Last week, a mom asked me on my Facebook page what constitutes good SAT scores.

I told her it depends on the caliber of the school. At some colleges a 1600 out of a 2400 score is above average while at other schools, applicants with that kind of score wouldn’t even be seriously considered. At some of the nation’s most prestigious schools, a 2100 could be borderline.

It’s always wise to look at the test score ranges at individual schools. You can find these scores on the College Board, COLLEGEdata and the federal College Navigator, as well as the Princeton Review and Fisk collegiate guide books.

The mother’s question prompted me to share some of the more interesting of the College Board’s latest SAT statistics. Here are eight stats that I bet you didn’t know:

1. The average SAT score earned by high schools students in the class of 2011 was 1500 out of a maximum of 2400 points. The overall score breaks down this way:

Math 514
Critical reading 497
Writing 489

2. Students who completed a core curriculum in high school scored an average of 143 points higher on the SAT than those who didn’t. The College Board defines a core curriculum as including at least four English, three math, three natural sciences and three social sciences/history classes.

3. Nearly 1.65 million high school students from the class of 2011 took the SAT, which is a record.

4. You hear far less about the scores for the SAT subject tests, which are chiefly required for elite colleges and universities. Here are the average scores for the subject tests:

5. The College Board breaks down SAT test performance by states. You can find the report card for your state here: College-Bound Seniors 2011 State Reports.

6. The best indicator of whether a child will succeed in college is his or her high school grade point average. The SAT is a weaker measure and it’s supposed to give colleges an idea of how applicants would perform in their first year of college.

The College Board developed a readiness benchmark that indicates that a score of 1550 (out of a 2400 scale) means students have a 65% likelihood of achieving a B- average or higher during their freshman year. Here is a college readiness graph from the College Board:

7. Forty four percent of test takers in the class of 2011 were minority students, which it the most diverse group of test takers ever. Thirty six percent of test takers were first-generation college goers and 27% don’t speak English exclusively.

8. More than 350,000  low-income students (21% of all test takers) obtained SAT fee waivers so they could take the test for free. If you know someone who could qualify for a fee waiver tell them.

More from The College Solution:

7 Ways to Boost Your ACT or SAT Scores

SAT and ACT: Which is the Better Test?

Should You Apply to a Reach School?

Winning College Admission Essays

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller and a workbook, Shrinking the Cost of College: Great Ways to Cut the Cost of a Bachelor’s Degree. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Here is something that really irritates me about the whole college process:  too many families view it as a game.

Their aim is to get their child into the best school possible. Fair enough, but what’s often overlooked is making sure that teenagers are well prepared for whatever college they end up at. Too many parents assume that their children will do well in college because their high school grade point averages look good. Considering that most high school students have a 3.0 GPA or higher, however, grades are fairly meaningless.

The annual college readiness statistics from the ACT organization shows that I’m not off base here. In 2010, only 24% of high school graduates, who took the ACT, met the college readiness benchmarks in English, Reading, Math, and Science. Not surprisingly, teenagers performed the worst in math and science.

According to the academics who wrote this recent blockbuster book, Academically Adrift, students who are well-prepared for college not only do better when they get to college, but they improve markedly while they’re there.

Studying Math in the Summer

I am bringing this up today because of one of my son’s projects this summer.  Via Skype, Ben is hoping to help his nephew Matt in St. Louis boost his previously low math score when he retakes the ACT test in June. Ben, who is a math major/physics minor at Beloit College, plans to help his cousin throughout the summer with his math and science.  Since the ACT tests what students should know in high school, all this work should make Matt a better prepared student when he does start college in the fall of 2012.

When Ben was in high school he also spent part of his summers working on math. Ben easily earned “A’s” in his high school math classes, but the grades didn’t impress him, his father or me. We all believed that his high school math classes weren’t rigorous enough to prepare him for high-level college math so Ben took five math courses at our local community college during his junior and senior year in high school, including summers. Ben started at Beloit College by taking Calculus II and Linear Algebra and while the classes were extremely challenging, he survived his first year and he’s eager for more math. I’d consider that a success.

What Are You Waiting For?

So what’s the bottom line here? Summer is the perfect time for teenagers to get help with their academics. Luckily, there are many resources out there. You can find online classes, tutors through Craigslist and there’s that favorite tutor of Bill Gates whom I wrote about recently.

Don’t waste your summer!

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and a workbook, Shrinking the Cost of College. She also blogs for CBSMoneyWatch and US News. Follow her on Twitter.

How many times have you read news accounts about American students lagging behind countless other countries in academic achievement?

In a recent standardized test of math proficiency, we’re way behind Taiwan (No. 1), Hong Kong (No. 2) and Korea (No. 3), but wait. We can’t even compete with the likes of Slovenia and the Slovak Republic.

When I’ve read the occasional American-kids-are-stupid accounts, I’ve never panicked. After all, I figured my children went to schools that gave them an academic edge and certainly they could do far, far better than students in places like Azerbaijan and Turkey. I bet you were thinking the same thing.

Many people, including myself, assumed that lower-income kids and immigrants held down the scores of whatever tests American kids were failing at.

It might, however, be time to panic.

A fascinating story in The Atlantic , Your Child Left Behind, makes a compelling case that even affluent American students are performing worse than the students of any income level in many well-off countries.

“People will find it quite shocking that even our most advantaged students are not all that competitive,” observed Eric Hanushek, a Stanford economist, who has sliced and diced the international academic data.

The State Where Smart Kids Fare the Best

Hanushek  also looked at the results of individual states and concluded that even states with a preponderance of educated residents aren’t faring well compared to developed countries. When researchers treated each state as its own country, Massachusetts performed the best — coming in 17th. Anybody surprised that it was predominantly Southern states that fared the worst with Mississippi — a perennial laggard – coming in last.

What’s the Problem?

So what are the reasons why smart affluent Americans students with every advantage aren’t kicking global butt?

Here are four reasons posited by the researchers that are not going to make you feel better:

1. It’s too easy to become a teacher. When Massachusetts implemented a basic literacy test for new teachers, for example, a third of them failed.

2. The focus isn’t on high-achieving students. There is less focus on these kids because it’s thought that they can do well without as much attention.

3. Common academic standards are rare.

4. Educators are focused on the wrong thing. Smaller class sizes, Hanushek insists, don’t tend to improve learning. Neither does throwing more money into schools.

After reading this depressing article, I wonder when America is going to start demanding more from our Schools of Education that are producing the nation’s teachers? When will they be held accountable?

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and She also writes a college blog for  CBSMoneyWatch and US News. Follow her on Twitter.

One reason is obvious. I don’t think I’d have the energy today to chase toddlers around.

The second reason occurred to me last week when I reading a story in The New York Times entitled, Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children.

The article explained that parents of young children are abandoning picture books like The Velveteen Rabbit, Madeline and The Runaway Bunny because they worry that their children won’t be able to compete in grade school — and eventually get into great colleges — if they spend too much time on books with few words. Instead, parents are pushing preschoolers to start reading chapter books.

In a blog post that I wrote for CBSMoneyWatch this week, I made this observation:

It’s stunning to me that parents of young children believe that ditching wonderful picture books like The Hungry Little Caterpillar and Curious George will give their kids an edge in school.

My two kids, who are now in college, loved picture books like Good Night Moon, The Ugly Duckling, The Little Engine That Could and a slew of enchanting books by such authors as William Steig, Jan Brett and Eric Carle. Some of my fondest moments as a mom of young children came when I was sharing picture books with my children.

I can’t imagine a better way to fuel a preschooler’s imagination than exploring a picture book. At the same time, I can’t think of a better way to turn students into non-readers than to foist chapter books onto young children prematurely.

What would a child rather explore? Cloudy With a Chance of Meatball, where the residents of Chewandswallow experience hamburger storms, mash potato snowfalls and syrup showers? Or would a preschooler rather muddle through a modern-day version of Dick and Jane, with monosyllabic words and no plots?

So why am I glad that my kids aren’t toddlers? I wouldn’t want to be raising my kids during a time when parents are so paranoid about college that they have turned picture books into the enemy. How warped.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon best seller, and she also writes for CBSMoneyWatch.

Many of them aren’t. According to ACT Inc., only 23% of recent high school graduates, who took the ACT test, were prepared for college.

When the ACT examined its latest crop of statistics, the test maker concluded that less than one in four high school graduates was academically prepared in these four key subject areas: English, reading, math and science. That certainly helps explain why roughly 44% of undergrads drop out.

This week a high school counselor asked peers on a college counseling website to suggest what skills are essential for college success. Here are some of the answers he received:

• The ability to resolve conflicts.
• Speaking and presentations skills.
• Researching skills.
• Math skills.
• Writing skills.
• Technology proficiency.
• Time management. (The all-nighter will never disappear.)

Is your high school student deficient in one or more of these skills? I wouldn’t worry too much as long as he or she graduates with a 3.0 GPA or higher.

As I mentioned in my previous college blog post, The Secrets of Succeeding in College, high school students who earn a “B” average have a significantly greater chance of surviving college.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com.

Further Reading:

College Advice: Why High School Counselors Can’t Always Help

Predicting College Success: Answer These 12 Questions

Great Reading Lists for Teenagers

I understand how hard it can be to get many teenagers to read. One of my children is a reader and the other is not. What should help is giving teenagers lots of choices by compiling a summer reading list. One of my favorite places to get ideas for books for children of any age and any reading level is the California Reading List.

The California Department of Education has compiled great reading lists for students of different reading levels from kindergarten to 12th grade.

For teenagers, the site contains 13 reading lists. Here are just a few of the titles from the state’s recommended teen reading lists:

• All Quiet on the Western Front, Eric Mamria Remarque
• Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
• Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire
• Dune, Frank Herbert
• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
• East of Eden, John Steinbeck
• A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen
• Nothing But the Truth, Avi
• A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
• For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enough, Nzoke Shange

If you’re interested in learning more about how to find wonderful colleges at affordable prices, I’d suggest you read my book, The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price. Lynn O’Shaughnessy