your child attends a school without English as the primary language, it’s best to make sure they have access to native English teachers for conversational English, reading, writing and vocabulary development from a young age. Traditional methods of memorizing vocabulary just for a test will not dramatically help overall English fluency.

Remember that you may think that your child’s English is ‘okay’ or at grade level, or is good or even better than their classmates, which in the context of their school it might be. However, what is considered “good English” is very different if you are in a public Chinese school, an international division, or in a school where you learn in English all day long. Rather than saying my son got a 95 in English class recently or he has 87 TOEFL, it’s much more useful to drill down into what that means. What books has your child ready lately? Are they an engaged, curious and excited learner or do they need to be forced into schoolwork? Have you had their reading, writing, speaking and listening objectively evaluated?

What Are Your Long-Term Educational Goals?

Educational investments do not see immediate, overnight returns, which is why there are no short-cuts in this process, but there are best practices to make sure you can go even further! Similarly, the dividends from real learning and ‘valuable education’ will pay off for the rest of your life.  One of the questions that you never need to ask is “is it too late to start (planning to study abroad)?” While it may be rushed to apply for one specific year, being worried that you are starting late should never stop you from getting started, there are always more chances!

If you are thinking about applying for US university, it is important to select a high school that will set you up for success. Since it is built into the structure and natural flow of American college preparatory schools they will do a lot to prepare students to be successful in an American university process. If you attend a high school outside of the US or in a non-American curriculum, it will be more important to go beyond what your school offers to make sure you are able to ‘keep up’ with all that your peers are doing at high schools around the world.  

What Age Is Your Child Now and How Much Time Do You Need to Prepare?

In the US, the youngest an international student might go abroad for boarding school is 4th or 5th grade, but there are very few schools that will accept non-US citizens or permanent residents of that age. There are about 300 boarding schools (countless private day schools and those who have homestay programs for international students) and a few thousand universities in the US, so the options become much more plentiful as students grow up. The current age of your child will determine how much time there is to prepare before traditional entry periods. We recommend students plan for at least two years before enrolling to allow time for exam prep, school search, research and the application process.

The most traditional entry years:

Junior boarding school (middle school):
6th and 7th grades (11-12 years old)

Boarding school (high school)
9th and 10th grades (14-15 years old)

Undergraduate (university)
18-19 years old

We sometimes hear families say, “I will only go to the US for boarding school if I can get into a better school than I am in now.” However, what is objectively “better” is a bit hard to say and may not be immediately obvious. Don’t just rely on the rankings! Will your opportunities to improve your English, become a better student, have more time for extra-curriculars to help you develop confidence, maturity and leadership make you a better college applicant? Probably! In another post, we will discuss how US college admissions officers view the differences between applying from different types of schools, and you might be surprised by the answers!

What Kind of Education Style Will Fit Your Child and Help Them Reach Their Potential?

Some families realize early on in their child’s education that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ classroom-style does not actually fit their child. Whether that be because the child loves art, theater, sports, loves to talk, think critically and independently, or just wants a more diverse and open learning environment, it may mean that your child can develop their strengths, hobbies, and confidence more quickly in the US.

Unsure about how to answer any of these or what these answers might mean for your family and child? Get in touch with us!

How Many Times Do You Need to Take the SAT or ACT?

There is no magic number-- but it should factor in: 1) a consideration of how much time you need to study in order to improve from your baseline score, and 2) if your starting level is close, or very far from your ultimate target score you hope to apply to college with.

In short: can you take the test once and get your desired score? Or will you need to put in a lot of time and effort and try multiple times?

Typically, we recommend that students take the SAT or ACT at least once (even those who are self-identified ‘bad test-takers’ should still give it a shot before only considering test-optional colleges), twice is best, a recommended maximum of three times unless something horrible and unpredictable happened and you need to give it a fourth try.

It’s very important to take a diagnostic of both a full-length SAT and full-length ACT. This can save you a bunch of time later on by 1) first determining which test you are best suited to which, 2) could very importantly helping you get a better score! (because colleges really don’t care which test you take!), and 3) will evaluate if you were to take an official test today, what would your score be?

Both the SAT and ACT cover material that is most suitable for students who have completed two years of high school already. That means that it is a bit of a waste of time to start too early, unless you are a prodigy, you just won’t be ready for it. You should never just take the SAT formally in order to do a baseline test score. If you end up applying to a college that asks to see all of your scores, they will see any of these ones you decided to just take for practice! This is what the PSAT (offered in US schools) is for, as well as real old SAT’s that the College Board makes available. Take advantage of them!

You should space the time in between your tests so that you have enough time to do more preparation and work on improving your score. You should never walk into an SAT having done no prep since your last test or no clue what your score range might be. In order to be a reliable metric that colleges use in order to predict academic success, each test must also be at a reliable level of difficulty. So, you should also reliably have some idea of how you will do! If you haven’t made time for preparation since your last test, you should consider rescheduling.

Will Colleges Know How Many Times You Took the SAT or ACT?

For the majority of colleges, you may use “Score Choice” and manually select which test score dates (but all sections from one date will be delivered!) to send to a college. If you are using superscoring, you may send two test dates with your highest Math score and Verbal scores, if they weren’t on the same test date.

There are some colleges that will ask for ALL of the test score information and so you MUST send all scores from all dates you have taken the test. This means that in your strategy for applying to these schools, you cannot totally negate reviewing for one section of the test even if it is already your ‘strong’ section. For example, you scored an 800 in Math and a 620 Verbal. You spend months working on Verbal. Don’t totally sweep by math if you are planning to apply to the colleges below for the next test sitting. If you accidentally fumble math because your focus was completely on Verbal, colleges will also see that, and it may raise some eyebrows.

Which colleges will ask for all of your scores to be sent?*

• Georgetown University

• University of Pennsylvania

• Cornell University

• Carnegie Mellon

• Yale University

• All University of California system

• Rice University

• University of Washington

(*not a full list, just notable ones current of this posting! Always check the website of the college for the most updated rules)

The ACT does not pre-calculate the superscored ACT in a score report that goes to colleges. This means that the colleges you apply to see all of the individual ACT raw scores before they themselves superscore the ACT.

Some colleges might use computers to do the calculations for them, in which case the admissions officers won’t spend time perusing each of your scores. But what if they do it themselves? It’s hard to say that an admissions officer seeing a lower score won’t at least subconsciously influence them and cause them to wonder—what happened there?

If you continue to do practice tests and are coming in at a 31, but get a 27, you should re-test. But if you or your tutor think your skill level is at 32 and you get a 33, and you’ve already taken the test three times, it’s best not to risk it to see if you can ‘get lucky’ another time.

If they see that you have taken the test many times, they may wonder if your test results are because you have been prepping all the time and trying to get “lucky” or is it really a true measure of our abilities.

If a college has an official superscoring policy, then they will likely follow it. PrepScholar has the most comprehensive list of all colleges that superscore the ACT and the SAT, so take a look to see if the colleges you are interested in applying to are on there.

The Superscore Preparation Strategy

If you are going to be applying to colleges that have an official superscore policy for the SAT/ACT, then you’ll want strategize your preparation to maximize your score for different sections each time. Since many of the students I work with tend to be quite strong in math, and it is sometimes the easier section to make rapid improvements on, we have students focus on get as close to an 800 as possible.

Finally, keep in mind that if you live outside of the US, we can be thankful for some new test dates in the 2020-21 cycle. However, with phenomena like coronavirus and other random test cancellations, it is wise to register far in advance and come up with a Plan A and Plan B. Space out your test dates, and start planning early so that you can still make a contingency plan if needed. Some of our students now take the SAT in the US for the August date, wrapping it in with the a college tour and intensive SAT prep while school is not in session can make a lot of sense for some students. Standardized testing is required still for international students by most competitive US colleges and universities, and while it shouldn’t overly consume your schedule and college preparation process, you can get ahead of the crunch and anxiety by starting to think about scheduling and preparation in 9th and 10th grades. In a holistic review like most US colleges do, you can’t sacrifice all of your time to reach perfection in one area like standardized testing and let other areas not develop, such as your grades and extra-curriculars.

If you have more questions about when and how to prepare for your US university testing, please get in touch!