As I write this, it’s a week before Labor Day, which means you don’t have much time to get your best SAT score possible, and give yourself the best possible chance you can to get in to the college or university of your choice.

So what SAT score do you have to get? The one that gives you the best, most realistic chance of getting in.

I came across a cool graphic that gives you the scoop on what score you need for some of the best, and most popular schools in the country.

Find out what your goal is, then let me know if you want help reaching it!

I just got off the phone with an overwhelmed parent.

As I’m writing this, it’s August 24. She signed up her son to take the ACT on September 11. She was calling back to cancel his lesson. He was so busy with other school work that he wouldn’t be able to see me until the weekend.

And he had just started with tutoring!

You can probably see what a mistake that is. It’s alwasy easier to see when it’s somebody else. But while this might be an extreme case, it’s an all too common situation.

The first semester of senior year, and the last couple weeks of the summer leading up to it, are an incredibly busy time. There’s sports practice, summer assigments, a heavier and more difficult course load, homework, tests, your last chance to take the SAT or ACT, campus visits, college applications, admissions essays, and often a job.

With so much to do, it’s no wonder that students and their parents often feel overwhelmed!

So what do you do about it? You prioritize.

We all do, all the time. Some things are more important, so we do them first. We’ll get to the other stuff later if we can.

So what’s the problem?

Most people don’t prioritize SAT prep. That’s a huge mistake!

I understand why people make it, though:

• There are no immediate consequences to not making SAT prep a higher priority.
• The SAT is still weeks away.
• Getting your score is even further away.
• Nobody will be angry with you if you don’t get a better SAT or ACT score, except you.
• There’s no absolute guarantee that a higher score will get you into the college of your choice.
• Many other things on the list are happening now, and you’ll immediately feel the negative consequences of dropping the ball.
• If you don’t do your homework, or don’t go to practice, or don’t hand in your homework, or fail your math test, someone else will be upset with you, you’ll have to deal with that right away, and you’d rather not have that unpleasantness.
• And finally, if you’re a parent reading this, you have to deal with your son or daughter complaining that they don’t have time for SAT prep!

It’s OK. I really do understand.

As human beings, we’re all designed to value things that will happen sooner more than those that happen later. And we’re all designed to value avoiding painful consequences more than the possiblity of making something good happen.

But when you put off SAT or ACT prep and assign it a lower priority than all of the other, more immediate things on your plate, it’s like having to be somewhere at 2 PM, knowing it takes an hour to get there, still being home at 1:30, and convincing yourself that, technically, you’re not late yet.

Guess what. If I’ve just described you, you’re going to be late.

Here are some reasons why you should make SAT or ACT prep your top priority:

• Getting a higher SAT or ACT score is the single most important thing you can do at this point in time to increase your chances of getting in to the college of your choice.
• Your SAT or ACT score, which most students take only twice, is as important to your chances of getting in to college as all of your high school grades combined.
• A score increase of even 100 points can make a HUGE difference in your chance of admission to the college of your choice.
• The combination of a motivated student and a skilled tutor can easily result in a 100 to 300 point SAT score increase (and a 2 to 6 point ACT score increase) in a short period of time.
• It gives you the biggest return on your investment of time and money.
• This means it’s FAR more important to do SAT or ACT prep than any single piece of homework.
• And far more important than your college applications, which can wait until you’ve taken these tests.
• I won’t even mention how much more important it is than any one sports practice.

Take a minute and convince yourself of the truth of what I’m sharing with you.

When you become certain of your priorities, suddenly everything else seems less overwhelming. And it becomes much easier to stand your ground with a teacher, a coach, a boss, or a college counselor who tells you otherwise.

I read something today by a 1st Grade teacher that was so powerful and so moving that I have to share it with you:

When I have a student standing in the middle of the room arms crossed with his eyes welling up with tears because we are about to do a simple writing activity but all of his previous experience of reading and writing has been full of frustration, disappointment and pain, then all the degrees and expertise (that I have) don’t mean a thing!

That’s why I even though I’ve taught at universities, I make sure that I know my students (interests, needs, desires, frustrations) and the language I need to use to communicate that I can help them. Because (all of the knowledge and techniques) are lost on the people who need it most unless you can connect in a way they understand. And taking those extra steps to ensure that your audience can both appreciate and apply what you have to offer shows that you truly care, and makes all the difference in the world.

The only difference between that kid in the first grade having trouble with a simple writing activity, and a high school junior who hasn’t yet been able to do his best on the SAT or ACT is that the older student’s eyes no longer well up with tears when other people are watching.

That’s why doing your best on the SAT isn’t about knowing a little more math, or knowing when to skip a question and when to guess.

Can you really improve your SAT score by a large amount? It’s a controversial question.

The answer is yes, but let me state the other side first.

It seems that last year’s controversy about SAT Score Improvement has reared it’s head again.

A widely distributed AP story once again insinuates that it’s not really possible for a student to significantly raise his SAT score.

It quotes Kathleen Steinberg, College Board, which administers the SAT, as stating that, “on average, students who take the SAT twice only increase their scores by about 30 points.”

(The College Board has a vested interest in believing that, though. If someone can readily improve her SAT score, it strongly counters their argument that the SAT is a fixed measure of a student’s ability to do college level work and worthiness of being admitted to a particular school.)

I don’t dispute that most kids don’t significantly raise their scores. What I dispute is the insinuation that most kids can’t.

Most students can raise their score about 300 points from their baseline PSAT score; some students can raise it much higher than that.
(I’ve also written about this here, here, and here.)

So why does the test prep industry fail so often?

Because while many people can “teach”, very few can help students learn.

Take a moment to let that sink in. It’s a big claim. And it’s not only true in test prep, by the way. It’s true in all of education.

Anyone who’s ever been in a classroom knows that it’s one thing to be able to “teach” material, and a whole other thing to be able to help people to learn it.

That’s the difference between the “outer game” of education, and the “inner game”.

In the world of SAT prep, the outer game is understanding the material on the test and the test taking techniques, and improving your critical thinking skills.

The inner game is all about believing in yourself, maintaining your focus, staying positive rather than getting discouraged while you study and prepare, and eliminating anxiety while taking the test.

The inner game is where the huge score increases come from.

Most tutors can’t help you with it. They might understand the material and the test taking techniques, but they don’t understand their students.

If you have big goals and you’re highly motivated to reach them, go ahead and contact me. Chances are I can help you to achieve them.

As I’m writing this, the April 10 ACT is only 2 days away.

While this site is called SAT Success Secrets, I tutor a lot of kids for the ACT as well (it’s just less popular here in Los Angeles where I’m currently located). In order to help students around the country who are preparing to take the ACT, I’ve modified my popular “6 Tips for Last Minute SAT Preparation” post in order to give you the same coaching advantage that my SAT students get.

So whether you’ve left everything until the last minute, or you’ve worked hard and want a few last minute pointers, here are the essential last minute ACT prep tips to help you make the most of your remaining time before the exam.

Last Minute Tip #1: You already know most of what you need to know to do better on the ACT than you might think.

Remember, the ACT is not rocket science. You already know how to read, you don’t need to know anything special to do well on the Science section, and by now you’ve probably learned most of the math, grammar, and punctuation that you need to do well on those sections of the exam.

Last Minute Tip #2: Confidence is king.

Henry Ford, the guy who started the car company, once said, “Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.” You have to believe that you’re going to be successful.

Why? If you believe that you’ll do well, when you have trouble with certain questions, which you inevitably will, you won’t get frustrated and lose your focus. That brings us to the next tip.

Last Minute Tip #3: Relax and stay in control of your emotions.

If a particular question is giving you a hard time, skip it and let it go. It doesn’t mean anything, especially anything bad about you.

I’ve seen a lot of students make mistakes and then feel bad about themselves. I’ve done it myself many times in my life. It’s not worth it though. It doesn’t lead anywhere good.

If you dwell on the questions that give you trouble, or even take too much time on them, you’ll just get lost in negative thoughts and emotions and lose the focus that you need to do well.

When you take the test, treat it like a video game. You don’t get upset when you’re learning a new video game, do you? You certainly don’t stay upset for more than a few seconds.

Last Minute Tip #4: Focus.

Focus is the most important factor in getting the best ACT score possible. In fact, the reason that the previous tips are so important is that being confident, relaxed, and in control of your emotions are what allow you to stay focused.

Answers that seem right but are actually wrong are built into every section of the test. That’s why focus is so important.

When you’re taking the ACT, if you’re not paying full attention at every moment, you’ll get questions wrong when you know how to get them right. Whether you’re starting with a 21 in each section and working toward a 24, or you’re starting with a 32 and working for a perfect score of 36, focus gives you the most bang for your buck. It’s the absolute, number one key at all score levels.

Last Minute Tip #5: Make yourself laugh.

If you notice that you’re feeling tense or frustrated, think of something that makes you laugh. It’s the number one thing you can do to change your emotional state from negative to positive.

Last Minute Tip #6: Practice all you can until Friday afternoon.

Take some practice tests using official ACT material from ACTstudent.org, and work on your weak points.

Download the free additional practice questions, purchase their online prep course, or get their official study guide called “The Real ACT Prep Guide”.

Practice the other tips as you go through the material.

Good luck on Saturday. Let me know how it works out.

Now that it’s early April, my students have started getting back to me to let me know what schools they got accepted to. There’s a lot of happiness, a little disappointment, and some decisions to make from among more than one good option.

How I Chose

It brings me back to the time when I had to make my own decision, a lot longer ago than I’d care to admit. After all my acceptances and rejections were in, I had narrowed down my choice to Brown and Wesleyan.

Like most high school seniors, I wasn’t terribly equipped to make the best decision. I decided that I’d go back to visit each school. Luckily, I grew up in New Jersey so it wasn’t too far a drive.

The first available Friday instead of going to high school, I drove up to Wesleyan. It was pouring rain. The campus was a sea of mud. Nobody was out, and the students who were out looked miserable. I thought, what a terrible place to go to school. The weather’s terrible, the campus is ugly, and the students are miserable.

The following Friday I drove to Brown. It was a beautiful day. The campus looked amazing. There were tons of students out on the green, walking around, throwing frisbees, playing guitar, just hanging out and enjoying themselves. I thought, and felt, this is amazing. What a great place to go to college.

Well, I got lucky. After a rocky start, Brown turned out to be just the right place for me. But boy is it rainy in Providence, RI. It rains A LOT. The campus was often a sea of mud.  There were many days when the only people who were out were the ones who absolutely had to be, and then only for the least time possible. It could not possibly have rained more in Middletown, CT where Wesleyan is, 80 miles down the road.

A Much Better Way To Choose

Sit down in a quiet place, it could be indoors or it could be outdoors, and imagine your perfect life in college. Begin to play with the images that you see. See different images of yourself doing what you love to do, what you want to be doing, of your different abilities and strengths, of the person you want to become.

Whenever you’re comfortable, let that turn into a movie of your ideal life in college, a movie that you direct. Run the movie over again as much as you want to, trying out various scenarios.

See the images in full vibrant color, like you’re living in the middle of your perfect life. See yourself the way you want to be, doing the things you love to do, living a life that you’re passionate about. Look around you. What else do you see? What do you hear? How do you feel? What does it smell like in the spring and the fall? You might even put music to it, for many people that intensifies the experience.

Walk through this perfect college experience. See yourself living out an exciting college life that allows you to do what you love to do and accomplish what you believe in. What are you doing? Who are you doing it with?  What is the campus like? What are your classes like? How do you picture life in the dorms? How do you imagine your social life?   Your other extracurricular activities, whatever they may be?

Enjoy the daydream for as long as  you want. When you’re satisfied, jot down a couple of notes if you’d like about what you discovered from that experience.

You can do that exercise as many times as you’d like, until you have a solid imprint of what you want the next phase of your life, your college life, to look and sound and feel and be like.

Now look at the brochures from the colleges you’re considering. Look at their websites. Look at other websites where current students share their experiences. One of my favorites is unigo.com, though I’m sure there are many.

As you look through them, imagine yourself in those campuses, living your life in each of them as you imagine it to be. How does it match up with your vision of your ideal college life?

If you can, go visit your final choices again before you decide. Do the same thing while you’re there. Imagine what life would be like living at that school, and see how it matches up with your ideal college vision.

As you do that, as you match up those visions, you’re looking, or listening, for your inner wisdom, that voice or feeling inside of you that gives you that flash of inspiration, that feeling that, “Yes! This is the place for me!”

Then go with it. That’ll be the right choice for you right now. And know that when you get there, it’s going to be amazing.

I saw two articles today that really shocked me.

Brown Alumni Monthly reported that applications rose 20% this year, from 25,000 to 30,000 applicants. Just a few years ago, in 2002, there were “only” 14,612 applicants.

That’s a 50% increase in 8 years. All competing for the same 1,500 freshman slots. It works out to an acceptance rate of about 5%.

Harvard reported 30,489 applicants, a record for them, and accepted 2,110, for a record low acceptance rate of 6.9%.

Not only that, but almost 3,600 of those Harvard applications were from seniors ranked first in their high school!

That’s unbelievable!

A couple of days ago, I wrote:

“You can’t control everything that happens to you, you can only control how you respond to it… If you didn’t get accepted to the college of your choice, know that acceptance rates have been dropping for several years and that it’s no reflection on you.”

It’s still true, but it means that you have to do everything in your power to control one of the few things you can control – your SAT score.

The amount of money that you’ll spend for a skilled SAT tutor is a drop in the bucket compared to what you’re about to spend on college, and for many of you, what you’re already spending on a private high school.

Better SAT scores mean more choices. Now more than ever, the stakes are high. Test preparation isn’t just another educational expense – it’s an investment in your future.

Here’s more from Brown Alumni Monthly:

About a year ago James Miller ‘73, Brown’s dean of admission, met with the father of a prospective student. The man had lost most of his savings during the recession. With some of his investments now worthless, he was looking for a more secure place to put his money. 

“I might as well put it into his head,” he told Miller, referring to his son. “That’s about the most secure investment I can make.”

Apparently a lot of other parents feel the same way. Miller believes the brutal economy of the last few years accounts for much of this year’s national spike in college applications.

“In uncertain times,” Miller says, “people want to invest in education. I’ve been doing this for thirty years and I’ve truly never seen an applicant pool with this depth of talent.”

Of course, when it comes to choosing a tutor for SAT prep, there are a lot of options.

If you pick the wrong one, you’re setting yourself up for a very frustrating experience and little to no score gain.

If you pick a highly skilled tutor who understands you and can help you reach your true potential, you can raise your score higher than you might think. In fact, with the right tutor and enough motivation, you’re score can go up 300 points or more, even if you’re a student with learning differences.

Imagine the difference 300 points can make when the admissions officer at the school of your dreams looks at your application.

If you’re highly motivated and you have big dreams, contact me for a free introductory session and let me show you what’s possible.

It’s finally arrived. Decision day.

You did all your hard work long ago, or so it seems. Taking the SAT, all of that tutoring, even your tutor’s name, probably seems like ancient history.

It’s now been months since you sent in your college applications, months of nervous anticipation.

Some of you know already where you’ve been accepted. And rejected. Many colleges let you know already.

But now it’s about to be completely finished. I believe that every college and university in the country let’s you know by tomorrow, April 1.

It came upon me suddenly, because here in Los Angeles, we don’t really have seasons, so I hardly know it’s spring. A little voice in my head must’ve let me know it’s time, because I just checked my alma mater, Brown University, and learned that if you applied there, you can go online tomorrow afternoon at 5 PM and learn your fate.

Online!

Back in my day, we had to wait for the mail. You didn’t even have to open it, because you knew the answer by whether the envelope was fat or skinny. A big fat envelope meant you got in, and a skinny one meant you didn’t.

I’m nervous for all of my students. Some will be elated and some crushed, and for a moment I’ll feel the same as they let me know how it went for them.

Here’s the part about keeping it all in perspective:

After a certain point in life, nobody asks where you went to school, just like nobody cares what you got on your SAT or what your high school grades were.

They just want to know what you’ve done since, and what you’re like as a person.

You can’t control everything that happens to you, you can only control how you respond to it.

If you’ve been accepted to the college or university of your dreams, congratulations!

If you didn’t get accepted to the college of your choice, know that acceptance rates have been dropping for several years and that it’s no reflection on you.

No matter where you go to school, you’re going to make lifelong friends, grow enormously, have more fun than you can imagine, and emerge a very different person from the one you are now.

You might not be able to picture it now, but it’s going to be awesome. All of it.

So let me amend what I just wrote.

No matter what happens today, congratulations!

You’ve worked hard. You’ve done the best that you could. And no matter where you decide to go, you’ll soon be starting your next great adventure.

P.S. If you’re interested, check out this column by Susan Estrich that inspired me to write mine.

The real goal of reading a non-fiction book is to learn something.

You want to spend less time reading and learn more, which means remembering and understanding more of the information. While learning to read faster certainly helps, a big part of it is reading less. It’s usually not a good idea to read the book cover to cover. Remember, you own the book. The book does not own you.

Before you open a book, you have to know what you’re looking for and why you’re reading it.

That way the things you need to know will pop out at you; 80 – 90% of what’s in a book is not important. You want to ignore that and focus on the 5 – 20% that is valuable. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. If you don’t know what the needle looks like, it’s a lot harder to find. The best ways to find this out are to ask your teacher and look at your syllabus.

In general, this is what you need to know when you read:

• The main idea. Everything else hangs on this.
• The author’s point of view, if it’s applicable (sometimes it’s not important, like in a science book).
• The key concepts. These are clusters of ideas.
• The principles or general laws that explain the details, or that allow you to predict.
• The vocabulary of the field. Depending on the book it could be names, dates, places, events, key ideas or scientific concepts, specialized words and terms.

Look for the big picture first.

A lot of times when you read, you’re seeing the pieces and figuring out the big picture, but the process often goes a lot faster if you see the big picture first. It’s like looking at the box of the puzzle while you put it together. You want to have a general framework to understand the material, because that makes understanding it much easier. The best way to do this is to pay attention in class. The teacher assigned the book because it helps you to better understand what she’s teaching. What you’re covering in class is the general framework that the book fits into.

Some parts of the book are more important than others.

When you pick up the book, read the introduction, the preface, the table of contents and the summary first (assuming the book has them). These parts of the book give you the framework for the book. Then see if the author has summarized, bullet-pointed, made a chart, or in some other way pointed out the most important concepts. Read those things next. If the book is broken down into chapters, the chapters will often have an introduction and/or a summary as well. They should be the first things you read in each chapter. Everything else is examples, applications and details, which are less important.

Skip what you already know.

Some of what you need to know you will already know before opening the book. How does this happen? By paying attention in class. I can’t stress this enough. You have to be there anyway, so make the best use of that time. The more you pay attention in class, the less you will have to read at home, and the easier it will be to understand what you read. Then, if you follow these steps I just outlined, you’ll find that a lot of what you read is simply a restatement of the key points. What do you do when you come across something that you already know? Skip it! Skim over it really fast until you get to unfamiliar material.

So to summarize, this is how you read less:

1. Know why you’re reading the book and what you’re looking for.
2. Pay attention in class.
3. Read the most important parts of the book first.
4. Skip what you already know.

The next step is to eliminate distractions when you read. And don’t multi-task.

Every time you get distracted, you lose a lot of time. There are a lot of distractions in the modern world; phone, IM, the internet, music, your friends, your siblings, your parents, the dog, feeling hungry and getting a snack, wanting to take notes and not having a pen and a notebook by your side, etc. Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed, turn off your phone and all that other stuff, have a pen and notebook with you when you start reading, tell your friends and family not to disturb you. This will allow you to focus, which is a really valuable skill for all of life. Read for 50 minutes straight. You’ll be surprised at how much you get done when you’re concentrating intently for that whole time. Then take a 10 minute break, and then read for another 50 minutes. After that you’ll probably need a longer break, because it’s hard for anyone to concentrate fully on one thing for longer than that. I suggest a half hour break at this point.

Some distractions are internal, and you have to do your best to eliminate them as well.

We’re not used to focusing our minds for that long, so they tend to wander. One thought or emotion leads to another, and before we know it we end up in daydream land. It’s a big time waster, and it’s going to happen, at least once in a while, and at least when at first. Sometimes one thing makes us think of something else, and before we know it, we realize that we were turning the pages but not really reading. Don’t be mad at yourself, just be mindful of it. When you notice it happening, go back to where you last remember what you were reading. As you place your awareness on it, it will happen less and less.

Here are two potential trouble spots that are special types of internal distractions.

If you don’t handle them, you’ll end up taking longer to read the material and learning less from it. The first is when you find yourself disagreeing with something you read. It’s hard to learn when you disagree with someone or something, because when that happens our minds tend to close. Just like with daydreaming, the key is to be aware of it when it happens. If you find yourself disagreeing with something in the book, take it as a signal that you have to focus harder. Remember that your job is to learn the material, not to agree with it. The second trouble spot is when you’re reading complex material that’s hard to understand and you get frustrated. Again, be aware of it. Skip anything that you don’t understand. Trust that your mind will figure it out. If at the end of a chapter you still don’t understand something, then go back. If you still don’t understand, make a note of it, and the page number it’s on, and ask your teacher about it in class.

Take notes, but not a lot of notes.

In your own words, jot down the key points that I talked about above. Sometimes it helps to make a drawing or diagram, or even an outline. Make sure you write down the page number that this stuff was on so you can easily go back for clarification later if you need to. You also want to write down questions that you have, and things it makes you think of, especially if it’s related to your own experiences. For example, let’s say you’re reading about Manifest Destiny. If I were taking notes, I might write, “Did they really believe it, or were they just using this concept to justify the action they wanted to take? Are there situations today that are similar? Assume for a minute that some people really believed it; how did that belief come to be? And might there be things that we believe today that in the future people will think were wrong, or even almost impossible to comprehend?” This will help you understand the material better, and make you seem really smart in class during a discussion.

When you’re done, re-read your notes.

Do this quickly; take about 5 minutes for each hour of reading. Then do it again a couple days later.

Practice reading faster.

Read slightly faster than you feel comfortable with. You will adapt to it. Again, don’t skip back if you don’t understand something. Keep going. Trust that your mind will figure it out. If at the end of a chapter you still don’t understand something, then go back.

Teach someone else.

If you have someone you study with, teach the other person what you learned as soon as you can, this will cement it in your mind.

That’s about it. Try it and let me know how it works for you.

I came across an article in USA Today that stated,

“…in the new study, 20% to 40% of officials at 130 colleges that consider the SAT in admissions said a 20-point math increase or a 10-point reading increase would ’significantly improve a student’s chances of admissions’ if all other factors in a student’s application were the same.”

That’s how competitive the college admissions game is today.

This information must be making it’s way around the blogosphere again, because the article is from last May,  and the study it cites is the one commissioned by the National Association of College Admissions Counselors that I cited in my first post, yet I was still stunned to read these facts.

If a 30 point increase can make the difference in some cases, imagine what a 150 or 300 point increase can do.

It can open the gates of admission to the college of your dreams. Imagine how good that would feel.

I can help you achieve it in 3 to 6 months of tutoring, and much less time in some cases.

Isn’t that worth spending a few hours a week for?