At the meeting, we talked about all of the things that generate stress for college applicants: score goals, GPA concerns, and daunting statistics, to name a few. Collectively, after several minutes of agonizing over our poor, stressed-out juniors and seniors, we decided that the biggest stressor of all is that students lose sight of the end goal. They know that they want to get into college – sometimes it seems their college goals are all anyone can talk about – but oftentimes, they forget that they also want to go to college. Students seem to know everything about their dream schools: they can recite acceptance rates, mean SAT scores, demographic breakdowns, and interview requirements at the drop of a hat. But do they know what to expect when they get there?

One of our tutors mentioned a strategy she uses to inspire her students to get through test prep – and it’s a mantra I’ve been sharing with my students since. She tells them, “It’s a few months of suck for four years of awesome.” While we as tutors don’t ever like to feel as though our sessions represent “a few months of suck,” it’s important to acknowledge the unpleasantness of standardized testing. We try hard to set goals and establish reward systems – we tell our students that if they work hard, they will get the scores they want. Do this, get this. Easy, right? Until I heard this other tutor speak, though, I had lost sight of the reward my students really want to hear about. Work hard, do well, get into college. That’s a bit better – most students would prefer an acceptance letter to a score report, right? Almost. I started to realize that what students actually need to hear is this:

1. Work hard
2. Score highly on your test
3. Get into college
4. Love it
5. Reach the point where the college application process becomes nothing more than a distant, dully painful memory. (It exists! Really!)

Suddenly, the goals are different. My mantra became: do this, get all this. And I think my students walked into their June ACT inspired by the notion that the bubbles they’re filling in mean something much bigger (and much less scary) than they originally thought.

Many schools publish student blogs as part of their Admissions pages. These can be great resources for prospective applicants to get a sense of what they’re working towards. I’ve included links to three below:

• UC Berkeley
• Emory University
• Towson University

Three different schools, in three very different parts of the country. Dozens of students sharing their experiences. But I found a common thread! Sometimes as little as one year out from what our students are going through, not one student blogger thought to mention the SAT.

I’ve worked with a number of students who labor under the onerous pressure of successful older siblings, extremely high personal expectations, parent expectations, or even peer expectations. Often, when students feel they are falling short of expectations, they find ways to rationalize (or explain away) their poor performance. Phrases like “I’m just not a math person” and “I’ll never be a good test-taker” are examples of self-talk that can be very damaging. Imagine if while you were driving, you continuously said to yourself, “I can’t stay in my lane, traffic is dangerous, an accident at this speed could be fatal, what if my brakes fail.” Eventually, this negative self-talk might begin to decrease your effectiveness on the road. The same effect often happens to students who continually reinforce destructive self-assessments.

Although there are a number of other factors that influence performance, such as content mastery, problem-solving-method mastery, innate ability, prior education and others, my main focus is on the damaging effects of negative self-assessment. The most disappointing phrases I ever hear students say are those that make it sound as if the student has no ability to ever improve. When a student says “I’m just not a math person” what he or she probably means is, “I don’t think I will ever have any success in math.” This is more than likely based on prior experiences of unfavorable outcomes on math tests, quizzes or in class instruction.

When a student reaches a conclusion about his or her own ability, it is usually based on a mixture of prior experience and reflection. However, students often leave out some important ingredients of the discussion. I have a few questions for them. What if math ability and test-taking effectiveness are coachable skills? What if their existing approach to math and/or test-taking could benefit from some adjusting and fine-tuning? What if they don’t have to be permanently banished into the invisible realm of “bad test-taker”?

One highly efficacious way to overcome a prior negative experience with math or test-taking is to replace that negative experience with a positive one. For this to happen, a student must first realize that math and test-taking abilities are acquirable skills for all as well as intrinsic abilities for some. I’ve been able to convince students that these skills are attainable by working with them to create mastery experiences in terms of applying new problem solving strategies. Once students see that the hardest problems on the most intimidating tests are less complicated than they initially appear, a sense of dread can often be replaced with a new sense that “maybe I can do this after all”.

Here’s what we’re offering (click on the session for more information):

What Is The Goal?

To support and challenge our students who are preparing for the June 4^th SAT. The primary goal of the instruction is to help put our students into position where they can achieve their desired SAT score. We hope that the constant exposure to the concepts will give students many added skills as well as increased confidence on the test.

What Will Be Covered?

We will cover all of the major content, concepts, and problem solving methods necessary to succeed on the SAT. We will do this through a mixture of content review, problem solving practice, and immediate feedback of right and wrong answers.

Who Will Benefit?

Anyone looking for guided SAT instruction filled with highly practical methods taught by seasoned tutoring veterans. Whether your child has been extensively committed to private tutoring over the last few months, or has attended an SAT group class, or has done some recent preparation on his own, little could surpass the value of receiving guided instruction with explanations of right and wrong answers.

How Many Sessions Should My Child Attend?

As many as his or her schedule and ability to benefit from classroom instruction allow. Not one of the lessons is redundant, though each lesson is complimentary.

Are Materials Included?

Any necessary materials, including The Fabulous Guide to the SAT and The Official SAT Study Guide, are included with the enrollment of at least one session.

1) Set concrete goals and create a detailed action plan
2) Visit colleges early in the process
3) Do the research
4) Drill vocabulary words
5) Discuss motivation

Set concrete goals and create a detailed action plan

Set very specific, concrete goals early in the test prep process. For example, plan to maximize your child’s SAT/ACT score by having him take the test at least three times. The detailed action plan to support this goal could consist of the following: a) have weekly or bi-weekly tutoring lessons either 6-8 weeks or 12-16 weeks before the first official test date; b) schedule mock tests every 3-4 weeks, working backward from your first desired test date; c) don’t over-commit to the test prep process until you are sure your schedule supports a three to four hour additional time commitment each week. My highest achieving students have almost always been those willing to invest the initial effort to create a clear test prep plan.

Another goal could be to keep preparing for the SAT/ACT until you reach your target score. The specific action steps would likely consist of setting aside enough time each week to master the necessary content. Some specific details within that step could include creating review sheets of the most important math formulas and concepts, as well as the most occurring grammar errors.

Visit colleges early in the process

What pictures come to mind when prompted to think about a 1450 Math and Critical Reading SAT score? That’s anyone’s guess. However, what pictures come to mind when I mention your first visit to your dream school? You may remember the pleasant breeze, inviting scenery, or even cool grass sneaking under your flip-flop while you eagerly explored your preferred four year paradise. I’ve heard stories of students bringing their SAT practice books with them on college visits. Any guesses on whether they do more prep on the ride/flight to the school or the ride/flight home?

Do the research

When I was applying to college, my parents helped winnow down the stacks of college guide books that were crushing our dining room table. They helped me compose a short list of ‘essentials’, ‘negotiables’, and ‘no-ways’. Once they worked with me to clarify the characteristics of my dream school, we were able to shorten the list of choices considerably. We knew the inter-quartile ranges for their SAT scores, their number of students, males to females ratio, percentage of greek life, famous alumni and alumnae, and other differentiators.

Drill vocabulary words

Teenage years are tenuous times, especially when the emotionally charged topics of standardized test scores and colleges are breached. Is there anything a parent can do to support the details of the test prep process? My favorite suggestion is to study the vocabulary words with your child. It may be tempting to just quiz him or her. However, let your child quiz you. It may even be beneficial to reveal occasional uncertainty about a meaning. If the dynamic is simply, “Did you study the words yet?” there may be some really enjoyable exchanges slipping away. Instead, you might get away with saying, “Did you scrutinize your week one vocabulary words with the meticulousness your peers harangue you for, or did you find the lists too prosaic?”

Discuss motivation

Calvin Coolidge once remarked, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.” I’m not sure about you, but I’ve learned the most about myself when things got difficult and the least about myself when things were easy. Winston Churchill shares Coolidge’s emphasis on endurance: “Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” Initial failures are discouraging. The alternatives to hard work are so accessible. However, the payoff of persistence exceeds the disappointment that quitting ensures.

Location: 2715 Peachtree Rd NE Atlanta, GA 30305

Price: Free

May 10 (Tue) 7:00pm – 8:30pm

May 17 (Tue) 7:00pm – 8:30pm

Learn from the best! With 9 years experience helping the nation’s elite students navigate the testing and college admissions process, Jed Appelrouth, MS, NCC, and Wendy Williams, educational consultant, will guide you through all the steps necessary to:

• Help your child achieve his or her best scores on the admissions exams (SAT or ACT)
• Find out what admissions officers are looking for
• Submit more competitive college applications

Don’t miss this FREE opportunity to help your child get ahead!

In a recent tutoring session, one of my students was shocked to see that the exact same “careless” errors she made at home she repeated with great consistency in our session.  In one geometry problem she “carelessly” solved for the diameter rather than the radius of a circle, both at home and in the tutoring office.  In another problem dealing with the coordinate plane, she “carelessly” flipped the X for the Y value of a point, both at home and again in our session.  Later she mistakenly solved for the 7th rather the 8th value in a sequence problem, at home and in session. All in all, my student repeated the exact same “careless” errors on five distinct problems on a single practice test, leading to a loss of 60 points on the SAT.

My student was stunned to discover something that many tenured tutors know: at the core, most careless errors are not random.  There is no internal dice that rolls, leading to a random moment of carelessness, at least, not for the majority of students.  Typically these errors are systematic errors or “processing” errors: the same mental processes which lead to “careless” errors at home remain active in our sessions.  The gaps in my student’s process were fairly consistent.  Only through repeating the same problems in multiple contexts and seeing the same errors repeat, did she become aware of the pattern.

The key to solving for “carelessness” is actually to identify the gaps in the mental processes of the student.  If we fix her mental procedures/protocols for handling certain types of problems, we would solve for the recurring “carelessness.”  We achieve this by giving the student fixed rules to bring to novel problems.  We must help them embed these rules and strategies into long-term memory through repetition and variation.  We call her attention to these rules again and again, using brief mantras that are stickier in long-term memory. By locking these rules into the memory of the student, and forcing her to recall the rules through practice, we make carelessness much less likely.

I gave my math student some simple math rules to help her solve for her “carelessness”:

• Write everything down.
• Label everything: every term, every element of a graph or chart, every X,Y value.
• Break things down one piece at a time and immediately translate every mathematical term into your own work before reading further.  This was a major relearning for my student to stop reading mid-sentence and write the math down, before returning to the rest of the sentence.
• Always circle what you are solving for.
• Never carry things mentally from the SAT problem over to the scratch area.  That’s too far!  So many errors occur as you are holding the math in your working memory before you get to the scratch area.  The key is no mental carrying!  Put everything down and work immediately below the phrases you’ve written down.  When it’s all written cleanly, in an organized fashion, you don’t have to hold anything in your head: it’s all on the page.
• Use your calculator every chance you get.
• Transfer your answers to the Scantron one page at a time

Any students who are struggling with “carelessness” would benefit from becoming more curious about the instances in which carelessness occurs for them.  If you study your errors enough, a pattern will usually emerge: either a deficit in a particular content area or a deficit in a mental process leading to systematic errors.  We can solve for the content area deficits by focused review and study; we can solve for the processing errors by teaching the student to attend more closely to their problem solving process, to watch their mind at work, and learn strategies for structuring their own thinking.  Students who study their minds at work and learn better problem solving processes will ultimately do better on high stakes tests as well as perform more effectively in numerous academic domains.

In 1993 when Zell Miller signed the HOPE scholarship into law, the lottery revenues were more than adequate to cover the costs of tuition, mandatory fees and a book allowance for the HOPE scholarship winners.  Each year, the number of recipients grew as did the size of the awards. In 1994-1995, 98,399 students received an average award of $851.  In 2002, 212,631 students received an average award of $1,701.  In 2010-2011, 238,907 students received an average award of $2,862.  (See Hope data here).  The cost of HOPE kept rising, but the gambling revenues were not keeping pace.

For 2010-2011, the Georgia Student Finance Commission, which oversees funding of the HOPE scholarship, forecasted a $243 million program deficit, to be followed by a $317 million shortfall in 2012.  Emergency meetings were held at the Capitol this summer, and just last week, Governor Nathan Deal signed a new law limiting HOPE and raising the academic bar for the top award winners. These changes begin with the high school graduating class of 2011.

What are the changes to HOPE?

The program will no longer cover books or the mandatory fees, which have been making up an increasingly significant portion of the overall cost of college. Maintaining a high school 3.0 GPA will now allow a student to forego 90% of tuition costs, but any increases in tuition subsequent to freshman year will be passed on to the student. There is no minimum SAT or ACT score requirement to be eligible for this level of the HOPE Scholarship.

To qualify for the 100% tuition waiver and become a “Zell Miller Scholar,” a student will need to maintain a 3.7 GPA and achieve a composite score of 26 on the ACT or a combined Math and Critical Reading score of 1200 on a single administration of the SAT.

Home-schooled students aspiring for the Zell Miller Scholarship must meet the same HS GPA and score requirements as well attain a college GPA of 3.5 or higher during freshman year. Having proven their academic merit outside of a home-schooled environment, these students will then be eligible to receive the scholarship retroactively at the conclusion of their freshman year.

What impact will this have on our students?

First and foremost the 3.7 cutoff will put more pressure on students to earn those A’s.  This may actually drive grade inflation, as highly involved parents push for those 89s to become 90s.  Additionally, tying the HOPE to SAT and ACT scores will drive more students to prepare for the college assessments.

Adding in the SAT/ACT component may have the unintended consequence of shifting the racial demographics of HOPE recipients.  In Georgia, the performance gap between white and black students on the SAT and ACT is significant.  In 2010 white students posted average scores of 22.9 on the ACT and combined Math and Critical Reading scores of 1044 on the SAT.  In contrast, black students posted average scores of 17.4 on the ACT and 853 on the SAT.

Asians, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders on average scored 1086 on the SAT, 23.6 on the ACT.  While Hispanics saw an average SAT score of 956 (a weighted average of the Mexican, Mexican American, Puerto Rican and Other Hispanic, Latino or Latin American categories reported) and a 20.1 on the ACT (See SAT State Report, ACT State Report).

Whenever you tie financial awards to SAT/ACT scores you ultimately enter the shadowy area of privileging particular racial/ethnic groups at the expense of others.

Final thoughts

In spite of the changes, the HOPE scholarship will remain a tremendous value to hundreds of thousands of Georgia families each year.  Since its inception HOPE has funded scholarships and grants for 1,345,248 students, and the program has been one of the most successful in the country.  Even in its diminished form, HOPE will make college more affordable for nearly a quarter of a million students each year and will continue to keep talented students in-state and drive the quality of our educational institutions higher still.

While these students started their studies well above average* with median scores of 693 in Critical Reading, 667 in Math and 667 in Writing, they were able to increase their scores an average of 215 points with our help. Their final score averages were 758 in Critical Reading, 734 in Math and 750 in Writing.

Grace’s mother, Amy Shea, credited Appelrouth’s flexibility to work around Grace’s hectic schedule and her tutor’s personal assessment with leading Grace to a “break through” moment that allowed for substantial gains.

We are proud of all our students and happy to have helped bring out the best in them. To learn more about North Atlanta’s STAR students and who they picked as their STAR teachers, read this article in the Buckhead Reporter.

*The national averages for 2011 are: Critical Reading—501, Math—516 and Writing—492.

Our new training and continuing tutor education model is designed to support and expand our tutors’ existing skill sets. Although our initial training of 30 hours is already demanding, we are formalizing our “shadowing” component. Before a new tutor begins working with students, he or she will first watch one of our most experienced tutors teach a few lessons. This apprenticeship model is meant to build camaraderie among our tutors, while developing the new tutor’s skills.

In addition to shadowing other tutors, all of our tutors will be encouraged to attend ongoing development workshops. Even the most experienced, record-setting tutor has areas where he or she can improve. Our development workshops will concentrate on teaching methodology and higher level SAT and ACT topics. For example, one workshop will cover advanced critical reading and what it will take to help students score in the 700s. Another valuable topic will be motivating students to set aggressive goals and plan for success.

We wish to maintain and expand on our existing culture of continuous improvement. Tutors who ask themselves the self-reflective questions often have a contagious intensity to help their students achieve even higher scores. Some of the essential questions are “How could I have explained that even more clearly?” or “What was the error in my student’s thought process, and how can I bring that error to his attention in a way that helps him avoid it next time?”

To a large extent, Appelrouth’s reputation, results, and relationships rest in the hands of our tutors. Those tutors whom we hand select to represent us must meet lofty expectations in terms of client satisfaction, results, and a relentless desire to become even more effective. All of this structured initial training, shadowing, and follow-up training is designed to provide our clients with an unbeatable tutoring experience.

Her primary goal is to shorten the time for the client-tutor matching process. Appelrouth guarantees a tutor match in seven days, but Maria has reduced that time to an average of two days over the past three months. If you have a question about your tutoring or a particular tutor she will be happy to answer it. She serves as a liason between Appelrouth’s client services, clients and tutors. This assures that if you have an unusual request such as: Can someone work with my daughter for one session before her AP calculus test next week? or, Can you help my son prepare for the GRE when he is in town next week? she is there to get the needed tutor.

Do you need to know more about the tutor you are working with? Would you like to work with a tutor who has specialized in a particular area? Are you wondering if your daughter can continue her tutoring while she visits relatives in Europe this summer? Maria will be happy to answer questions like these for you!

Maria also assists with the screening, hiring, and training of new tutors, and continued training of current tutors by providing support to the tutor development manager. Additionally, she will continue with her love of teaching by tutoring Appelrouth students.