COllege Admissions News and ACT / SAT Strategy

So you're getting ready to take the ACT! That's great! Good luck! Here are 5 tips to help you do your best on ACT exam day:

Tip #1

Be confident, yet just a tiny bit paranoid. That slight edge of paranoia will help you not to underestimate the ACT. The ACT has 4 sections: English, Math, Reading, and Science, plus an optional written essay component. You've been studying English, math, reading, science, and writing for years and years, so you should be well prepared, right? Well, yes and no. Your background knowledge in each subject is very important and will help you on the test. However, the test makers will often try to lull you into a sense of false security. To do so, over the years the makers of the ACT have developed some rather slippery tricks to try to get you to make mistakes even on topics you're very familiar with. Which leads us to the next tip.

Prepping for the SAT is like taking a trip. You want the journey to be safe, to be as pleasant as possible, and to bring you to your intended destination. Making the journey certainly doesn't have to be a drag. In fact, it can be kind of exciting when you see that you're making good progress, and extra exciting when your SAT score reflects the progress you've made. A tutor is like a guide who knows the territory your trip will cover and can help you get to your destination smoothly, avoiding dangers and wrong turns. Here are 6 reasons why a tutor can make your test prep a better experience and help you raise your SAT score:

MyGuru doesn’t discriminate – we provide tutoring in almost all subjects and standardized tests.  However, students certainly request tutors in some subjects much more than others.  This got me to thinking about the various classes students can take in college, and the various majors to which those classes lead.

This is a three-part post that covers two topics:

• What criteria to use in choosing a college major and
• 5 example majors which are surprisingly good choices

In this post, part 1, we discuss the criteria one should use in choosing a major and the first recommended college major:

Philosophy.

This is a guest post by Stuart Nachbar, the President of EducatedQuest.com, a leading college admissions blog and guide to the best values in higher education. For more advice and information contact him at stuart@educatedquest.com.

I’m often asked: What is a “good” or “excellent” school?

If you are considering hiring an SAT tutor for your son or daughter but aren’t sure whether it is a good investment, here are six benefits you should consider.

In a recent guest post for the College Solution, we showed how Indiana University has a simple automatic scholarship system to attract top students that might otherwise choose more highly ranked schools.  This system is based on an assessment of GPA and ACT score.  For certain students, it provides an automatic $11,000 per year scholarship, making IU much more affordable than it otherwise would be.  So, I argued that, even if you already have a high ACT score, it could make sense to hire an ACT tutor and try to squeeze out another point, which would bump you into the $11,000 automatic scholarship range, and may impact which school you choose to attend.

In this post, with the implications of part 1 in mind (i.e., significant reduction in the cost of attending IU) I’ll illustrate the potential decision faced by a high school senior from Illinois considering five schools: