So, we are holding a Calculator Drive for our Boys and Girls Club scholarship students, hoping to give them the chance to score their best on the upcoming ACT. We are reaching out to our community, asking for any used graphing calculators for our students. If you have any graphing calculators approved by the ACT that you no longer use, we ask you to donate them to these motivated students. You may drop them off Monday through Friday, 9:30am to 5pm at our main office or mail them to:

ATTN: Randy Schultz
1768 Century Blvd NE
Suite B
Atlanta, GA 30345.

We offer our heartfelt thanks for your generosity.

September 16, 2010
7:00 – 8:30 PM

Dunwoody United Methodist Church
1548 Mt Vernon Rd.
Dunwoody, GA 30338

FACILITATORS: Diane Morgan, Joan K. Teach, Ph.D.
To leave a message or question: 404-633-2040

All support meetings are free of charge, but we do encourage you to contact www.chadd.org for membership information and services.

YES!

Besides the prestige you will have around the office water cooler when you brag about your progeny, scoring high enough on the PSAT to become a Scholar, a Finalist or a Semi-Finalist can equal big money at some schools—public and private. Read that last sentence again. I wrote Scholar, Finalist or Semi-Finalist. That means your student may only need to score high enough to make it to the last or penultimate round; he or she doesn’t even have to be the last one standing.

Below are tables that list schools and the awards they offer students at different levels of National Merit-ness. I’ve compiled this information from various Internet sources and believe most of it is current as of 2009. But as with all Internet information, please take it with a grain of salt. Consider it a guide, not a rule book. If you know of any additional information about any schools listed or schools left, please leave a comment. If you are interested in a particular school, we suggest you contact their Admissions Office and get the skinny from them.

A quick key to the language below:
Full ride: Tuition, room and board
Plus: May cover some or all of books, fees, etc.

Public Schools

Private Schools

Additional Awards

Sign up for this Everything College Admissions Seminar with Jed Appelrouth

Tips For Studying

Don’t try to cram everything in your head during one intensive session. Space things out. You will need to learn the content, then forget some things, then learn the content again. This process of learning-forgetting-relearning creates a much stronger trace in your long-term memory, allowing you to encode the information multiple times across multiple conditions. If you need to cram everything in during one session, it will make a much weaker trace in your long-term memory. So you may be able to pack enough into your head to knock out a quiz- but you will need to learn everything again for the test/exam.

Try studying in different contexts: at your desk in your room, in your bed, in the library, alone, with music, without music, outside, inside. Contextual variation will lead to the information being encoded under numerous contexts, creating multiple traces in your long-term memory; this generally leads to higher rates of recall.

Tips For Reviewing Material

Cover the answers

When you are studying and doing review problems, it’s a good practice to cover the answers and really test yourself. If you can see the answers, you may have a false sense of whether you could perform the problem unaided. Practice as if it were the real thing, under the same conditions, unaided.

Generate your own questions to test your knowledge

How well do you know the material? Create recall questions that could be on the test- and then at some point during preparation for an exam, attempt to answer these self-generated study questions. In general it is important that you do not passively review the material, but actually measure and gauge your retrieval of information. Review is generally passive. Retrieval Practice is what you will be asked to do on the test, so you must practice this. This is much more effective than passive reading or review. Retrieval Practice is fundamental to studying.

The Power Of Your Mind

Mentally rehearse a successful performance on an assessment.

Before you take an assessment or test, walk through the steps in your imagination of you successfully navigating the test.

Positive self-talk

Mentally reinforce thoughts of success and positive performance before and during the assessment.

Mentally recalling study conditions

While you are sitting for an assessment, mentally reinstate the conditions under which you prepared for the assessment. If you were in your room with music playing, recall the room, the materials, the time of day, the music playing. Bring yourself back to the context in which you encoded the information, and that memory cue can facilitate retrieval.

At Appelrouth Tutoring Services we are always thinking of ways to use technology to increase our students’ potential when it comes to test prep and college admissions. In that regard, we would like to announce our new system for taking vocabulary quizzes online.

To start your own vocabulary quiz:

1. Log in to your ATS Account
2. Click on the Tests tab
3. Select the quiz you want to take (Week 1-7 or a mix of all weeks)
4. Click the Take Test button

Each vocabulary quiz takes 25 random words straight from our actual vocabulary flash cards and gives you 8 minutes to pick the correct definitions. Feedback is instant and, after the quiz, an easy-to-print Missed Words report gives you an opportunity to focus on exactly the words you need to study. Even if you get a perfect score, your best time is always recorded so keep trying to shave off those extra seconds!

Have a question or suggestion about the online vocabulary quizzes? Leave us a comment below!

Straight from the Bull Dog’s mouth:

Writing and Standardized Tests

For students applying to enroll at UGA beginning in Spring, 2009 and later, the writing section must be submitted for both the SAT and ACT if both tests are to be considered for admission. For students who are only submitting the SAT, the writing section is always included in their final scores. For those submitting the ACT, they must have at least one submission of the ACT with the optional writing included. If they submit more than one ACT, at least one must have the writing included.

If a student is submitting both the SAT and ACT, they must have at least one ACT with the writing included: it will always be included with the SAT. If there are no submitted sittings of the ACT with writing, UGA will not be able to use the ACT for consideration for admission.

How Will UGA Use the Writing Score

UGA has a traditionally used standardized test scores and high school GPA to help predict success as a freshmen at UGA. In the past, the English and Math sections of the ACT and the Verbal (now Critical Reading) and Math sections of the SAT were used for the standardized tests, each section individually. These were combined with the student’s GPA and the rigor of the curriculum was also factored.

For the past three years, since the inception of the new writing sections of the ACT and SAT, UGA has required that students submit at least one standardized test with a writing section. Admissions has used the writing scores (and even reviewed some of the essays) on an individual basis to add information when needed. With two classes of freshmen students with writing scores having enrolled and completed their freshmen year we have now analyzed the role that the writing section can add to our ability to make better admission decisions. We will now incorporate it into the prediction regression for all applications. In order to do this, UGA must have a writing section for each of the types of tests (SAT or ACT) that the student submits as part of their application.

As in the past, while standardized test scores do play a role in admission, the choice of high school courses and resulting grades play a must stronger role in predicting success at UGA.

More news:

UGA to start adding in SAT writing scores

UGA might consider standardized writing tests

Good news:

Fear not, though. Students just need to review some simple rules about appropriate comma placement, parallelism and adverb use, and they are well on their way to higher scores. Our students frequently see big gains on their Writing section scores with limited study.

Let’s make a deal, don’t worry we won’t ask you to dress like a chicken (sorry, students, that was a joke for your parents). If you have great ideas where smart, well-educated adults mingle, send them my way. In return for the best suggestion, we will give you a prize! No, it’s not a toaster. The best suggestions will receive… drum roll please…

FOUR FREE HOURS OF TUTORING and a BOX OF VOCABULARY FLASH CARDS

Submit any place you can think of where the super smart linger. Bonus points if it is located in East Cobb, Alpharetta or Sandy Springs. How will submissions be judged, you might ask. Since we are offering this opportunity in an effort to hire more intelligent, friendly, professional tutors, we will let response rate be the judge. The more interest we receive in working with us, the higher your suggestion will be ranked. You can offer as many suggestions as you want, but you can only win once. However, the more suggestions you make, the better odds you have.

Put on your thinking caps and tell us where other thinkers can be found. Email your suggestions–preferably with contact information–to info@appelrouthtutoring.com.

Remember: If you are the only one who offers a suggestion, you win automatically!

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