What does my child's starting score actually mean?

Nick's answer is that a starting score, whether it is a 17 on the ACT or a 1500 on the SAT, is feedback on what to work on and not a measure of intelligence or of where a student will go in life. He explains the apparent paradox that these tests still predict college grades, graduation and job placement, because what they reward is hard work, grit and perseverance.

Recorded November 2025.

Transcript

Let's talk about your starting score on the SAT or the ACT. It doesn't mean anything in and of itself. If you come in with a 17 on the ACT or an 800 on the SAT, it's not a measurement of your intelligence. If you come in with a 34 on the ACT or a 1500 on the SAT, it is not a measure of your intelligence. It's also not a measure for your capacity for the future or where you might go in life. All it is is feedback on what you need to work on and what you don't need to work on in order to improve this score.

In the last video we talked about long-term goals. It's really critical that you set those long-term goals in order to reframe the SAT or the ACT as simply giving you feedback on what you need to do in order to achieve the score that will get you into the colleges that will help you achieve your long-term goals.

Now, these tests, while they don't tell us anything of real substance about a student, what's interesting is they are predictive of performance in college. They are highly predictive, more so than high school grades, of your grades in college. They're also predictive of graduation rates from college, job placement after college, and graduate school placement after college.

Now, this is seemingly a paradox. How can they be predictive of all these behaviors in the future but not tell us anything of substance about a student? Well, here's the answer. These tests reward hard work, grit, and perseverance. If you really put in the time and energy, your scores are going to go up. And students who figure that out, who are willing to put in the hard work and the energy into these tests to get a higher score, they do the same thing when they go to college in these different arenas. And that is what makes the test predictive of that future behavior in college.

So whether you come in with an extremely low score or an extremely high score or anywhere in between, I want you to think about that as feedback. It's nothing more, nothing less, than feedback about where you currently are, areas that you have content mastery over, and areas that you need to work on to achieve that mastery. If we start to reframe these standardized tests like that, we're much better able to take the steps necessary to achieve the score you need to reach your long-term goals for the future. And that leads to higher motivation, and that leads to success.

More explainers for parents: https://www.prepgurus.com/13secrets (the free 13 Secrets to College Admission guide) and https://highschoolreach.com (look up any high school's college outcomes)