COllege Admissions News and ACT / SAT Strategy

Parents of high schoolers frequently ask me when the best time is to begin planning for college. My answer is usually “now!” which often, and more importantly, leads to talking about “how.”

In the first post of our SAT review video series, we approach working through a standard reading comprehension question.

The SAT reading comprehension section can often be a time crunch for many students. This video demonstrates a systematic approach to quickly reading and analyzing a passage in order to answer questions.

No matter how many times your parents have repeated it to you, it never quite sinks in – If you fail to plan you plan to fail. While this feels a bit dramatic, in a test like the SAT or ACT it is important to realize that preparation can have a significant benefit on your score and on opportunities that stem from this such as college admission and scholarships. While many students have performed well in high school, standardized admissions tests can be a limiting factor because students often fall into a few common traps, such as the idea that being a good student translates directly into a high performing standardized test taker. While this may be true for some students, it often is not the case. College admissions exams often require knowledge on how to study for and take a standardized exam. The best way to overcome this hurdle is by creating a study schedule and planning for test day ahead of time.

The SAT and the ACT are not designed to be fun tests. That’s probably really obvious to you already! These tests takes forever, have a billion questions, and will turn you into a zombie for the rest of your Saturday.

Many to-be ACT and SAT takers absolutely dread the Reading section for a series of totally fair reasons. The passages can be mind-numbingly boring. Questions about tone and author’s purpose seem cruelly subjective. So many of the questions have various answer choices that seem fine.

“Ever thought about taking the ACT?”