Remember when you were a kid and the box of Lucky Charms had a toy buried inside? Yeah, hold on to that memory, because thanks to advertising laws, most cereal manufacturers stopped offering such promotions in 2008. I sure wish law makers would at least allow cereal manufacturers to put toys in cereals with low […]
9 Essential Resources for College Applicants
Whether you’re currently applying to college, or are just starting to think about the process, having resources available is something that all students can benefit from. I know that I constantly rely on information and guidance from multiple sources (both online and off) to help me as I counsel students–and, often, the information I get […]
Diction-Error-y
Some of the hardest SAT multiple-choice Writing questions involve diction, or an author’s choice of words. These questions usually appear in the Identifying Sentence Errors and have seemingly perfect grammar. The problem, however, is a word or phrase that just doesn’t make sense. Consider an example: 26. The purpose of the Heimlich Maneuver, which was […]
SAT Reading Tips: Related Answers in Sentence Completion Questions
Humans are programmed to make logical connections, which is never more evident than in our classification of words. We group words by topic and meaning from an early age. For example, consider your early associations with the word dog. It is likely that as a small child just learning to talk, you learned other words […]
Should you Retake the ACT or SAT?
After all the tough questions on the ACT or SAT, you have another one to answer when your scores arrive: Should you take the test again? There isn’t a universal right answer to this one. The best choice depends on you and the colleges you’re applying to. When you’re making your decision, consider these questions: […]
Inflated GPAs: When Test Scores and Grades Collide
On the day SAT scores are released, I wait for the one phone call that never fails: that from a distraught parent who cannot understand why her daughter with a 4.5 GPA received a 1350 on the SAT. Teachers and administrators at her daughter’s school may be quick to jump on the test anxiety bandwagon, […]
ACT English and SAT Writing Tips: Ambiguous Pronouns
I must apologize for my absence: Hurricane Matthew chased me from home for over a week and then kept me busy for another week when I came back. I am happy to settle back into a routine today, so let’s get right to it: Ambiguous pronouns. Ambiguous means unclear or open to more than one […]
Should you Submit Both ACT and SAT Scores to Colleges?
It’s something that we’re hearing more and more of recently–students who are submitting both ACT and SAT score to the colleges to which they are applying. It seems to be a fairly new phenomenon; it’s something that’s become particularly prevalent (and that we’ve been asked more and more about) in the last couple of years.
SAT Essay Tips: Pre-Planned Ammunition
Soldiers do not go into battle without ammunition, and you should not go into the SAT without essay ammunition. The College Board uses essay questions that tend to have consistent themes, such as success, adversity, happiness, ethics, and technology. Because these themes appear so frequently, it is useful to have a few pre-planned examples that […]
Who Should Write Your College Recommendation Letters?
This week’s College Admissions Tip of the Week comes from Lauren Rudick, one of our SAT instructors and college admissions counselors. Letters of recommendation are the one part of your college applications that you don’t do yourself and don’t have direct control over. But you can still influence this part of your applications by choosing […]