Tutoring For All Ages

Interview fashion is one of the most frequently-asked questions I get as a tutor of both college and prep school hopefuls. I’m not sure whether it’s because many of my students are used to worrying about clothing choices or because they just want every detail of the admissions process to be perfect, but I get so many questions about the interview that it seems prudent to write down a few answers here.

Silly fashion shows aside, my advice about interview attire is very simple: be yourself, and show respect.

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Every year, we take on plenty of students who are about to take a particular standardized test for the first time. In our first lesson with a new Testing student, the “guessing question” usually comes up within the first 20 minutes. Most people have talked through the issue with their friends and/or teachers, but they still want to hear it from us.

So, for all our honorary students who just don’t happen to be in the same zip code as we are, we will try to answer the general question with a few tips: (more…)

Around this time of year, we start getting a lot of questions about the January SAT, mostly from high-school juniors. Should I take it? Should I wait? My school is making me take it and is that okay?

Quite honestly, it’s a bit of an awkward time to take the test. Some students haven’t been exposed to all the material they’ll need to know for the test by January of their junior year. For those students, it might be better to wait until the spring or even next fall to take the test.

But for those students who have covered the math on the test and are relatively confident in their verbal skills, the idea of getting the test over with in January is quite alluring.

Be careful, though, about over-preparing for this test. Unless you are a very rare person, you will probably end up taking the test again, perhaps more than once. So you will end up preparing for the test several times. And it is possible to overdo it and burn out. The last thing you need is to take the test again and have your score go down because your performance peaked too early.

If you do decide to take the January test as a junior, we generally recommend that you only do some light preparation specific to standardized tests. If you want to do some intense studying over the holidays, we recommend that you do two things: work on your vocab, and read. Reading and improving your vocabulary are the most important things you can do to improve your verbal test scores.

Need some suggestions? Check this list.

We recently got a panicked e-mail from a parent:

Mary [name changed] is really upset by her scores. She always gets grades at the top of her class, but she got a 68% overall on the SSAT. How bad is this?

It’s such a common question that we thought we’d print it here. We’ve covered it before: for a detailed description, check our post entitled “What’s a good SSAT/ISEE score?”

Don’t worry, Mary: you didn’t fail the test. Of course there’s room to improve, but you’re well above the average score among other students like you. So you’re above average even for the good students!

This time of year, one of our most frequently-asked questions is, “My student is already taking the SAT. Should s/he take the ACT as well? Or instead?” Our answer is that we evaluate each student individually, making recommendations based on their own strengths and weaknesses, but we also thought we’d answer the question more generally here.

First, the tests are in many ways “the same, but different.” They cover mostly the same material, but have different approaches. The math on the ACT can be a bit harder, but the questions are typically more straightforward — meaning, fewer tricks than the SAT. The reading comprehension section is more predictable on the ACT, but not necessarily easier. The “English” section on the ACT is very similar to the multiple-choice “Writing” sections on the SAT. And the ACT’s essay is optional and not included in the composite score, though it is about the same length as the SAT essay.

But that’s where the similarities end. (more…)