Notice how the older, more experienced student is looking after the younger one? (Photo credit: Oakley Originals via Flickr)
Welcome back everyone!
By now I'm sure all of our Freshman and Sophomores are well on their way to a fantastic start to their high school career. But what about those students that have been there and done that? They need just a little more in the way of advice than just, "study hard." Lucky for all of you, in addition to the basics, we here at Omniac have more specialized things that our upper classman can be doing to improve their college applications!
Junior Year!
This is when most people start to really think about college, but you should have already done some of that stuff already, so you'll be a few steps ahead of your classmates. As always though, there's still plenty you can do.
"Study Hard!"
Thought I wasn't going to tell you this? Well, Im sorry, but there's never a time when you can afford to give up on your grades. The first thing you should do as a junior is take a good, long look at your GPA. If you've kept your nose to the grindstone the past 2 years, it'll be just more of the same for you. If not, then this is the time to try to pull that up. Remember! Most applications will have deadlines in the winter of your senior year, so you only have 2-3 more semesters to improve your grades.
"Take the PSAT"
This test is open to all juniors and there's really just no excuse not to take it. I know it's a long, boring standardized test, but if you do well enough, your college prospects will greately improve. Let me repeat that for emphasis. If you do well enough on this single test (the PSAT), colleges will literally fight each with big handfuls of money to get you to go to their school. And if you don't do very well...then you've only lost about 3 hours. Like I said, there's really no reason not to at least try it out.
"Take the ACT/SAT. Take them early and take them often"
On the subject of tests, when spring rolls around, you should be trying out your first ACT or SAT. These tests are only held 6 times every year; so the earlier you take it, the more time you'll have to
fix any problems you find. And if you get the score of your dreams now, then that's one less thing to worry about next year.
Senior Year!
Here it is! This is what the past three years have been all about. More than any other year in high school, your senior year is all about what you've made of it. If you've had your eye on the prize this whole time, you'll largely be able to sit back and enjoy yourself this year. But if you've slacked off as an underclassman, there'll be no enjoyment to be had as you work your butt off trying to play catch up.
"Avoid Senioritis"
The first and most important thing you can do during your senior year is AVOID SENIORITIS!!! One F or major discipline problem can destroy all the hard work you've put in over the past 3 years. The party that everone is going to or the class that's so easy to skip...is just not worth endangering your future. This is the last year of high school and the end is so close, just a little more work and you'll finally be done!
"Dot your Is and cross your Ts"
You've done all the work already. You've kept a good GPA throughout high school. You've experienced different clubs and activities and lived life outside of the classroom. You've taken your tests.
You've picked your colleges. Now all that's left is to put all that hard work together and wow colleges with your tremendous application.
That's all there is to it. If you can stay on top of everything, you can almost just coast this last year. You may have to take a test again, but at least you know what you need to do to prepare for test day. You will have lots and lots of applications to fill out, but since you've spent the past 3 years building towards this, it should be relatively easy. This is the reward for all the previous years of hardwork you've put yourself though, so enjoy it!
She looks like she's starting to study. Remember that: we'll go back to it again...several times. (Photo Credit: Dawn Ashley via Flickr.)
Hey all!
A new school year is right around the corner, if it hasn't gotten to you already, and there are always things you can be doing to improve your college applications regardless of your current grade. Every year, students of every grade level have questions about things they can do to start prepping for college. As always, Omniac is here with some answers!
So, without further delay, here are a few simple tips that any student can use to help prepare for college!
Freshman Year
In a lot of ways, freshman year is the most important year because it sets the tone for your entire high school career. Rock the socks off it, and you've put yourself in a great position to do the same for the next three years. But if you blow it, you'll spend those same three years trying to dig yourself out of a very, very deep hole.
1.
Study, Study, Study!The number 1 thing you can get taken care ofduring freshman year is
GRADES, GRADES, GRADES! High school GPA is the biggest clue as to how well a student will do in college and it's the most important part of your application. The earlier you can lock down your grades, the better you'll look to colleges.
2. Embrace your next 4 years!
After you get your grades where you want them, the next most important thing is to fully experience high school. Like it or not, this is where you'll spend the next 4 years of your life, and you can make yourself have a great time, or a miserable time. Obviously the better time you're having, the better you'll do academically. Make some more friends, check out sports, or band, or the myriad other clubs that every campus offers. Find your niche, find the thing that makes you special and colleges WILL notice.
Sophomore Year!
You're a year older, a year wiser, and you're hopefully well on your way to having that whole "high school thing" figured out. There are good and bad things about sophomore year: the Good is that you're not a freshman anymore. The Bad, though, is that you're kinda like the middle child of the school. You don't get all the cool stuff that the juniors and seniors get, but you're held to a much higher standard than the freshmen. That doesn't mean you can let sophomore year go to waste. There are still lots of things you can be doing to make this year great!
1. Find "Yourself" and make that person AWESOME!
After the obvious (keep those grades up!), the best thing to work on is YOU! Ya know, the unique individual things that make you stand out. Hopefully, you have a couple of ideas about what those things are, and you might have even found extra curricular activities that let you show your passions off. Dive as deep as you can into your activities and make them your own!
2. Take your show on the road!
Let's say that you've been finding things out about yourself that are unique and great and you've been exploring those things through your school. Fantastic! But there are plenty of other avenues outside of school that are just as good, if not better. Always remember that, in addition to big changes in your education, your high school years are about big changes to you and your community. Taking whatever skills and talents you have to help better your community is not only just an all-around good thing, but it will look even better on your application than school-sponsored events!
Thanks a lot for checking in with the first part of this series. We certainly hope that all Freshmen and Sophomores are able to put these ideas to good use so they can have a spectacular start to high school! Come back next time to see our tips for upper classman!
Over the years, we here at Omniac have done a lot of work to keep our finger on the pulse of the ACT. Technically, the test isn't supposed to change without ACT notifying test takers, but we all know that small changes creep into the test over time.
While ACT releases a good deal of material every year to students for us to study, we don't rest until we feel like we've experienced the test exactly the way our students do on test day. That means...we have to take the test too.
Today, I'm introducing a new feature here to our blog. We want to share the information we get from taking the test with our readers, especially those students who are trying to figure out what to study and where to work on their test taking skills. We're hoping that it helps all of you make better choices about what to study!
To be clear: we will not be posting questions, answers, or other direct material from the test. Instead, we want to highlight the big trends that are shaping up and draw your attention to specific topics that we think are important. In addition, we want you to know how hard we thought the exam was relative to past exams.
WHAT WE SAW (September 12, 2009 ACT)
Section 1: English
Difficulty: Medium
The English section was an extremely typical exam for the September 2009 ACT. We saw the usual split between Grammar and Rhetoric and plenty of questions that asked students to remember how punctuation marks, verbs, and pronouns work.
This year, we did see a slight decrease in punctuation questions and a slight increase in verb questions. Also, a good number of the verb questions provided answer choices that weren't even real words: ranned, wented, threwed, etc. Students should use these "verbs" to their advantage by getting rid of answer choices that can't be correct.
Section 2: Math
Difficulty: Hard
The Math section for the September 2009 ACT was a tough section filled with tricky questions. We saw the typical six math subjects (Pre-algebra, Algebra I + II, Shape Geometry, Coordinate Geometry, and Trig), but the focus shifted from the usual Pre-algebra and Algebra I to Shape Geometry and Algebra II.
There were several questions that appeared to be trying to slow students down. Upper-level math problems for this test seemed to be specifically guilty of this, introducing concepts like the Law of Sines and the absolute value of complex numbers. Students would have been served well by skipping such questions.
Overall, students should not see huge drops in scores on the Math section. While it was hard and students probably felt like they were drowning in numbers, the test is scaled for a reason. All the students will labor under the same burden for the September 2009 ACT and the scale for the scores will reflect that.
Section 3: Reading
Difficulty: Easy
We are always hesitant to say that a section is easy on the ACT. However, it's been a while since we've seen such a manageable Reading section. Containing the usual four sections (Prose Fiction, Social Sciences, Humanities, and Science), the September 2009 ACT featured clear writing and compelling topics that made the Reading section a relative breeze.
The Prose Fiction section, as usual, proved to be one of the most difficult sections for students to understand. While most of the questions were easy to solve, the remaining problems were vague and unhelpful. Once again, the Science section was a pleasant alternative for students seeking to find easier questions.
Section 4: Science
Difficulty: Medium
The September 2009 ACT ended as it began: the Science section was a straightforward version of the test we've seen a million times before. Just like the English subtest, the Science section had the usual breakdown of questions with the usual levels of difficulties. Any student who invested time into learning how to break down and solve basic Science questions was well-rewarded on test day.
However, we did see a few questions that struck us as odd. It's commonly accepted that the ACT Science contains very little actual science, but this year featured a few questions that required students to know the basics of Chemistry and Biology! It's difficult to prep for questions of these type because we have no idea what the ACT thinks is important (Acids/Bases, Cell Mitosis, Photosynthesis, ets?) We urge students to continue to focus on the big picture, eliminating answers they know are wrong and focusing on questions they can score points on first.
September 2009 ACT Overall
Overall Difficulty: Medium
As you can tell from the notes above, this was a pretty typical September ACT. We fully expect students to show strong improvements if they've worked hard to learn new skills since their last test. Students probably felt frustrated by the Math section, but as long as they didn't let that struggle get them down, they should have bounced back well on the other sections.
Also, it's worth noting that the ACT instructions about snacks aren't accurate. Your ACT ticket says that snacks are "Not allowed," but it's perfectly fine to eat them on the break if they fit in your pocket. You just aren't allowed to bring them into the test room.
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Got any notes for us about your test? Please let us know in the comments!
Do you think they made any part of the donation in coins? (Photo Credit: Flickr via Theiving Joker)
Several universities (including Purdue, UC Colorado Springs, and UNC Asheville) have recently received very large donations from a mystery donor! Chronicle of Higher Education
California is facing a 6% shortage of college trained workers by the year 2025. Yup, a college degree is more important than ever. Los Angeles Times
Do you have an unusual passion like solving Rubik's Cubes or collecting free stuff on the Internet? Weird hobbies can look very good on an application if framed correctly! About.com
Admissions officer from U of Georgia talks about some of the reasons applicants are denied. He strongly suggests reapplying as a transfer student if you still want to attend. AJC.com
Credit Card applications are everywhere on campus and college students are racking up more debt than ever before. WISTV.com
NYU changes it's testing requirements...one step closer to an SAT-free world! Now all you need to take is the ACT. Inside Higher Ed
National Association for College Admissions Counciling wants National Merit Scholarship to move away from PSAT, claiming that the Scholarship focuses too much on one day of testing. Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Even Princeton is starting to question the effectiveness of the SAT!
The GW Hatchet
New law makes it easier for students to earn financial aid through volunteer work. San Fransisco Chronicle
The week before an ACT exam is always a stressful time for students. Many test takers try to cram last minute studying sessions into their already busy schedule to bring up their ACT score as much as they possibly can. Unfortunately, the ACT isn't a test for which one can study; it's an exam for which one has to practice!
Practicing is quite different from studying. It's quite likely that you already know all the math formulas, science theories, and grammar rules that you need to be successful on the ACT. Instead of trying to learn more, as you would for a traditional exam, any work you do at the last minute needs to focus on using the information you've already got.
With that in mind, let's take a look a five tips that can help you get the most out of the small amount of practice time you've got!
1. Get The Right Materials
There are a lot of ACT books out on the market. While Princeton Review, Kaplan, and others have books that promise to raise your score, trying to implement any of their techniques at the last minute is probably going to do more harm than good. Focus your efforts on trying actual problems out and get The Real ACT Prep Guide from the makers of the ACT. Doing real problems is the best way to get ready for what you're going to see on test day!
2. Don't Answer Every Question
Most students try to answer every question on the test, regardless of difficulty. This is a mistake! Instead of trying to do all 60 math questions in 60 minutes, focus on doing 40 or 50 questions as correctly as you can. Every question is worth the same number of points, so focus on getting the easy questions right first!
3. Bubble in Every Bubble
While you should take your time and answer questions slowly, you shouldn't leave any bubbles blank. The ACT doesn't mark off extra points for wrong answers, so you should always guess. The worst thing that can happen is that you get a question wrong, costing you nothing. The best thing that can happen is that you get a free point!
4. Do Timed Sections
While it's tempting to pick through the book you've purchased, you need to actually sit down and take a few timed sections. That means getting Mom or Dad to time you as you try to do as many questions as you can within the time limit. You might not have time to take an entire practice test, but a few timed sections can give you a much better sense of how many questions you can do and keep your accuracy up!
5. Get Up Early on Test Day
You have to get up early enough on test day to wake up your brain. That means that if the test is at 8:00 AM, you need to be awake and active by 7:00 AM at the latest. It's also a good idea to eat something resembling a real breakfast and engage your brain so that it's as awake as you are. I suggest a crossword, video game, or a fight with a sibling you don't like very much.
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Any other tips you've found useful on test day? Let us know in the comments!
Hey all!
Over the past few months, Omniac has been proud to help the Carnival of College Admissions by supplying blog posts and even hosting! We love how awesome all the links are that Mark Montgomery collects!
This week the 13th edition of the Carnival was released and we were once again proud to be a part of it. Here are a few highlights:
- The current recession has made many students re-think their college
choices and even transfer to a more affordable school. Student blogger,
Ally Demos from myusearch.com, presents a video blog about how the
economic crunch is affecting college students. Elizabeth Kudner
presents College Students Feel the Economic Crunch posted at myUsearch blog.
- Sarah Scrafford presents 100 Awesome Open Courses and Lectures for Digital Artists posted at Online Universities.com
- Eric Perron, the host of our last edition of the Carnival of College
Admission, likes to talk back to the television. He offers his
critique of a recent program on college admission, aptly titled Come On “CBS Early Show”, This Is The Best Advice You Have To Pay For College? posted on his blog, Dream Strategy.
Go check the whole thing out! It's definitely worth it!
As you may recall, College Board announced over the summer that they would allow students to pick which SAT scores would be sent to colleges instead of forcing students to send a cumulative record their scores. I pointed out at the time that this policy change was a pretty cynical move on College Board's part, since they killed a program in 2002 that did the exact same thing because it "hurt more students than it helped."
At the start of 2009, several colleges weighed in on the issue as well, choosing to either accept or reject the College Board's plan. Some influential schools like Harvard accepted the new reporting standards, but others chose to reject it and have demanded that students send all of their scores. Stanford was especially public and vocal about rebuffing the Score Choice program. The Stanford Director of Admissions, Shawn Abbott noted:
"We want to discourage students from taking the SAT more than once or
twice, and believe that programs like Score Choice encourage applicants
with resources to take the SAT excessively to improve their scores. [...] I wouldn’t agree with the notion that Score Choice relieves pressure or
stress,” he said. “I would argue instead that such programs only
encourage students to take more tests to improve their scores at all
costs." - The Stanford DailyTo some degree, this development totally caught me by surprise.
The SAT Score Choice program is supposed to let students choose the score they want to send to the schools. If the program isn't universal, then they aren't really choosing anything! Instead, some schools are promising to ignore the scores they would probably chose to ignore anyway.
Look at Harvard's statement concerning Score Choice:
"Students applying to Harvard are free to use the College Board's new
Score Choice option and/or a similar option already offered by ACT.
Score Choice rests on the same principle that has supported our
admissions process for decades — that applicants should be free to
present their own best case. We have always counted an applicant's
highest test scores and have allowed students to decide whether they
wanted to send all their test scores." - Harvard's WebsiteIn short, they are accepting Score Choice because they already counted your highest scores and ONLY your highest scores. Stanford is rejecting Score Choice for the same reason that Harvard is accepting it. They already counted ALL your scores and want to continue counting all your scores.
How should you respond to all this? Take the ACT.
The ACT allows you to send your single highest score to any school in the country. It's a significantly shorter test than the SAT, clocking in at nearly an hour less with the optional essay. Students enjoy that the ACT is direct and to the point, lacking many of the "tricky" question types that make College Board and the SAT famous. And more importantly than anything else, the makers of the ACT aren't involved in the backroom shenanigans that surround all of this Score Choice nonsense.
So unless you fall into the small category of students who naturally test better on the SAT, now is the best time to avoid College Board (and the SAT) altogether.
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Still planning on taking the SAT? Tell us why in the comments...
It's inevitable. Every term, I have students who come to me a few days before the ACT and sheepishly confess that they are not registered to take the test.
Their reasons are many: They forgot. They were sure they registered, but now found out they didn't. They were convinced that registering for a tutorial meant that we would sign them up for the ACT. Mom thought Dad had done it; Dad thought Mom had done it.
Regardless, the sad fact remains that they've prepped for a test, but aren't enrolled for the test date.
Luckily, ACT has planned for this occurance and lets students attend the test on a "standby" basis. So if you've forgotten to register and your test is bearing down on you, here's what you should do:
- Go to your high school counselor and get a paper ACT registration.
- Go to ACT's list of test centers and find a testing site near your house.
- Fill out your paper registration and place a check for the test fee + $40 Standby fee inside the registration. Seal the envelope and make sure that your return address is on it.
- Make sure you have a photo ID with you and your sealed packet.
- Go to the testing center you've selected well before 8:00 AM. I would suggest going as early as 7:00 AM to make sure you get a seat.
- Wait in line until they call for standbys. Hopefully, you are at the front of the line and they take you first.
I've told literally dozens of students these same instructions and have never had a student turned away by the test proctors. But make sure to get to the testing location early to be sure! And next time register online!
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Did you forget to register for the ACT? Drop us a note in the comments section and let us know what you did!
Let's say you are throwing a party for your closest friends. You arrange for everything at your house, buy chips and drinks, and plan fun games, hoping to impress everyone who shows up. Soon after the party gets started, a friend of a friend corners you and promises that he can make your party "even better!" He tells you about new fun games that will make entertaining easy, chips and drinks that will dazzle the tastebuds of every guest, and new ways to arrange furniture that will "totally get you noticed."
You agree to try his stuff out. What do you have to lose? It's not like he can make the party worse...
So he moves in all kinds of new toys and proceeds to take over pretty much everything. Your food gets pushed to the back to make room for his dishes. Your games get put aside to focus on his activities. After a few hours of this you look around and realize that all the stuff your new friend supplied isn't supplementing your party, it's swallowing it whole. And worse, everyone seems to be having a terrible time!
And then you realize that while you wanted your party to be awesome, you never needed this guy. Sure, he's got charts and graphs showing that some people sort of like his fancy chips and neat toys, but you can easily look around and notice that you aren't throwing a better party than the ones you've thrown in the past. This guy just scammed you by promising to help when he had no intention of helping at all...
This week, the National Association of College Admissions Counselors came to the same stunning realization about standardized testing. They note:
Although many colleges find benefit in using admission tests in admission decisions, it is the view of the Commission that there may be more colleges and universities that could make appropriate admission decisions without requiring standardized admission tests such as the ACT and SAT. The Commission encourages institutions to consider dropping the admission test requirements if it is determined that the predictive utility of the test or the admission policies of the institution (such as open access) support that decision and if the institution believes that standardized test results would not be necessary for other reasons such as course placement, advising, or research.
Let's sum that up: The NACAC, a widely respected group of college admissions officers, is advising all colleges to drop the SAT and ACT unless they have a specific reason to continue to require them.
I can't tell you how big this announcement is for the world of college admissions. For the last few years, I've continually stated that I believe colleges will be able to move past the ACT and SAT and focus on the parts of the college application that have been proven to matter (GPA, Extracurriculars, etc). Even as the score optional movement has gained momentum and continued studies proved that the SAT is worse at predicting success than GPA, I never believed the NACAC would take such a strong stand against standardized testing.
Mark this day on your calendar. Whatever domination the SAT and ACT have had on the world of college admissions is starting to slip. The NACAC isn't the first to criticize the testing industry, but this report is a devastating blow to the belief that every college needs standardized testing.
Someone finally pointed out that the SAT and ACT are ruining the party...
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What do you think? Is this the beginning of the end for standardized testing? Let us know in the comments!
Every summer colleges and counselors debate the usefulness of the SAT and ACT to the college admissions process. With students gone for the break, everyone involved feels that they can ask a few tough questions, suggest a few alternatives, and generally poke and prod at the whole process. And, of course, College Board always chimes in with sunny but useless data that continues to try to convince everyone that the SAT can determine everything about your future success.
Yet when summer ends, everyone goes back to the business of telling students in no uncertain terms that the SAT and ACT are super important regardless of their usefulness in determining college aptitude.
This leads to an unpleasant situation by the time we meet with a student for the first time at the beginning of the school year to discuss the ACT. They know that standardized tests are part of the college process that shouldn't reflect on their overall intelligence, but they are still convinced that their score reflects poorly on them. Many are sure that they are the worst test taker they know. Some students are even convinced they have test anxiety, doomed to fail every version of the ACT ever constructed.
Yet, while most students need help preparing for the ACT, I've never met a student with actual test anxiety.
Gay Brock over at the Miami Herald published an excellent article at the end of July about a student who did have test anxiety. Here's how he describes the plight of his own daughter:
The morning of her first SAT test, my daughter Cate Falkowski left our
Weston home with a No. 2 pencil and a predictable amount of
apprehension.
With
a 3.8 GPA and all the required credits, she was poised for admission to
her college of choice, Purdue University. Her only hurdle was a
respectable SAT score -- or so she thought.
She had been gone about an hour when the home phone rang.
''I couldn't do it,'' Cate said. ``I threw up and left.''
In
the weeks and months that followed, we realized Cate's biggest
challenge was no longer the SAT; it was full-blown test anxiety.
Cate suffers from a condition that is extremely rare. Real, actual test anxiety
is characterized by physical and mental symptoms that go beyond simply
being scared and struggling a bit. Students who are suffering an onset
of test anxiety are prone to vomiting, fainting, and hyperventilating.
Needless to say, it's hard to take a test when you're in the restroom
for the first thirty minutes throwing up.
If these symptoms describe you...then you've got full-blown test
anxiety and you need to consult a psychologist. Cate conquered her
symptoms with a combination of Xanax and psychotherapy; it's likely you
will have to do the same.
But as I said earlier, you probably don't have any of these
symptoms. Most students we work with describe the test as a scary
obstacle and we are all too happy to help them conquer it without
medication. Preparing for the test is usually the best cure for any student who is afraid of the ACT or SAT.