You bet you can.
Watch this video to find out how.
What We’re Doing to Get Ready for the Redesigned SAT
If you read our blog at all, you’ll know that we’ve been sharing some insight into the new SAT and how students can get the best possible prep for it. In this post, I’m going to put some of those thoughts together so that parents can get an overview of how students can be successful on this new test.
The biggest challenge we see thus far on the new SAT is the increased reading level. The redesigned test includes more passages from the 19th and even 18th century. These passages tend to feature complex sentence structures and unfamiliar vocabulary. Students have to read carefully and pay close attention to context. Ideally, they will also have prior experience reading older texts. That won’t be the case for every student. Because of the challenge from these passages, I recommend students spend time practicing reading older texts. Reading is a muscle—and picking up a classic work from the 1800s is like pumping iron.
Good news on the Evidence-Based Reading and Writing section (and I have to go on the record again here and say that I think that name is stupid and even a little confusing…but no time to rant right now) for you: the Writing section is quite manageable. It covers a fair number of grammatical rules over 44 questions, but the universe of grammar is limited. Students who care enough to try will find that improvement here is easy and predictable. We are helping our students get ready for this section by setting clear objectives for content/concept mastery and making sure that all of our students reach those standards.
The Math test is so focused on algebra that every student will benefit from working through everything from the concrete mechanics up through the abstraction understanding of why we use algebra in the first place. Is that fun? Not particularly. Will it get every student to more than 85% mastery of the math sections? You bet. We’ll focus on lines and parabolas because that’s what the test makers are focusing on. In addition, we’ll review fundamentals of factoring, grouping, and other simplification techniques.
On the Writing test, we’ll make sure that students have their own ironclad strategy for writing their essay. Students are likely familiar with essays that ask them to analyze and incorporate a given text into their argument. They may be less familiar with the writing essays that require them to go beyond an interpretation of the author’s argument. Students will have to learn how to analyze another writer’s strategy. We’ll teach that technique as well as the names of rhetorical strategies that students can cite.
Lastly, we’ll insist that our students take practice tests. The whole test prep industry has been hamstrung by the relative lack of official practice materials. We’ll make the most use we can out of the tests that College Board has released and administer them under test-realistic conditions at our office.
We are up for the challenge of the Redesigned SAT! We hope you are too. If you have any specific questions about the new test, please reach out and <a href=”tel:13106009595″>ask us!</a>
How College Admissions Offices View New SAT vs. ACT
With the arrival of the Redesigned SAT, we reached out to our friends in the admissions offices at Harvard, Princeton, and Northwestern to find out how they will handle the new test, the old test, and the ACT. Here are the questions we asked followed by their answers.
What is your opinion of the new SAT?
“The new SAT is as new to us as it is to the students so we will have to see how everything unfolds but we commit to giving students fair consideration and I don’t imagine that our review process will change drastically.”
Is the ACT the equal of the SAT?
“We accept the results from both the ACT and SAT and consider them in the same way.”
How will you compare Redesigned SAT results to ACT and old SAT results?
“We will likely eventually get a score concordance table from ACT and the College Board that allows us to compare results. We don’t have that table yet but that is what we have used in the past.”
The Redesigned PSAT is upon us.
The new SAT is about to make its debut—in the form of this Wednesday’s PSAT. I thought I would share some advice for “week of the test” advice for students.
• First, and most important: don’t panic. The PSAT matters for 50,000 out of the 1,500,000 students who take the test. That’s a little over 3 percent of everyone taking the test. For the vast majority of you, the PSAT is a warm-up and nothing more.
• That said, you shouldn’t take the test cold. Your school has test booklets on hand with a practice test inside. Go get one. If you have time, sit down and take the test under the timing restrictions given in the booklet. If you don’t have time to do that, do at least one reading passage, one Writing and Language passage, and problems of various difficulty within both of the two math sections. Get yourself acquainted with the test so it doesn’t surprise you on test day.
• Strategically, the best thing you can do on the Redesigned SAT and PSAT is to read the questions carefully. The importance of question stems has been elevated on this new test. Read them with extreme care so that you know you’re answering the question the test makers are asking.
• Know that the reading level on the new test has been significantly elevated. That means a lot of students are going to be staring at passages that are a grade level or two above their comfort level. If you find yourself lost on a reading passage, keep in mind that A) you’re not alone, and B) you can use the questions and answers to help you get an understanding of what the passage was truly about.
• Get some rest! We recommend a full night’s sleep for the TWO nights leading up to the test. That means getting to bed tonight at a reasonable time.
Good luck! We’ll be eager to hear how about your experience with the new test.
Strategies for the Redesigned PSAT
The new SAT (I’m exhausted calling it “the Redesigned SAT”) is more than just a conversation piece–it’s the next test on the calendar. I’m shocked by how many people don’t that the October 14th PSAT will be the brand-new test. It is, and it will be going forward.
The new test is much more than an edit to the old one. In some spots it resembles the ACT. In most senses, it’s a brand new test.
How can students be more successful at this new exam? In a few ways. Ready?
-Know your linear equation. That’s y=mx+b and all of its various permutations. Know how to find a slope, an intercept, the solution to a system, the equation of a parallel line. Know everything you can about equations of a line and you’ll know a good chunk of what you’ll be using on the math section.
-Know quadratics. Quadratic formula, roots, how to find a vertex. Do you know what -b/2a is and why it’s helpful? You want to know.
-Read question stems with extreme precision. Know what’s being asked. You’ll avoid traps and find correct answers quickly.
-Use every word of an answer choice. Answers are often wrong based on just one word. Make them all count.
That’s a taste of what you’re going to need on the PSAT and the SAT. More to come.