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Founded by Michael J. Youmans, Ph.D. (aka “Dr. Yo”)—creator of CommonApp Boot Camps and author of The CommonApp Handbook—with degrees from Harvard, Middlebury/Oxford, and Boston College School of Ed, CollegePrepExpress provides individualized, comprehensive strategies for playing today’s ultra competitive college admissions game to WIN!
How Much Should I Study for Standardized Tests?!
Great Question–glad you asked. As those of you who work with us know, at CollegePrepExpress we’re not big fans of the two major college entrance exams, the SAT and the ACT. Marathon length, high stakes tests for teens are not our idea of a good time. It would be one thing if there were some redeeming quality to these exams–for example, if they were decent predictors of some desirable or meaningful life outcome–but there isn’t. SATs and ACTs won’t tell you how smart you are, how well you’ll do in college, what profession you’re well suited for, what your future net worth will be, how good a spouse or parent you’ll be, or whether you’re going to get into heaven. Nevertheless, and this is the crucial point, they still count A LOT towards college admissions, alternatively as recalcitrant gate-keeper and indomitable personal assistant, depending on your scores. So, really, the fact that they don’t actually MEAN anything is irrelevant; what matters is that they still count, even in an era when some colleges are beginning not to require them (e.g., California State Schools, the UC family). And that raises the question, how much time should you devote to preparation, i.e., practice and study? If you went around the country polling admissions committees officers about what counts the most for college admissions, you will find that they all share the same top few criteria: Grades and Course Levels Standardized Test Scores Grades and Course LevelsLetters of Recommendation Extracurriculars Application Essays & Interview (Campus or Alumni) While there may be some variation in the specific order, Grades and Scores generally head the list. Now let’s be super-analytical (punctiliously geeky in SAT parlance ;-)), and do a business-style assessment of how much time (our most precious resource) we should devote to studying for standardized tests. Let’s agree that our GPAs (or the sum total of all our grades) in high school count more than our tests scores. They do. But how much more–twice as much? three times? four times? five times? Let’s say we take five classes a year for four years. That makes 20 final grades on our final high school transcript. Now let’s conservatively assume that grades count FIVE TIMES more than our standardized test scores. That means, purely from the perspective of getting into college, we should invest about as much time studying for standardized tests as we spend on FOUR full-year classes (Did you catch the math? 20 ÷ 5 = 4 ;-)). Now if you think about how much time you have to invest in any ONE CLASS, it’s a gargantuan amount time: think of 9th grade English, 10th grade math, 11th grade U.S. History–you pick one. 5 days a week in class, homework almost every night, studying for quizzes, writing papers, studying for tests, prepping for exams, doing group work, sucking up to the teacher in the hallway…. it’s a LOT of work for that one final grade. Now multiply all that time and effort by 4, and that’s how much time–again, from a purely businesslike, cost-benefit analysis–you should spend taking practice SATs and ACTs and learning the material you don’t know. I know it’s not great news, and I don’t expect anyone to be doing cartwheels over this. Nor, frankly, have I ever worked with anyone who has actually made this kind of commitment. Those who’ve come close, however, have all consistently scored in the 700s across the board on the SAT and in the 30s across the board on the ACT. Carve out ONE HOUR A DAY–every single day–and you will write your own ticket to the college of YOUR CHOICE! Forewarned is forearmed. You may as well go into the unnerving college admissions process with your eyes wide open. CollegePrepExpress, LLC is here to help keep you motivated, focused, and as chill as possible. As long as you’re going to invest a whole lot of time and effort raising your scores (which ALWAYS pays off in the end), we’ll try to make your standardized test prep as fun and enjoyable as possible :-).
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REFERENCES To email or talk to former students and parents about CollegePrepExpress, LLC, email or call/text (413) 329-7540 for contact info. We’re happy to connect you with past families — just reach out! MORE RESULTS —>
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Working with your HS Guidance Counselor: Creating a Foundation to Maximize Admissions to College
by Dr. Yo, with contributions from Anthony Faulise 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 counseling events, and, in some cases, a lot more. But even more important to success of applications is that they often communicate directly with admissions officers, and they always write the Counselor Letter of Recommendation that serves as a kind of cover letter for every student’s entire application. In other words, they typically make the first impression on admissions officers about each applicant’s candidacy, and, of course, first impressions are lasting impressions. Ultimately your individual talents, interests, college preparedness, and likelihood of making some kind of contribution must score the touchdown, but in many respects college counselors are the quarterbacks who can make plays to get you the ball. Nationwide, relationships between applicants and high school college counselors vary considerably from region to region, state to state, and school to school. At the luck end of the spectrum, counselors know their students as well as their parents do—perhaps because they served as dorm parents for a year or more, as academic advisors, teachers, coaches, or extracurricular instructors who guided them through a significant chunk of high school, or some combination of these. At the unlucky end, counselors are faceless administrators, whom students meet for the first time when they sit down to develop their college lists. While relationships between students and counselors come in every gradation between these two extremes, the national student-to-counselor ratio—somewhere between 300:1 and 500:1—strongly suggests that most counselors simply don’t have the bandwidth to give each student the time and attention necessary to know them well enough to create outstanding applications. Some data in 2023 suggests a slow trend toward smaller numbers, but even the most optimistic numbers peg the ration above 400:1 (see, for example, New data shows fewer students per counselor at nation’s schools, but caseloads remain high). It’s often hard to get your quarterback’s attention and focused interest when you’re competing with hundreds (or frankly, even dozens) of other players screaming for the ball. we advise all college applicants to make it their responsibility to make sure their counselors know them well enough to serve as an effective advocate for them throughout the process. At CPE, we advise all our applicants to make it their responsibility to make sure their counselors know them well enough to serve as an effective advocate for them throughout the process. Nevertheless, having a good working relationship with their counselor—their quarterback—is paramount to every applicant who wants to maximize his or her chances of acceptance to college. And a good working relationship in this case stems from the counselor’s specific knowledge of the applicant, both the most salient features of a high school career and particular dreams and goals for college… even if that counselor has 500 such applicants. Consequently, regardless of how well a college counselor may or may not know a student, we advise all college applicants to make it their responsibility to make sure their counselors know them well enough to serve as an effective advocate for them throughout the process. Your counselor may be the quarterback, but ultimately either YOU score the touchdown or YOU do not. And this is where being prepared with written summaries of the highlights of your high school career to date and your academic and personal goals for college for your first big sit-down with your counselor (and sometimes parents) go a long way toward helping you get in. In other words, given the hundreds of students typically assigned to a U.S. college counselor, the responsibility falls to the applicant to help their counselors know enough details about them through a clearly articulated assessment of their greatest strengths as college candidates—wherever they may lie. And if the overworked counselor is getting their information from you, the student, then you can help control the narrative. And if the overworked counselor is getting their information from you, the student, then you can help control the narrative. The cues you write for your counselor and how you write them may play a stronger role than the counselor’s own observations, especially if they are overloaded or sidelined in the post COVID-19 era. When you write your reminders to the counselor, write them in the way you would like the counselor to write them for your colleges—their limited time for each indicia advisee may necessitate their having simply to copy-and-paste from you. You can’t just invent an award you didn’t actually earn (#CollegeAdmissionScandal), but you can heighten the impact of a passion you want to convey. Although these written summaries, if done well, will be as unique to each applicant as a thumbprint or a photograph, they will generally cover three major areas of a high schooler’s life: Academics, supporting standardized tests, intellectual pursuits outside the classroom, and academic accolades Extracurricular activities, including athletics, club affiliations and leadership, community service, important holiday and summer experiences, and hobbies/passions Hopes, dreams, goals, and likely area(s) of study as an undergraduate How NOT to Do It The two most common mistakes students make when they first attempt such a self-assessment is that they’ll write too little or too much. For example, in summarizing their academic careers, some students will offer their cumulative GPA and maybe a sentence about their favorite subject. That much can be gleaned from even a cursory glance at their transcript, so it’s not much help to the counselor. Likewise, they might summarize their extracurriculars by noting they played a Varsity sport and listing all the clubs and organizations in which they participated since ninth grade. But they fail to connect their activities to each other, to their academic or professional interests and accomplishments, or to their aspirations for college. That’s too little. Conversely, some students will write a book about every class every year, or how they bounced between fall sports for three years before finally deciding to weight train senior year, and an array of other discrete narratives of all their other extracurricular activities, often losing the counselor in a sea of disconnected minutia. That’s too much. The best summaries take a lesson from Goldilocks: they’re not too short and uncommunicative, they’re not too long and discursive, but just right—with enough details to support a few, key, memorable points that highlight their strengths and make the best case for college acceptance. Writing up these summaries of academics, activities, and plans for college sounds simple and straightforward enough, but it is not an easy assignment for a high school junior or senior during the application process. Ironically, less than a year later, they will be much better equipped to do a thoughtful, thorough, and compelling job as a direct result of writing their applications. The CommonApp, and every other college application I’ve ever seen, asks students to put in writing answers to questions that create an overview of their academic records, their extracurricular pursuits, and what they hope to accomplish in and out of the classrooms at college. When they see their answers to all the application questions laid out in front of them, they start to notice, alas many times in hindsight, patterns in their academic, intellectual, and personal interests that will drive their college pursuits, and how their personal values and convictions are woven into their daily activities and allocation of time. But in the college admissions game, as in life, foresight leads to far greater success than hindsight. It’s a tall order, then, for teenagers to write cogent summaries of their high school careers as one of the first steps in the process. But those who rise to the challenge and do a thorough job are rewarded thrice over in the college admissions game: they ensure their college counselors know the major chapters of their overall story and how they have paved the way to their college dreams, thereby positioning them to be of maximum service in helping them get in; they place themselves in a much better position to write cohesive and ultimately successful college applications when the time comes; they position themselves to hit the ground running upon arrival to college campus, which is good for them, and nice for their parents, who typically spend a bajillion dollars to send them there. To ease the burden, students shouldn’t be afraid to ask their parents or other trusted adults who know them well for assistance. And the hard truth is that, even with help, most high school juniors and fall semester seniors lack the knowledge and experience of how to draw from the full range and subtleties of their entire high school careers as well as enough perspective to see it clearly while it’s actually still ...
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