elizabeth online » elizabeth king

On Negativity and Dealing with Struggles on the SAT and ACT

elizabeth — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:26:03 +0000

Barbara Ann and I are back again with this permanent page about coping with and overcoming negativity in competitive arenas. Please check out part three of my interview with this Gold Medalist Olympian here.

U.S. Olympic Team Website Features Me and Barbara Ann Cochran

elizabeth — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:39:23 +0000

Many of you know that I’ve been teaming up with Olympian Barbara Ann Cochran to talk about the mental tenacity it takes to prepare for the SAT and ACT. Well, I’m thrilled to report that the U.S. Olympic Team got wind of this and has done a little feature about our work together on their site. You can read the article here.

Olympic Gold? She knows what she’s doing…

elizabeth — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:56:42 +0000

I wanted to take this opportunity to announce an exciting series of interviews I’ll be doing with Barbara Ann Cochran, an Olympic Gold Medalist and incredible performance coach for young athletes. While it goes without saying that you’ll be stuck on test day if you’re struggling with math basics and grammar fundamentals, mentally surviving the test day is also a huge challenge. With the incredible pressure put on students to achieve high scores on the SAT and ACT, I thought it was important to start really looking into what it takes to perform on these tests and figure out how to articulate what makes standardized tests easy for some and difficult for others.

Our first conversation deals with the importance of mental preparation and what you can do to start preparing now for your test experience, whether you’re taking it in a few weeks or months down the line.

You can find the first part of our conversation here.

SAT Tips Featured on Unigo.com

elizabeth — Wed, 13 May 2009 22:29:53 +0000

I love what Unigo.com is doing for students searching through colleges, so I’m so thrilled that they have added my tips about the SAT to their website. If you’ve never heard of this new company, they feature reviews by current students at more than 2000 colleges across the country–unedited. If you want a unique perspective that goes far beyond student teacher ratios and lists of departments, I’d take a peek at what they’re doing. They’re going to be huge. Also, please check out my first post for Unigo, 10 Tips for Outsmarting the SAT.

Strunk and White Forever.

elizabeth — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:34:40 +0000

Well lo and behold, today is the 50th anniversary of that magical little compendium The Elements of Style. True to form, The New York Times highlighted the day and let five grammargicians have their way with it–and their way, frankly, was not so kind. You can read the article here.

Nevertheless, I’m going to stick my own grammatical neck out and say it: if you want to break the rules, you need to learn the rules first. Struck and White are, as far as I’m concerned, the A#1 resource for learning to piece together a concise piece of writing that is well structured and clearly states an idea. I’ve been known to hand it to students who are 13, 14 years old (and even sometimes those about to graduate high school) as a great little guide for Getting What You Mean On Your Paper.

God bless the crafty writers with their beautiful prose, but if you’re looking for the basics and great examples of what you might do versus what you should do as you learn to write, The Elements of Style is still where it’s at.

OUTSMARTING THE SAT Sample Pages!

elizabeth — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:12:09 +0000

I know it’s tough to get a sense of OUTSMARTING THE SAT from the Amazon sample pages; evidently that’s because the book is a technically a textbook so the index is what’s most important. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of anything less important than the index, so I’ve taken the liberty of creating a little 10 page sample PDF of what you can expect to find in the book. Specifically, I’ve included the introduction (so you can tell what I’m all about) and the first chunk of the geometry lesson (because everyone needs a little geometry love). Interested? Get the PDF here, buy the book, and take your score to the top!