Success


Shedding Light on the Dark Ages of Junior Year

Back when I was in school, teachers sometimes liked to call the Middle Ages the Dark Ages.  Perhaps a misnomer, the term Dark Ages was meant to suggest that during the Middle Ages—the period in Western History between Antiquity (Greeks and Romans) and the Renaissance—nothing very interesting happened as far as historians were concerned.  Hence, it was dark. By analogy, the long period in the junior year sandwiched between Oct PSATs and winter/spring SATs/ACTs might well be called the Dark Ages of the Junior year. I see it happen to well-intentioned, high-achieving students every year: not a lot going on in terms […]


Guest Blog by Amanda Youmans, I Got the SAT Blues

Why do I believe my standardized test scores are not a valid indication of my college readiness?      (A) I read Sian Beilock’s Choke and I lie on the spectrum between nervous test takers and those who suffer from full-blown test anxiety.      (B) I don’t think there exists a standardized test that reflects my passion for learning or intellectual interests or abilities.      (C) Bubble sheets are not well-suited to represent the breadth or depth of what I’ve learned in high school, in or out of the classrooms.      (D) All of the above. If […]


ACTs Less Than a Week Away? 5 Pro Tips to Raise Your Scores REALLY Fast

Good time management on the ACT, even more than on the SAT, is crucial for getting high scores. And the cool thing is, relatively speaking, it doesn’t take long to master or to see its impact on your composite score. Is a few days enough time? Yup, if you’re dedicated. It’s basically a matter of knowing the format of each of the five tests really well. You don’t want to be the kid who, when the proctor says turn the page and begin, blurts out, “Hey! There’s Science on this test?!”   Those who become students of the exam–that is, […]


Standardized Test Prep Made Simple: Tip Sheet for Preparing for SATs and ACTs

Preparing for high-stakes standardized tests like the SAT or the ACT is not EASY, but it is SIMPLE. What I mean by that is much of the work is psychological: you need to make a decision to invest the necessary time, plan your work, and then work your plan. For years instructors at CollegePrepExpress have been helping students get high scores by showing them that preparation for these behemoth exams is really the same as that for any other test: it involves TWO basic activities: studying the material covered on the exam and taking practice tests to give you facility […]


‘Twas The Night Before Early Action… A Note to PARENTS

By Kate Cryan Let’s time-travel for a moment. Not into a time with hoverboards or flying cars, but just a few short days or weeks into the future, to the first application deadline. It’s the day before the application deadline of your teen’s first choice college, and time to click the “Submit” button on the CommonApp. If it had been up to you, this button would have been hit at least a couple of weeks ago, if not before, but, sadly, it *wasn’t* up to you. No; the task lay with your resident high-schooler who, for the last few months, has suffered from a […]


Dr. Yo’s Top 2 Tips for Reading Comprehension/Concentration on the PSAT, SAT, ACT, Literature Subject Test, and AP Lit exams

Reading  comprehension tests are, in most cases, a misnomer. Passages on the SAT, ACT, Literature Subject Test, and AP English exams do not typically test students’ ability to COMPREHEND the material; they test students’ ability to pay attention to what they’re reading. This is a very important distinction, particularly when it comes to confidence. When students perform poorly on a reading comprehension test, or at a level less than they’d expect,  the reason is not likely that they can’t COMPREHEND the passage, but rather than they weren’t paying close enough attention; that is, they weren’t concentrating on what they were reading. […]


Dr. Yo’s 6 Tips for September Goal Setting

September is always a month of great beauty and of great energy in the academic world. The start of a new academic calendar every September—as a career academic, I’ve always put more stock in the Sept-June than the Jan-Dec calendar—is a great time for self-assessment and goal setting. If you haven’t sat down yet and made some goals for yourself for the new school year, now would be a great time. 🙂 I just did mine and posted them on the fridge where they can serve as a motivation (or admonishing reminder) of what I want to accomplish for myself in 2014-2015. […]


Catch the Back-to-School Wave

One of my favorite things to do is to bodysurf.  I remember when my dad taught me how on a Florida vacation back in the early, gulp, 1970s. (This past weekend I had the privilege of teaching my daughter at East Beach in RI–hey, never mind that her first effort resulted in a complete heels over head 360). My father explained how good timing enables you to harness the full force of the swell just as the whitecaps begin to break at the crest of the wave.  If you jump too early or scramble to catch up, you’ll miss it: […]


An Undergraduate-Eye View: Tips for College

As an addendum to our last post, Leaving Soon for College? Dr. Yo’s 6 Simple Tips for Guaranteed Success (What are YOURS?), Emerson undergraduate Laura Cryan has these words of wisdom: Tips for Success in College by Laura Cryan   You Get Out What You Put In It frustrates me when students expect the degree itself to get them a job, any sort of special recognition, or to magically endow them with special skills. It won’t. College campuses are full of amazing resources – many of which are untapped by a lot of students, simply because they don’t know about them, […]


How to THINK about Math

As a teacher of both English and Math for over two decades, I’ve had a unique opportunity to witness how the same student OFTEN thinks completely differently about math and EVERYTHING ELSE. Every year I work with really bright, hard-working students who exercise impressive critical thinking and cognitive firepower in the humanities and in life in general, but as soon as a problem is written down in a math book or on a math section of a standardized test, their IQ seems to fall precipitously as their eyes glaze over and their shoulders start to shrug. I’ll tell you, people, […]


4 Reasons Why It’s Important to Tell the Truth and How It Can Get You Into College

Let’s face an unpalatable truth together, shall we? We ALL lie. Yup, when occasion suits our needs, even those of us who are honest almost all the time and pride ourselves on our integrity are still prone to exaggerate, understate, omit, prevaricate (go ahead, look it up), or explicitly speak what we know not to be true. Human beings have emotions, and to paint in broad stokes, we prefer the good ones to the bad ones; so sometimes we delude ourselves that telling a white, or sometimes black, lie will feel better than suffering the short-term pain that telling the […]


Taking the ACT This Weekend? Here’s Your 5-Point Checklist for Cramming

If you’re taking the ACTs this weekend and haven’t been able to prepare as thoroughly as you’d like—understandable given the end of the year crunch—do not despair. Because there’s no vocabulary on the exam, you don’t need to spend nearly as much time studying 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 Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, and a wee bit of Trig) and 10 key grammar rules. More […]


7 Tips for Writing New Year’s Resolutions in the College Admissions Game

On behalf of everyone at CollegePrepExpress, I wish you a healthy, productive, successful, and HAPPY NEW YEAR! I’m a great believer in the old adage 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 you choose. But there are two ideal times for students in particular to pause for serious introspection and reassessment and to set new goals: the beginning of the academic year and the beginning of the calendar year. So NOW would be a great time to sit down with paper […]


The 2012 PSATs are Over!….Now What?

Some of you took the PSAT on Wednesday this past week, and the rest of you will take it tomorrow. For many, so begins your foray into the wonderful world of high stakes, college admissions testing. That’s the bad news. The good news, though, is that you get a little standardized-test break in the otherwise nonstop bombardment that is the junior year in American high school. So what’s the next best move? Good question, glad you asked.  THREE suggestions: FOCUS ON YOUR SCHOOL WORK. Remember you’re in school primarily to, um, get an education. So buckle down and try that […]


Choking: Testing and Performing Well Under Pressure

Listen to internet radio with CollegePrepExpress on Blog Talk Radio   Have you ever choked on a big test? Have you ever done a bunch of practice tests and felt confident going into the SATs, ACTs, or a final, only to get far worse results on the actual exam? Have you ever missed a goal with a wide open net when the team was counting on you to put it in? Find out why and what you can do about it as Dr. Yo discusses the phenomenon of underperforming in high stakes situations with Dr. Sian Beilock, Ph.D., Professor of […]