For 11^th graders (and some precocious 10^th graders), the testing season is here.  Whether you're taking the SAT or the ACT, it is time for Alison’s Top 3 Tips about standardized tests and college admissions.

Tip #1:  Be strategic about which tests you take.

Your strategy should be shaped by two things: what tests are required by the colleges to which you will be applying and which test suits you best.

What Tests Are Required

Start with what is required by the colleges to which you will be applying.  You’ll discover that there is quite a bit of variety and that the testing landscape is changing a lot, so it pays to take the time to do the research. Right now, these are the basic configurations for testing requirements:

• No tests required.
• SAT Reasoning OR ACT with writing required.
• SAT Reasoning and SAT Subject Tests OR ACT with writing required.
• SAT or ACT with writing required AND SAT Subject Tests recommended.
• SAT or ACT with writing required AND SAT Subject Tests required.
• SAT OR ACT with writing OR 3 SAT Subject Tests OR 3 AP Tests.

Faced with this variety of requirements, many students get the advice or decide for themselves that they’ll just take them all and cover their bases.  I think that is foolish – you get no advantage in the admissions process and you spend valuable time, energy, and resources taking unnecessary tests.  Instead, be strategic and focus your efforts.  For most of you, this will mean taking either the SAT Reasoning or ACT with writing test.  If you are applying to the most selective colleges, you’ll probably have to add 2 SAT Subject Tests. 

I do have two special caveats for international students (students who are not U.S. citizens, whose primary language is not English, and who have been educated outside the U.S.).  First, you should make sure you understand the testing requirements for international students – they are often different and include a test to demonstrate proficiency in English such as the TOEFL.  Second, you should take the TOEFL even if it is not required.  Many admissions offices consider your other scores in light of your TOEFL and therefore it will be helpful to you. 

Which Tests Suit You Best

SAT Reasoning or ACT with writing? 

The statistics gathered by the colleges suggest that for most of you, it doesn’t much matter.  You are going to score about the same in comparison to the national pool and that is why the colleges themselves will take either. However, a significant minority of you will do better on one or the other.  There are lots of theories for how to predict which test will “suit you.”  But no prediction is as valid as simply testing yourself.  Carve out some time to take one of each test, either at a test prep center, at your school counseling office, or in the privacy of your own home.  Do it old school and use paper and pencil just like you do on the real tests.  If you score decidedly better on one or the other, then go with that test. 

But what if you do equally well on both?  Then it gets a bit more complicated, because I think you need to consider whether you will be taking SAT Subject Tests. 

If you do not have to take the Subject Tests, then simply pick the one that most people at your school take, because you’ll be in sync with everyone else, have more resources for test prep, and it will be all around easier.  

If you can substitute the ACT with Writing for both the SAT Reasoning and Subject Tests, then go with the ACT.  You’ll definitely take fewer tests and, if need be, you’ll get more chances to retake the test and boost your score. 

If you do need the SAT Subject Tests, then it probably makes sense to go with the SAT because you’ll get in the SAT groove and you can leverage your test prep most effectively.   (For the record, this is new advice from me.  I used to say that if you do equally well on both, choose the SAT.  But because the testing requirements for colleges have changed a lot in the last three years and because at the same time, the ACT has caught up with the SAT in terms of its recognition and acceptance by admissions officers, I no longer have a decided bias in favor of the SAT.)

Tip #2:  Schedule your tests with your life in mind and schedule your life with your tests in mind.

Now that you know which tests you are going to take, get the test dates from the web, sit down with your calendar, and map out when you are going to take the tests.  Some things to keep in mind as you go through this exercise:

• Be aware that if you want early decision options, you need to have ALL of your testing complete before November 1 – any test date after October 1 is probably out.
• Some test dates may not be available in certain locations.  For example, there is no February ACT in New York and no May SAT outside the U.S.
• Some SAT Subject Tests are available only on particular test dates.
• Exploit opportunities to study once and test twice – finishing an AP class and studying for an AP exam in May?  Take the SAT Subject Test in May or June while the material is still fresh.
• Don’t overschedule yourself.  No big events scheduled right before a test – you need at least a week of “open time” to put yourself in a position to do your best on the test.  What does that mean?  Hard choices.  For example, if you are a soccer star, your team expects to be in the state finals, and the finals game is scheduled the week before the SAT, then you can’t do them both.  Either bow out of the state finals or rethink your testing plan.  Sorry.  That’s the reality.

Tip #3:  Put yourself into the “Peak Performance Zone.” 

You want to go into the test confident and able to perform at your best, so do what it takes to put yourself into the “Peak Performance Zone.”  Peak performance does not happen by accident.  It is the result of intentional action on your part. 

• Prepare.  Acquire the knowledge and skills you need for the test you are taking.  You can do that in any number of ways and all of them work if you actually invest yourself in the activity. 
• Practice.  You can’t take too many practice tests.  Familiarity breeds success.
• Sleep.  At a recent conference, a testing expert reported that a teen needs at least 4 good nights of sleep before a test in order to score his/her best.  Got that?  4 good nights!  So when do you have to start going to bed by 10 pm?  The Tuesday before the test!!!!!!  No late nights – even if it is dedicated to test preparation.  Get your sleep.

Questions, thoughts, tips of your own you’d like to share?  Post and continue the conversation!

Alison Cooper Chisolm heads the college admissions consulting practice at Ivey Consulting. She came to private consulting after working in admissions for more than 10 years at three selective universities (most recently at Dartmouth College). Follow Alison on Twitter (@IveyCollege)

Standardized tests -- whether you love them because you score high or you hate them because you don't, they are a part of the college application process, so you have to deal with them.  This week is all about that -- dealing with them in a step-by-step process and then moving on.

Note:  Many, if not most of you, have already taken some of the required tests or have a schedule for when you are planning to take the required tests.  If you have your schedule, skip to Step 3.  If you don't have a schedule, start with Step 1. 

Step 1:  Decide which tests you are going to take.

Which Tests Are Required by the Colleges You Want to Attend? 

Generally speaking, colleges require either the ACT (including the writing portion) or the SAT.  In addition, most selective colleges require a certain number of SAT Subject Tests.  There are some colleges for whom tests are optional, but it is unlikely that the entire group of colleges to which you are applying will be testing optional, so there is REALLY no way to escape the tests.  To determine which tests you need to take and when, you need to review the requirements for the particular colleges that interest you.  You'll have to schedule with the most demanding set of requirements in mind.  If you aren't completely sure of your college list (we'll be working on that next week), then take the SAT and 3 SAT Subject Tests and you'll be prepared to apply anywhere.

Should I Take the ACT or the SAT?  There is a huge amount of literature that gives advice about whether to take the ACT or the SAT. See, for example, this posting by Charles on the Ivey Files. Although it might seem that you should take the test on which you expect to score best, I remind applicants that a higher score is meaningful only if it is statistically significant -- meaning that it changes your percentile standing with regard to other test takers, for example if it moves you from the top 25% to the top 20%.  But most times, it won't.  If the higher score isn't meaningful, then you really are better off with the SAT because: 

• The SAT is the norm; the ACT is the exception for all selective schools and most other schools except those in the Midwest and certain parts of the South.  Although the admissions officers and process can handle the exception, it is better to be part of the norm.  First, because the admissions officers know the norm better than the exception, they can make more nuanced interpretations of your score.  That is important for everyone but the "off the charts high" test takers -- in other words, 99% of applicants.  Second, because the formulas that some colleges use to calculate an "indexed academic rating" that combines your scores and grades are normed to the SAT, you don't lose from the conversion.  If you have an ACT, then the score is converted and usually that is to the detriment of the applicant, e.g. the high scorer on the ACT will be at the bottom of the high scorer tier as a result of the conversion.
• At some schools, you can "mix and match" your best scores from different SAT tests, but that opportunity is not extended to those who take the ACT.  If you take your best score on each subsection, you may end up with a much higher overall score.  Note that the new ScoreChoice policy for the SAT does not allow you to mix and match; you still have to release all scores for any particular test.

Which SAT Subject Tests Should You Take? 

Your choices will in part be dictated by which courses you have had in high school and which tests you are prepared to take.  If you can choose amongst several, here are a couple of guidelines for you:

• Choose those tests that showcase your particular interests.  If you write your essay about how you are a born "scientist," it is nice to back it up with a high score on a science test. 
• Choose the tests that showcase either depth or breadth.  If depth, choose tests aligned within one area of talent, like humanities (one English, one History, one Language).  If breadth, choose from at least one from humanities (English/History/Language) and one from Math/Science.  Your third is up to you.

Step 2:  Schedule your tests and get registered. 

Now that you know which tests you are going to take, you can make your testing schedule.  Basically, you have between now and the December test dates to get all your tests taken.  If you are an early decision applicant, you have a shorter time line -- you have to get all the tests done by the October testing dates.  If you are a regular decision applicant, you may find some of your chosen schools will accept scores from the February tests, but that will mean you are in the last round of admissions.  You don't want to be in the last round -- there will be fewer slots to go around -- unless circumstances mean you will be a much stronger overall applicant in the last round than you would have been in the earlier rounds.  It is preferable that you take your subject tests as close to the time when you finish the related course work, so it may be that the December dates are your best time for these tests because you are studying the subject in the first term of your senior year.

Put your testing dates on your master calendar (from Week 1) and look up the registration deadlines and put those on your master calendar too.

• SAT Registration:  http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/about.html
  
  
• ACT Registration:  http://www.actstudent.org/regist/dates.html
  
  
• SAT Subject Tests Registration:  http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/about/SATII.html

By the way, the time to register is NOW.  Regular registration is already over for the October SAT and SAT Subject Tests; late registration closes on September 23, 2009.  Regular registration closes for the October ACT on September 18, 2009; late registration closes on October 2, 2009.

Step 3:  Commit to a preparation method that matches your best studying style. 

Preparation makes a difference -- even for the natural test takers and best students.  What's interesting is that the research indicates that the method of preparation is less important than the fact of it.  So choose a method that works for you and then in the immortal words of Nike -- Just Do It! 

• If you are a SELF-DIRECTED type, then you'll do fine with self-directed preparation, working with the materials available online, workbooks from the testing services and other materials from commercial outlets, like flashcards.  (Need it free or at a low cost? Online is your best bet.  Start with the testing companies and www.Numbers2.com. Then explore others on your own.)
• If you are a SOCIAL type, then you'll do well working in a group either at your school or through a test prep course.  (Need it free or at a low cost?  Check out non-profit organizations that support getting under-resourced students into college -- they often provide scholarships and/or free courses.)
• If you need INDIVIDUAL ATTENTION, then a one-on-one tutor is probably best.  (Need it free or at a low cost? Check out tutoring services offered by local colleges or universities -- often there is someone who has worked for one of the test prep companies and is willing to do it free for the right student.)

Schedule yourself for prep sessions and mark them on your calendar (from Week 1).

Step 4:  Show up at the test ready to perform at your best. 

You need to be in top form on the day of the test.  That means observing the basics of good self-care.  Some "Mom-like" tips that will stand you in good stead:

• Eat a healthy breakfast.  (Fiery Hot Cheetos and Soda aren't in this category.)
• Take a healthy snack to eat during the breaks.
• Use exercise to burn off anxiety and get good sleep the week before the test.
• Go to sleep at a reasonable time the night before the test (and don't engage in "party" behavior in the early evening).
• Make sure you know where the test is going to be and give yourself plenty of time to get there.
• Assemble everything you need to take to the test the night before -- ID, admission ticket, pencils, snack, etc.
• Wear layers of clothing so you won't be hot or cold.

Step 5:  Cancel your score promptly if you know you did poorly AND you have another opportunity to take the test. 

If you know you did poorly because you took the test while ill or froze during the test or some other calamity befell you, cancel the score if you have another opportunity to take the test.  Otherwise, you'll have to explain away a low score.  The fewer things to explain the better.  You may elect to cancel your score on the SAT and SAT Subject Tests until the Wednesday following the test.  You may elect to cancel your score on the ACT until noon on the Thursday following the test.

Step 6:  Implement a strategic response to your scores. 

Done right, the college application process is strategic, and your response to all developments is determined by some thoughtful reflection and then intentional action.  Here are some suggestions about strategic responses once you get your scores.

What do your scores tell you about you? 

Hopefully, you scored basically as you expected.  If not, can you figure out why?  Possible answers may be poor preparation, unrealistic expectations, or undiagnosed learning disabilities.  Your strategic response is to take this learning about yourself and apply it the next time you test.

What do your scores tell you about your options for college? 

Hopefully, you scored high enough to be in the running at all of your chosen colleges, even the reach schools.  But you should be realistic now that you have the numbers.  Your strategic response is to align your list of colleges to your scores.  (More about this next week.)

What do your scores tell admissions officers about you? 

Admissions officers have lots of experience interpreting test scores, and the scores are signficant in their assessment of your academic abilities.  Want an inside take on what an admssions officer is thinking?

• If you have high scores and high grades, the officer thinks you are a classic academic achiever and strong candidate.  The officer hopes the rest of the application bears that out.
• If you have high scores, but mid-range/low grades, the officer thinks you might be an underachiever.  The officer is going to look closely at your grade trends, your teacher recommendations, and anything else that gives the officer information about whether the scores or the grades are more predictive of your performance at college.
• If you have mid-range/low scores and high grades, the officer thinks that you might be a good student but a bad test taker,  or you might be at school that inflates grades, or you might be taking a load that is not particularly challenging.  The officer is going to consider information about your school, your course load, your teacher recommendations, and anything else that gives the officer information about whether the scores or the grades are more predictive of your performance at college.
• If you have mid-range/low scores and mid-range/low grades, the officer at selective colleges thinks that your academic performance at college is likely to be the same, so admission is likely only if your other attributes -- sports recruit, alumni connection, or under-represented minority -- overcome the lower academic rating.  Officers at less selective colleges may think the academics aren't stellar, but are sufficient for admission.

Informed by this insight into what an admission officer thinks about your scores, your strategic response is to make sure the other components of your application either support the positive interpretation the officer will make, or give the officer reason to believe that the best possible interpretation is the right interpretation. 

Step 7:  Move On. 

Testing is just one aspect of the process.  If you've scheduled, prepared, and are ready to make a strategic response once you get your scores, that's it for testing.  Time to move on to the next critical step in the process -- making your final list of colleges where you will be applying.  We'll take it up together next week.

Comments or Questions? 

I really want to hear from you about how things are going.  Anything you don't understand? Do you have a specific situation that needs some personalized attention?  Please post a comment below!

Alison Cooper Chisolm has worked in admissions at Southern Methodist University, the University of Chicago, and most recently Dartmouth College. She is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Virginia Law School. As part of the Ivey Consulting team, Alison works with college applicants and their families as they navigate the college admissions process. Read more about Alison here. 

I recently finished reading this article that describes a research report commissioned by the National Association for College Admission Counseling. The report discusses the effect of test preparation and tutoring services on SAT scores.  It suggests that gains from test prep services are minimal, only around 30 points, but that even 30 points can make a difference.  These results are thought to validate the College Board's longstanding position that the SAT isn't really coachable.  The report suggests that there be more research into this question, as all the current research has been done by the College Board.

As I read about this report, everything in it seemed to fit together logically, but there was an element that was missing.  I'd like to make an important distinction, one that might sound obvious but that wasn't mentioned anywhere: there is a difference between good tutoring and bad tutoring.

The difference between good tutoring and bad tutoring is like night and day.  Bad tutoring is pernicious because it makes you think you're learning something about the test.  In reality, you're just being forced to memorize a bunch of abstractions about the test, and then when you take the test you realize that nothing has really changed from the first time you took it, except that you expected to do better the second time.  In most debates, this falls into the categories of "teaching to the test" or "getting comfortable with the format."  These approaches don't really provide any benefit and are rightly downplayed.

Good tutoring works in an entirely different way.  Good tutoring discourages quick fixes and works instead at increasing depth of understanding.  If a student is having difficulty with a particular problem, good tutoring first seeks to understand why before it suggests a solution.  Students often struggle even with good tutoring because they are working to overcome longstanding biases about their own knowledge and problem solving ability.  Once they overcome those biases, however, they arrive at a new plateau where the test in question is fundamentally easier for them to solve.

The tricky thing is that it's tough in advance to determine which tutoring is good, and which tutoring isn't.  Both make reference to "special techniques," "expert faculty," and "lots of experience," but the unfortunate truth is that there's no way to tell whether it's going to work for you, unless you've had some experience in the field.  Even though this distinction is hard to spot, the distinction does exist, as is obvious to anyone who has gone through the process.

I'm making a big deal about this because the conclusion of the article is that test prep categorically doesn't really help that much, that the test is relatively uncoachable.  For bad test prep, I have no problem with that conclusion.  On the other hand, to pretend that good test prep can't improve someone's score significantly, even hundreds of points, is pretty darned silly.

Think about it this way:  do you, the reader, know of any activity where you aren't able to get better than you were the first time you tried it?  I'm pretty sure that I would be the world's worst ballet dancer, but I know that if I laced up some shoes and took a bunch of lessons, then I would probably be able to at least do some of the very basic moves.  Think about it for a second:  does it really make sense that there is this thing called a standardized test that is totally immune to any sort of preparation or improvement?  That humans are able to invent a test that they themselves can't master?  I hope this sounds as wacky to you as it does to me.

The fact of the matter is that good tutoring can have a huge impact on your scores, and the result is not due to some magical formula.  It comes from understanding students, addressing their concerns, challenging them on their bad habits, and trying at all times to get them to see the bigger picture.

I have eight years of experience in thinking about these things and helping students improve their sccores.  As long as the there are reports out there that contend the SAT is uncoachable, I can keep doing what I'm doing, because the makers of the test can pretend I don't exist.  Unfortunately, these types of reports also preclude an honest discussion about education and equity in the United States.  If test makers refuse to concede that their tests can be mastered, then students with resources will continually outperform equivalent students without resources.  Thus, the tests will be working at cross purposes with the problem they were originally intended to solve: to level the playing field so that everyone has equal access to education.

Comments? Thoughts? Please share.

Charles Williamson has helped hundreds of students prepare for standardized tests. He blogs for the Ivey Files about test prep, the intersection of education and technology, education policy, and whatever other topics strike his fancy.   

I just read this fascinating article in the New Yorker.  It describes a professor's research into mechanisms by which people learn to delay instant gratification.  Specifically, it describes an experiment where a marshmallow is placed in front of a young child, and the child is told that he or she can eat the marshmallow at that moment, or wait 15 minutes and get 2 marshmallows.  Surprisingly, only 30 percent of children can wait the 15 minutes, but those that do have a much higher rate of success in life, both academically and emotionally.

I am struck by the parallels between this article and the work that I do in standardized testing.  Most of the students I work with feel a need, a compulsion even, to solve the problem as quickly as possible.  Now, this initially might not sound like a bad trait, but when I say as quickly as possible, I mean that they show no work, have no idea whether their answer is correct or not, and become slightly agitated if I dwell on the problem for too long.

In a previous posting, I talked about how few students really study their wrong answers and attempt to learn from them.  I referenced how I thought there were deep-seated psychological reasons for this behavior, and this article provides at least a clue in that direction.  I suspect that many students are intimidated by abstract thought [we're not wired for abstract thought, apparently - Anna], especially in a topic in which they do not have innate confidence.  Very few students have innate confidence in standardized tests, and so like any unpleasant subject, they try to do things as quickly as possible and avoid thinking about the problem solving process itself.

The metaphor to the article above works as follows:  instead of placing a marshmallow in front of students, you place a standardized test problem in front of them.  The rewards to solving the problem correctly are not as tangible as the marshmallow, but for students primed to get into a competitive university or graduate school, the benefits are certainly obvious.  Now, the answer to the problem is not obvious at first glance, but with a little persistence and patience, the student could certainly work out a solution in a relatively short amount of time.

I would concur with the article that students are by nature impatient [and maybe also distractable - Anna].  They want the quick fix, the one formula or principle that will tell them the answer.  I emphasized the phrase ‘tell them,' because often these formulas and principles are a substitute for thought, not a vehicle for it.  

So much of what I do is to show these students how to be patient, to attack a problem in a piecewise manner so that the problem unfolds before their eyes.  There are some students who have the greatest difficulty in making this adjustment.  For the ones who do, the higher scores that initially seemed so remote turn out to be not that remote after all.

Thoughts? Comments? Please share.

One of the questions I am asked most frequently is to provide advice for parents and students choosing between the SAT and the ACT.  As my responses to the questions regarding the differences and similarities have become more polished and concise over time, I'll share them with you in a Q&A format, because it seems like the most efficient way to answer them.  Or maybe because I like talking to myself.  You be the judge.

Q:  Which test should I take, the SAT or the ACT?

A:  Well, it depends on what type of a student you are. The factor that most often determines your choice is the speed at which you read.  If you are the type of student who reads well and reasonably quickly, but doesn't ever read a single book or article that hasn't been assigned by the teacher, you're going to be in the ACT camp.  The ACT offers more straightforward reading questions that lack some of the complexity and most of the vocabulary of the SAT, but at the tradeoff of requiring you to complete the section without much time to spare.

On the other hand, if you are a capable reader but just read slowly, then the SAT is going to be your best option to get to all of the questions.  I've worked with very smart but very slow readers before, and the frustration of not being able to complete all the passages on the ACT gnaws at readers' consciences, leading them to try and rush and make lots of careless mistakes.  While studying for the SAT requires a student to memorize lots of arcane and abstruse vocabulary, students with time issues have a higher score ceiling on the SAT than the ACT.

The other reason reading speed factors into the decision process is the ACT science section.  The science section is very tightly timed; if a student has trouble getting finished with the ACT reading section, he or she is definitely going to have trouble getting the science section done in time.

Of course, if you fall somewhere between these two categories, sometimes it is just easier to take a diagnostic test in each, pick one, and stick with it.  If you are a fast reader with a great vocabulary, then the world is yours.  (Seriously.)

Q:  Ok, but lots of colleges prefer the SAT, right?

A:  First of all, a disclaimer:  as a tutor, my primary responsibility is to get a student's score up, and to figure out the best way and the best test to do just that.  As I have often worked closely with very talented college advisors, I try to remain agnostic about the college advising process.  My advice should never be construed to conflict with that of a competent college counselor (because some colleges might have specifically stated policies of which I am unaware).

With that said, the general feedback that I have received indicates that colleges are primarily looking for a number that makes you look good.  They would rather see a high score on the ACT than a low score on the SAT.  If you're a student who reads well in school but has never learned any vocabulary that wasn't forced upon you, then unless you have a change of heart, the SAT is going to be an uphill battle.  

In every SAT class I have taught, I start harping on vocabulary from day one.  What unfortunately happens is that some students ignore me (and the vocabulary quizzes I give out), and discover by the end of the course that vocabulary is the single thing holding them back from their dream score.  By that time, they have to wait a month or two to take the test again, which, when coupled with final exams, causes them real pain.

For every ACT student just starting the test preparation process, the first thing I do is to give him or her a reading section.  The thought process and mistakes will get ironed out eventually, but I want to make sure that the student has enough time to get through each passage.  If that's not the case, I have to manage the lessons much differently, and so it's one of the most important things I can determine.

Q:  Ok, but seriously, isn't the SAT regarded as a "tougher" exam, so it's "worth more" on your application?

A:  When I was applying to college many, many moons ago, I had never heard of the ACT.  [Charles, you are not that old. Young grasshopper! - Anna] I grew up in Connecticut, and taking the SAT was a rite of passage.  Since around 2004, when I first encountered it, until now, the ACT has been gradually increasing its presence and market share and has gained roughly equal footing. 1.5 million people took the SAT last year, and 1.42 million took the ACT, according to each test's respective web site.  As more and more stories have been written about the problems surrounding the SAT, (see here for an example), many colleges out there want to seem impartial or are deemphasizing standardized tests in their own admission rubrics.  The fact that you took an SAT or an ACT matters much less than the score you eventually got, which sometimes (but not always) matters much less than a lot of the other stuff on your application.

Q:  One last question.  Doesn't the SAT test you more on "how smart you are," while the ACT tests you more on "stuff you've learned?"

A:  No.  Both exams have one purpose in mind:  to divide the Junior class of American high school students into neat little piles so that they can sell off data piece by piece to different colleges and universities.  Both tests do this by providing a test of complex questions, although they manufacture complexity in different ways.  

The ACT's attitude is, "We'll give you a lot of questions that are more straightforward, but that you most likely won't have time to complete, and ‘certain' people will be able to get a good score."  The SAT's attitude is more, "We'll give you fewer questions with more time to do them, but some of them are so hard that only ‘certain' people will be able to get a good score."  Both the SAT and ACT want you to believe that these "certain" people are the "smarter" or "more capable" students, but the research used to support this is highly prone to self-interest.  

See this link for an example, then contrast it with this one.  If you actually read the report (in the box to the right of the College Board press release), the College Board heavily massages its data to get the conclusions it wants.  If you wade through the thicket of language that they use to describe the "corrections" that they apply to the correlations, then you are a very patient reader indeed.

The takeaway is that you can exploit the differences between the SAT and ACT to find a test that is better aligned to who you are as a test taker (which is not necessarily the same as who you are as a student).

Agree?  Disagree?  Have any questions or similar points about graduate admissions exams?  Please comment.

Charles Williamson has helped hundreds of students prepare for standardized tests. He blogs for the Ivey Files about test prep, the intersection of education and technology, education policy, and whatever other topics strike his fancy.  

To kick things off here with my new column at the Ivey Files, I wanted to share an idea that's been going through my head recently: the idea of efficiency in test preparation.  

As a tutor, I would sometimes get calls from parents who wanted to find out more about what kinds of "services" I offered. More than looking for a specific answer, they seemed to be trying to assess whether I sounded competent.  

Well, having spent many years thinking about the tutoring process, I wanted to answer this question a little more completely and give an idea of what it is a tutor actually does (or is supposed to do).  At the same time, I hope to provide a framework so that everyone can make a well reasoned decision regarding whether hiring a private tutor, taking a class, or just buying some test prep books is the best way to study for a standardized test.  (I'll talk about online preparation in another posting.)

First, let me hit you with a whammy (in bold, no less): 

Test prep students would drastically improve their scores if they simply bought the official study guides, read them cover to cover, did all the exercises, and spent time trying to learn from their mistakes.   

In other words, the idea that certain classes and tutors possess "proprietary knowledge" or "secret tricks" is a quaint hypocrisy.  (This is a topic I will cover in detail in a later posting.)  

That last part of the statement in bold is especially important.  One of the things that baffles me the most is when students show zero interest in understanding why they got a question wrong.  I have spent more time than I would care to recount trying to convince students to spend more time learning from their previous mistakes and less time taking new tests.  I think there are some deep-seated psychological reasons for this, and the consequence is that people spend massive amounts of time making the same kinds of mistakes.  

When studying for any standardized test, you need to cover a certain amount of groundwork, whether you work with a tutor, a class, or a book.  Far too many people out there think that if they hire a tutor or sign up for a class, then they can skip the groundwork.  Part of what I hope to show over the course of these postings is how mistaken this notion is.

To those of you who read the statement in bold and think, "Well who has time to read the book cover to cover?":  you're on the right path.  What classes and tutors actually do is to provide a more efficient process.  A good class or tutor can zero in on exactly what you, as a student, are doing right and wrong, and prevent you from having to spend the time to read that book cover to cover.  The Official SAT prep guide currently clocks in at 889 pages, the ACT guide at 623.  My point is that if you actually took the time not just to read what was contained in those pages but actually to learn it, then you would be able to get most, if not all, of the score increase that you would get from a class or with a tutor.  

Classes and tutors provide a quicker way to learn the same thing.  Tutors are more efficient than classes in the same way that classes are more efficient than reading a book.  When thinking about getting a tutor or signing up for a class, don't just look at the dollar cost of things, but make sure that you factor in the amount of time that it will take to get your goal score, and factor the amount of time you need to spend getting there into your calculation.  

If you discover that your time isn't free (and it almost never is), then think about signing up for a class or getting a tutor, but just going through this exercise will prepare you to start asking some smart questions of whatever tutor or class you run across.  "How will you get me to my goal score faster than reading the book?" rather than "What can you teach me?" is an example of the way I would think about it.

There are two conclusions here.  The first is to remember to stay on your toes.  If you start working with a class that's basically an excuse to do problems and then go over them in class, ask yourself, "Could I be doing this on my own or do I need a classroom to keep me focused?"  If you think you could be doing the exact same thing on your own, then it's probably not a good class to be in.  If you're working with a tutor and the tutor is merely walking you through a set of classroom type exercises, ask yourself if the tutor is really making the process more efficient.  Too many classes and tutors fall into lazy habits.  Being aware of the bigger picture can keep you on your toes.  

The second conclusion is that any option needs to cover that important groundwork.  Efficiency doesn't kick in until that groundwork is covered, so before you start looking to classes and tutors, make sure you spend some time reviewing the basics.  If you have to spend lots of time in a class or with a tutor covering the basics, then you've essentially discovered a more expensive way to read a book.

Any thoughts or comments from your own test-taking experience? Please share.

Charles Williamson has helped hundreds of students prepare for standardized tests. He blogs for the Ivey Files about test prep, the intersection of education and technology, education policy, and whatever other topics strike his fancy. 

Most people think of standardized tests as a necessary evil and really boring to think about.  Charles Williamson is not one of those people, and we're excited to bring him on board as an Ivey Files blogger.

For the past eight years, Charles hasn't met a standardized test he didn't like, helping hundreds of students in everything from the SAT and ACT to the SSAT to the GMAT to AP Calculus. 

A longtime student of the thought process that defines performance on standardized tests, Charles got off to a good start, receiving a perfect score on his SATs in high school. He then graduated from Brown University, earning bachelor's degrees in computer science and history.  He has long been fascinated by the intersection of education and technology, and when not writing about standardized tests and educational policy, he will be happy to speculate rampantly about how the Internet will affect the ways that we learn. 

Because all of the above makes him sound less than socially well-adjusted, I would hasten to add that he does lots of normal stuff too. If you bug him enough, he might even write about it.

Keep an eye out for his postings -- first one coming soon!

I've decided that I need to be posting more of the discussions I have (largely by email) over the course of the day. I yak all day long about things that might be of interest to readers of the Ivey Files, and I need to get over the fact that reproducing things I've written in an email will by necessity offer up writing that is less than polished (although Lord knows that's true for blog postings as well).

So, just today, I was chatting with some people who were commenting on the habit of finance employers to ask job applicants for their SAT scores (as well as LSAT or GMAT scores, as the case may be). On the one hand, we laughed our butts off -- we're in our mid-thirties and can't imagine that a test we took back in, oh, 1989 (!!) could possibly say anything meaningful about us. Can SAT scores say anything meaningful about someone who just graduated from college? Maybe yes, maybe no. Some argued that SAT scores do say something about raw horsepower under the hood, while others argued that good SAT scores just prove you're good at taking the SATs. Either way, to people who aren't routinely dealing with recruiting practices in the the finance world, it seems weird to ask for the scores.

However, if employers are asking for the scores, then employers obviously see some value in that information, and I'm very curious where that value comes from.

From one of my emails:

This is, I suspect, also a reflection of the fact that college grades, and college transcripts  as a whole, don't really mean squat [to the interviewer].

Unless you have very inside-baseball *and* recent knowledge of a school's grading practices, as well as knowledge of the grading practices and substantive difficulty of individual courses and professors, transcripts really mean nothing. When I look at a transcript, I have no idea whether PHYS 325 is string theory or "Physics for Poets" (as the gut physics class was called at Columbia in my day). And when I was still on the job market, I was bummed that my law school transcript didn't say who taught my Financial Accounting class at the business school -- it was Roman Weil, and that actually means something to some people, but I never got the benefit of that on my transcript.

The uselessness of transcripts also leads to over-reliance on the name brand of the school to signal something about the applicant.

We went on to discuss grade inflation more generally, and I recalled a Boston Globe article from the early 2000's about the fact that 91% of Harvard undergraduates had graduated with honors that year. (The rest of the ivies are pretty inflationary too, so I'm not just picking on Harvard, although it has seemed to be the worst offender.)

So I throw that out there, because transcripts are so unhelpful not just in the job hiring process, but also in the graduate school admissions process.  When applicants complain about the seeming over-reliance on standardized test scores, understand that most transcript are in fact very, very hard to interpret in any meaningful way.

And another article in which I discuss what I perceive as one of the downsides of conventional college rankings: that they focus on and try to measure the quality of incoming freshmen (SAT scores etc.) rather than the quality of education they receive at their respective colleges or the value added by those colleges. Basically, it's an input vs. output argument. I'm not the first or only person to make it (the Spellings Commission has been grappling with the output side of the equation for a while now), but it's something to keep in mind as you use rankings to help you think about different schools, whether at the college or the graduate school level.

Learned about this cool new test prep service based in NYC -- it promises a "holistic" approach to test prep, so you're not just learning how to ace the test (SAT, GMAT, LSAT, etc.), but also learning how to tackle your test anxiety and stress using tools like hypnosis. I haven't ever tried a holistic approach to test prep, but given the number of applicants I hear from who feel absolutely crippled by their test anxiety, I thought I'd share it with you here. Apparently the founder (Bara Sapir) also has a 5-CD course coming out.

More info here.