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I’ve been in the test prep field for long enough now to be able to have seen about two complete high school student body turnovers. Amusingly enough, when I started prepping students for the SAT I was only a year or two out of college and still had a pretty decent sense of what was happening on the high school front.

Now, I don’t want to pull some sort of “in my day” spiel, but you should know that when I was in high school we didn’t have computers at the house and internet access was extremely limited (and, frankly, we really had no idea why we’d want to use it anyway). That being said, I’ll also admit that we watched a fair amount of television. Nevertheless, we spent a good deal of time reading recreationally. Anais Nin, On the Road, Jonathan Edwards–you name it and someone we knew was reading it. And now, well over a decade later, I will bet serious money on the following statement:

Kids–even the “smart” kids–just aren’t reading like they used to.

It’s a problem.

In the past week alone I’ve had to clarify the meaning of the following words for students hoping to attend Ivy League schools: timid, pedagogical, somber, polarized, consummate, equitable, and steadfast. [There are more but I'll spare you.] In no way do I mean to be condescending or to in any way poke fun at my students; instead I mean to Sound The Alarm.

In the world of educational chatter, “teaching to the test” and the limitations of what one can glean about a students’ intellect or college readiness from standardized testing are major issues–and a fair ones at that. However, I think we’re finally at the point where it’s not about the test anymore.

I don’t want to hear another word about how deeply unfair the SAT is until you can show me a culture of high school students who read quality literature for fun on a daily basis. Show me students who turn off YouTube and Hulu (and  Halo, for that matter) in favor of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell or The Kite Runner. Show me students who are working through House of Leaves for the fun of it (to date, I’ve had one dare to do so and, frankly, he loved it…. and now he’s at Williams) and I’ll show you a legion of college applicants that aren’t doing battle with the reading comprehension section on the SAT.

As a tutor I spend more time than ever teaching the rudiments of critical thinking–meaning, I spend many hours explaining one, the meanings of words, and two, why it’s so important that we be able to articulate definitions. (It’s quite difficult to compare the meaning and intention of two words–the building blocks of answer choices–when all you can say about each of them is “oh, you know, I know what it means, but it’s just so hard to say it!”)

I’m seeing fewer and fewer students knock the SAT Reading out of the ballpark and I’m going to stick my neck out and say that I don’t think it’s because I’ve spontaneously become a lousy teacher. So, teachers, parents, and my tutor colleagues: please, please, encourage your students to read more than you ever have before. And students, you heard it here first: if you don’t start reading challenging literature on a regular basis and discipline yourself to learn and articulate the meanings of new words as you come across them, your SAT score will suffer.

It’s as simple as that.

Funnily, in the midst of the Twilight hysteria that began what now seems like eons ago, I started hearing about a specific aspect of it from all my students. Incredibly, while all my adult girlfriends were thoroughly engrossed in the pure drama of the saga (full disclosure: the Twilight series is not a guilty pleasure in which I have yet indulged), my teen students were assaulting me with “Elizabeth! These books are serious and have so much vocabulary in them!”

Well, more kudos belong to Brian Leaf, a Massachusetts-based prep tutor who has taken on Twilight with an excellent challenge for its disciples: since the book is full of great vocabulary, let’s learn it. “Defining Twilight” is a great way to not only learn the vocab in Twilight (rather than just notice that it’s there and forget it), but also to spark a pattern of learning the vocabulary in other challenging texts as students move through high school. As an SAT, SSAT, and ISEE tutor who works with students with limited vocabularies on a daily basis, I’m so pleased that another useful product is available to help students get started early on–in a way that’s applicable and even possibly exciting.

While “Defining Twilight” (and the ensuing follow-up titles) shouldn’t be a student’s only path to increasing her vocabulary, this book is a great start and I hope a product that will encourage students to begin developing vocabulary for the SAT and PSAT long before their junior years.

Check out Brian’s book here:

Fact #1 In life you will find that there will be a number of things you don’t want to do. While you will be an adult and will have the freedom to make your own decisions, you’re still going to need to get a job, pay bills, mow the lawn, and do the dishes. (Read: you’re going to need to have a work ethic.)

Fact #2 When you have a job, whether you work for yourself or someone else, if you aren’t a self-starter—even when the project is sooooo boring—you’re going to either lose your job or stay in the same stinkin’ position until the end of time.

Fact #3 While your parents may pay attention to your grades and homework now, the only person who is going to notice the grades you make as an adult—as measured in your personal satisfaction with your career and the number of dollars in your bank account—will be you.

What does this have to do with test prep?

Fact #4 It’s not a big secret that preparing for a standardized test is not as fun as riding your bike, playing a video game, watching television, cooking dinner, mowing the lawn, cleaning the bathroom, changing the oil in your Grandma’s car…. Ok, you get the idea. Studying for these tests, while they do have their creative moments, isn’t usually going to be the activity you most look forward to during the day.

Fact #5 It doesn’t matter that it isn’t fun. Lots of things that aren’t necessarily fun lead to great things: sweating it out at the gym leads to great muscles, running sprints at practice means speed to outrun your opponent when you need it, and cleaning out the car means you won’t be mortified on your date on Friday night.

Fact #6 Sometimes, it’s not even the immediate result that is most important; instead, it’s the opportunity you create for yourself in the long run—opportunities you may not yet even realize exist. What does this mean? Well, to be direct, your SAT or ACT score is totally pointless if you don’t see it as a key to get you through the door of your dream school, even if you don’t yet know what your dream school is.

The moral here is that the amount of studying you do for the SAT or ACT today, that one extra vocabulary word you learn or the geometry rule you memorize, can directly influence the number of doors that will be opened to you after you send in those applications.

On those days where you’d rather give Fluffy a bath than do another flash card or practice test, just remember that drudgework today is just an investment in opportunity tomorrow.

I recently realized that, whether you’re an accomplished student or not, that you may not really have a handle on the best way to prep for a standardized test. People argue back and forth about how “coachable” these tests may be, but there are two fundamental things you need to keep an eye out for while studying for either the ACT or SAT. This is one of my best-kept secret tactics. 

For every question you come across (and this is assuming you are using only real practice tests created by the test maker), you need to know what they asked how they asked the question. It’s fairly simple, really. Neither the SAT nor the ACT is a test of everything you learned in high school; instead, they test a finite number of facts/concepts and then test your knowledge or ability to apply them in different ways.

So, while you’re studying any SAT or ACT topic that fact-based (like grammar and math), this what you do for any question that gives you any sort of pause:

• Write down what you needed to know.

New formula? New grammatical construction? How functions work? Make sure you take notes on what you needed to know (and, most importantly, what you didn’t know) so you can make sure you don’t miss it again.

• Write down how they asked you about it.

Did they make the question a two-parter? Was the grammar something that “sounded right” that you might actually say but is, in fact, wrong? Did you miss an EXCEPT question? Did you overlook the different of perfect squares because you didn’t recognize it? Did you have to factor exponents in a way you never did in Algebra class?

Tracking these two simple elements is the key to unlocking and studying for any standardized test. Good luck!

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. 

If you’ve had your finger on the SAT/ACT phenomenon lately, you may have noticed that over the past 18 months or so the content of the ACT has become more varied and difficult, likely in response to the many students who chose to take it instead of the SAT. More kids with higher scores means the test has to get tougher.

So kids are switching back to the SAT, which is great, but it’s leading to a lot of conversations about vocabulary, which ultimately leads to conversations about reading. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of the students who work with me directly are very privileged in their educational backgrounds: many of their parents hold several degrees and they attend excellent schools. One would be naïve to think that I’m not having conversations like “seriously, you need to start to reading” with presumed young scholars. However, blame You Tube, blame the television, blame our culture, or blame bad writers… I don’t know, but we’ve got kids who want to go to Brown and Penn who don’t read. I suppose this doesn’t strike them as unusual, as so few of their friends seem to read, but the fact is this:

The most prestigious colleges in the country (and frankly, many colleges that are not so prestigious) don’t give students big homework assignments and expect regurgitation; instead, they intend to challenge students’ thinking, to broaden their intellectual horizons, to encourage them to develop new ideas. If you’re mulling over new ideas, you’re going to need to write to express your thoughts, and you’ll need to do that well if you want anyone to take you seriously. Moreover, if you’re not a reader, your vocabulary will likely suffer as well, which means your SAT score is going to suffer.

All those coveted seats at Top Institutions? They’re going to readers.

Which means you need to go pick up a book or a copy of Vanity Fair, stat.

And if you’re not reading, whether you’ve realized this yet or not, you’re going to struggle to eek your way into the top institutions, no matter who you are. Hate to be heavy-handed, but these are the facts, kids. Now go pick up a book!