–Duke doesn’t actually suggest preparation for either test, so don’t feel enormously pressured to prepare. In fact, Duke TIP clearly states on the program’s site that they don’t want students to feel stressed when approaching the test, especially because stress on test day may have a negative impact on scores.

–However, if you do want to minimize test intimidation, your student may feel more empowered by actually seeing a copy of the SAT or ACT before test day just to know what she’s getting into. Free sample tests are available on both the College Board and ACT websites. Remember that the SAT does dock scores for incorrect answers—to score around a 500 on an SAT section, one needs to answer just over half the questions correctly and leave the rest of the test blank. Answering or guessing too zealously may be to your disadvantage. However, the ACT does not take off points for incorrect answers, so you want to encourage your student to select an answer for every question on the test (yes—Christmas Tree during the last five minutes).

Investigating the scoring rubrics in either The Official SAT Study Guide, 2nd edition
or The Real ACT Prep Guide: The Only Official Prep Guide From The Makers Of The ACT
can help you sort out how to earn the scores you need.

–Having your student take a practice test, even just at home at the kitchen table, can be helpful for selecting the best test for her. You may want to keep in mind that the SAT employs a far more robust vocabulary than the ACT, while the ACT includes a fast-paced Science Reasoning section that tests data-interpretation skills (rather than high-school level science).

– The Duke TIP cutoff scores are usually at or just above a 500 on each section of the SAT, which translates to roughly a 20 or 21 on the ACT.

–If you decide you do want to prepare your student, some of the faster, more learnable elements of both tests include Algebra, basic Geometry (not proofs, but rather understanding angles, lines, and degrees), and Grammar. Since you’re just out to collect as many correct points as possible, concentrating on a few specific topics may streamline the process of reaching the cutoff scores. Outsmarting the SAT was written for students to learn these concepts from the ground up, it’s a great option for basic skill-gathering for both the SAT and ACT; use it in conjunction with The Official SAT Study Guide, 2nd edition or The Real ACT Prep Guide: The Only Official Prep Guide From The Makers Of The ACT for real practice questions.

–We’re happy to help and congratulations on having such an accomplished child!

Tuition “surcharges,” cost-cutting measures, and student-prof ratios are all on the rise. Please see the attached CNNmoney.com article about the trend and make sure you’re keeping an eye on the price tags of the state schools you’re considering.

This seemed great: techniques you could use to guess when you didn’t know the material and the possibility of earning some points anyway.

Thirty years later we have a huge problem. That one simple idea, that there are ways to get around the SAT, completely disempowered students. Why? Because the trend has gone from “here’s how to tackle that last really tough question or two” to “you can’t learn this–here’s how to guess your way to a tolerable score.” 

The minute you tell a student that a question–any question–is so challenging that you can’t teach her the skills to answer it and, instead, you’ll show her how to guess the right answer, she doesn’t gain confidence. Instead, she hears the following:

You can’t conquer this. This test is too hard. The SAT is smarter than you are. 

Well I say enough already. 

The SAT is not smarter than any of us; it’s just a test of math, grammar, and critical thinking skills. 

I’ll rephrase: everything on the SAT is completely learnable. It is not the Holy Grail of knowledge, all elusive and mysterious. It’s just a really long test. 

It’s high time we quit being afraid of the SAT, stop being convinced that it can outsmart us, and instead prepare ourselves with the tools necessary to achieve great scores on the SAT–skills that are transferable to improved college and professional success. It’s time to enjoy the achievement of learning new, relevant concepts and applying them in creative ways. It’s time to be smart again.

Thirty years is too long to be afraid of anything. 

I’m not scared. Are you?

We’ve all been hearing about The Secret for a while now…. Oprah’s talking about it, your community is talking about it. Perhaps you’ve read the book. Now it’s coming to your movie theater?

I can’t take it anymore. I’ve got students with lousy work ethics telling me they’re going to Brown because they’ve put it on a vision board and they’ve told the universe that’s what they’d most like to do. I suspect if I told my students how many of my other students have an identical vision, they’d flip; the admissions numbers and their thought lives aren’t in synch. Sorry to let the cat out of the bag.

It’s time we sort out the differences between wishful thinking (e.g. The Secret or Law of Attraction) and outstanding personal positioning and decision-making (what Rosalene Glickman aptly calls optimal thinking in her eponymous book).

I’m not going to lie: it seems like such a nice idea that if one wants something badly enough that “the universe” (whatever that is) will just line up with her and conspire to make it happen. However, I daresay Hitler really wanted to kill the Jews—and did a pretty effective job for a while there—and I’d hate to think that my universe got on board with his wholehearted, albeit despicable, desires. By the same token, people like Sean Combs, Oprah Winfrey, and Barack Obama aren’t sitting at home writing little journals about how much they want to be media moguls or The President; they’re working their butts off and making the most of every opportunity!

I’m going to challenge you in the midst of all this Secret stuff to buckle down and start thinking optimally. Optimal thinking calls us to decisively weigh out our options, assess the potential outcomes of our actions, calculate the risks involved, and then pointedly move in a direction towards our objectives. That means that if you want to get a high SAT score, you can’t use Professor Harold Hill’s Think System and hope to do well; you have to work at it!

It’s true, the implementation of optimal thinking feels quite a bit like implementing The Secret in that there’s a good deal of focus and meditation on goals. In fact, some of the things that The Secret suggests probably foster the same sorts of outcomes that optimal thinking would. For example, if I have a “vision board” in my locker with some pictures of Harvard and words like Achieve glued to it, I’m subconsciously encouraging myself to give my all at school and not to lose focus. My vision board may ostensibly lead me to get higher grades just because it’s a great reminder.

However, optimal thinking restores your personal agency (that’s your ability to act and make decisions for yourself, rather than being someone who passively reacts to the world). In other words, going to Harvard, achieving great grades, becoming Captain of the Track team are all great objectives, but you’re held accountable for designing and following up with a plan that maximizes the possibilities of those outcomes. Rather than “putting it out there” that you want to be on the debate team, you take every opportunity to assess each moment of your day and look for new ways to become a better arguer, to become more informed, and to improve your ability to see both sides of an issue.

Look, leaving your personal agency out of the equation can be tempting when your confidence is shot; in that case, if getting into Brown was merely a wish and it doesn’t come true, there’s no one to blame but Star Light Star Bright (certainly not yourself!). Ultimately though, I would wager that particularly when we’re working toward those goals that seem like they can’t be achieved without resorting to a flat out wish, we’ll fail without the pointed decision to optimize every situation.

It’s true: sometimes we just get lucky. Every now and then things seem to fall into place, but optimal thinking prepares us to respond to less-than-ideal situations and get as much out of them as we can. The Secret is safe; optimal thinking requires ownership. However, I’m willing to bet you’ll have so much more to own when you set your goals and are brave enough to optimize your life so that they’re more likely to be achieved. 

I’m really excited about this initiative within high schools to move away from quotas of volunteer hours and toward meaningful projects that impact those schools’ immediate communities. I can’t tell you how many college applications I’ve seen that yammer on and on about the value of community service, and yet the hundreds of hours those students have racked up hardly represent the work of kids who have a heart for their communities.

It seems counterintuitive that the wealthiest communities—those with the most to spare—would be least inclined to find projects that have large impact on those with real need, and yet that seems to be the case. Anything that alludes to a move towards authenticity and service gets a thumbs-up from me.

Good Deeds: The Backlash –NY Times

I’ve been giving a good deal of thought to the idea that’s been swirling around about Obama’s new role as archetypal American Dream success story—namely that he’s an inspiration and example to us all of what hard work, ethics, and some fantastic PR can do for a person. He’s the bootstrap president, or at least a bootstrap president.

Politics aside, I’m interested to see what sort of effect a President who is the product of pure hard work (ok, and more than a modicum of sheer giftedness) has on the educational expectations in our country. In other words, now that the U.S. is led by someone who made it to the top on merit, against all odds, will we feel a palpable trickle down effect on the aggregate American expectation of achievement, not only for us, but also for our children? Will it become cool to be an overachiever? Will it no longer be considered gauche to “try too hard”?

As much as we collectively triumph in a good old fashioned success story, individually we have been folks who strive merely to get by or get out, to work as little as possible, to keep up a façade of wealth that is not reflected in our bank accounts. We think we thrive on convenience and entertainment. We neglect education as a chief tenet of political campaigning, in effect, neglecting ourselves and showing our true colors as folks whose priorities have led us to such a historically precarious moment. In fact, during the 2008 election we turned elitism into a negative attribute, thereby throwing out regard for all that is elite with it. And while we have entertained ourselves into oblivion, the rest of the world has not stopped working, has not stopped striving, and suddenly the global community has grown much smaller and intimate.

Bailouts, taxes, left-wing and right-wing rhetoric aside, I hope that if anything is “redistributed” during this new administration, it is a new affirmation for the personal pride, hard work, educational merit, and continual striving and sacrifice on which our country is founded and to which we must surely return.