Having studied student error patterns on standardized tests for a decade, it has become increasingly apparent that careless errors on the SAT/ACT are typically not as “careless” as they seem.  In fact, clear patterns emerge when you sit down to study students grappling with inherent “carelessness.”

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How many Powerball plays does it take to cover the annual mandatory fees for a student at Georgia State University?  1628.  And that’s only for the fees.  As the costs of tuition have sky-rocketed in the last several decades, it was only a matter of time before the proceeds from the Georgia Lottery fell short to cover the costs of the HOPE scholarship program.

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There’s a great article in today’s NY Times: Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits.  It spells out some valuable strategies for parents to help their kids get an edge on studying more effectively.

I wanted to outline the main points in the article and add some commentary from my own research and experience.

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You can lead a horse to water, but how can you get it to study its SAT vocabulary? This is the challenge that test-prep coaches have dealt with for years. How do we motivate others? Specifically, how do we influence and motivate teenagers?

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Two friends of mine in the world of Educational Consulting recently published a book which is completely aligned with my philosophy of writing college essays.  Evan Forster and David Thomas, educational consultants in Manhattan, wrote The MBA Reality Check: Make the School You Want, Want You. This book focuses on applying to MBA programs, but all of its lessons are applicable to students applying to college. (read more…)

In June I had the privilege of participating in the summer conference of the Association for College Counselors of Independent Schools (ACCIS). College counselors from the top schools in the country including Harvard-Westlake, Middlesex, Deerfield, Sidwell Friends, Hotchkiss, Trinity, and many others were in attendance. The theme of the conference was testing, and I was invited to participate in a 3-member panel focusing on the ins and outs of the college assessments and test prep. What do the top college counselors in the country want to know about testing? I took some time and wrote up my responses.

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The 70 plus college counselors assembled at the most heated breakout session of the ACCIS (Association for College Counselors of Independent Schools) conference didn’t know the answer to this question. Among peers they felt safe enough to plainly voice their frustrations with a system that is clearly under strain. I was the fly on the wall, the only outsider in the room. I listened intently as dozens of counselors from the top private schools in the country painted a picture of a system that seems to be buckling under the weight of an ever-rising tide of applications.

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As the theme of the Association for College Counselors of Independent Schools (ACCIS) conference was testing, two of the presenters were there to question the emphasis on testing and argue for alternative admission policies. One session was led by Joseph Soares, researcher and Associate Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University. Soares, author of The Power of Privilege, was a vocal proponent of Wake Forest’s decision to go test optional in 2009. The other session was led by Bob Schaeffer, the driving force behind FairTest. Schaeffer has been working for decades to help American colleges and universities wean themselves off their “addiction” to high stakes admissions tests. Though Bob Schaeffer told me they had not coordinated their efforts, Soares and Schaeffer delivered a well orchestrated critique of testing and its role in the admissions process.

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Six years ago I remember standing in the kitchen of my 13-year old “little brother” (I was part of a big-brother-little brother program at the time), watching him simultaneously participate in 6 IM chats on AOL. I watched in disbelief as he responded to each of his friends. How on earth could he focus on 6 conversations at once? My mind could not grasp that possibility. Was this a new kind of mind, a new type of consciousness? Suddenly I felt like my parents must feel when they call on me to help them understand some new technological development. I felt dated.

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How many times do you have to lose your keys before you start playing Sudoku or tackling the daily NY Times crossword puzzle to keep your mind sharp? Just ask a baby boomer: they’ll surely have the answer. The boomers have learned to keep their aging minds honed through cognitive challenges, as well as through a host of funky sounding supplements such as Ginko Biloba and St. John’s Wort. But there are other ways to keep the mind healthy. According to the neuroscientists at the most recent Learning and the Brain conference, the most direct way to maintain the mind, and encourage higher order cognition and executive functions (e.g. planning, organizing, problem solving), may be to take better care of our physical bodies.

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