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SAT versus ACT, A Side-By-Side Analysis, Part 1 of 3
In March 2016, the CollegeBoard rolled out a completely redesigned SAT, which they’d been planning and perfecting since 2012, the first year they were outsold by the ACT. Although all the changes were ultimately based on (or perhaps justified by) sound educational principles, whenever CollegeBoard representatives spoke about the specific changes or whenever articles were published about them, in almost every case they made the SAT more like the ACT, at least on the surface. These changes included the following: removing the guessing penalty; moving from five answer choices to four; replacing challenging vocabulary with simpler “words in context” and […]
Dr. Yo’s 3 Tips for School Supplies
Quick word about school supplies. ‘Tis the season, fa la la la la. Here are Dr. Yo’s guidelines for purchasing school supplies: If your teachers recommend certain types of notebooks, paper, and other school supplies, always get what they want. It shows respect, willingness to learn their way, and who knows, they might actually have a good reason :-). If you haven’t done it their way before, don’t prejudge – give it a shot. If you know what organizational scheme works best for your learning style (either because you’re an older high school student or a younger precocious student who uses words […]
Got ACT Soon? 5 Tips for Cramming
If you’re taking the ACT next weekend and haven’t been able to prepare as thoroughly as you’d like—hey, we understand, end of school, start of summer, yada yada yada—do not despair. You don’t need to spend nearly as much time prepping as you do for the SAT. The ACT is, in fact, a much more “beatable” test than the SAT, especially when time is short. There are two bodies of material you need to know: math (key topics in Arithmetic, Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, and ~15% of Precalc) and 10 key grammar rules. Send us a text @ 413-329-7540 […]
Working with your HS Guidance Counselor: Creating a Foundation to Maximize Acceptance to College
by Dr. Yo, with contributions from Anthony Faulise (originally posted June, 2020) For better or worse, college counselors play a significant role in every U.S. high school student’s journey to college, influencing many aspects of the entire application process, from the selection of schools to admissions committees’ final decisions. College counselors have substantial administrative responsibilities both for their school’s particular guidance program and for each of their individual students’ applications, including coordinating letters of recommendation, sending official high school transcripts and mid-year reports, arranging information sessions with regional directors and other college representatives, helping to run college nights and other […]
Prepping for the Personal Essay: Who Are We and How Did We Get This Way? Aka, Two Apples a Day…
[Originally posted 6/16/20, but still all true in 2023, and you can’t say that about MANY things.] There are many ways to understand who we are. We are, for example, in a literal sense, what we EAT and drink and breathe. When we digest things, we literally take the external world and make it part of ourselves (hence the magic of the pig, who, as Jim Gaffigan has noted, can take an apple—basically garbage—and miraculously turn it into bacon!). Less literally, we are the sum total of our THOUGHTS and FEELINGS, in that what we think about all day and […]
Great 2023-24 SAT/ACT Plan for Rising JUNIORS Applying to SELECTIVE Colleges
My kid wants to consider applying to at least SOME selective schools. Which college entrance exam should s/he take, and when should s/he start? Please bear in mind we’d really like him/her to have a great junior year, especially academically, and s/he’s signed up for some super tough classes with some super tough teachers…. Great questions, great qualification, so glad you asked! Many CT juniors wait until spring of junior year to get started climbing up the college entrance exam mountain, largely because, for the past several years, CT Public high schoolers get to take TWO SATs in March, one […]
Summer Strategies for High School Students
With standardized test preparation, application writing, and summer reading assignments ramping up as the fall looms on the distant horizon, summer is no time to go academically soft. Just as athletes lose ground without regular practice and training, students can forget math facts and vocabulary words, or begin to slip in writing skills and study habits, if they aren’t intellectually challenged through the summer months. There are three specific areas in which students can get substantially ahead during the school break: standardized test preparation, academic (math, English, and other study) skills, and summer reading. Prepping for Standardized Tests Junior year […]
Writing College Applications in the Sweet Spot: June, July & August
Many college-bound students make one of two critical mistakes when it comes time to thinking through and writing college applications: they do it too soon, or they do it too late. Too soon, you say? Clearly you haven’t met my mother. Is there really such a thing? Yes, there really is. Emphatically so. Many high school teachers and administrators, both public and private, do their juniors a disservice when they stress them out about writing college applications during the spring of junior year. It’s one thing to go through the personal essay prompts and even write a MOCK essay for the […]
12 Hot Tips for SAT and ACT Game Day
If you’ve been preparing over weeks or months for an ACT and/or SAT, then you’ve probably spent most of your time learning and reviewing all the math and English grammar covered on them. If you’re shooting for a competitive score at the most selective colleges on your list, I bet you’ve also been taking practice tests to develop effective strategies and recognize common question types. In the end, your SAT or ACT score won’t likely correlate with any meaningful aspect of your future, but it WILL be an accurate measure of two things: knowledge of highly refined academic material and […]
Six Quality Summer Activities for Success in the College Admissions Game
Ah, summertime. The long awaited break from the rigors of academia during the seemingly interminable haul between September and June. Time to sleep in every day and finally get to new levels in all your favorite video games and indulge all your other couch potato fantasies. Right? Um, wrong! The last thing you want to do in the college admissions game is be a complete couch potato over the whole summer. There are plenty of productive, meaningful, and FUN things to do between final exams and back-to-school BBQs that will give you a feeling of accomplishment AND impress college admissions […]
TWOFERS: Why April Is a Fabulous Test Prep Month for Most Juniors
Each year there are 14 total national college admissions exams offered (seven each of the SAT and ACT), making 14 total opportunities (not including individual State in-school exams, e.g., March in CT). As you can see in the linear academic calendar, these exams are fairly evenly distributed across the 12 months (one each approximately every 7.5 weeks), with a couple of notable exceptions. Twice a year each, in Oct/Nov and June/July for the ACT, and in Oct/Nov and May/June for the SAT, two exams each are offered closer to ONE MONTH apart than two, and the 3+ week difference does […]
7 Tips for Writing New Year’s Resolutions in the College Admissions Game
On behalf of everyone at CollegePrepExpress, I wish you a happy, productive, successful, and COVID-free 2023! At CPE, we’re great believers that “today is the first day of the rest of your life,” that you can choose to wipe the slate clean and start fresh any day and time you choose, with new thinking, new activities, new routines, and, over time, new habits. But there are two ideal times for students, in particular, to pause for serious introspection and reassessment, two ideal times to set new goals: the beginning of the academic year and the beginning of the calendar year. So RIGHT […]
A Vacation Exercise Tip from Harvard Law School
For those who like to exercise… and those who exercise even when they don’t like it 😉 Like most other freshmen at Harvard, I lived in the Yard my first year, which, alas, was sometime during the last century 😂. It turns out, the Yard is closer to Harvard Law School than any of the upperclassmen houses, and I had a close friend who had his eye on attending HLS after graduation. (P.S. He did, and yes, he made Law Review just like his dad. Anyway.) Because he’s sharp, Ben spent more time on the Law School campus next door than […]
If I got rejected, does that mean I’m a failure?
Absolutely not! And I’m not trying to offer false solace; I’m offering an understanding of simple math. Single- and low double-digit acceptance rates are REAL. If you got rejected from a school with, say, a 30% acceptance rate, then to consider yourself a failure means you’d also have to consider 7 out of every 10 college bound applicants to that colleges failures, too. Likewise, if a school with a 10% acceptance rate dings you (and many rates have spiraled to less than HALF that since 2020), then you’d have to consider 9 out of every 10 failures. And that would […]
