We see no value in fear mongering. Admissions to independent schools in New York City, boarding schools and competitive colleges across the country, and elite boarding schools in the UK and Switzerland provide an abundance of great opportunities for our families. Local buzz and reporting would have everyone believe that we’re living in an admissions environment that’s like the “Hunger Games”. Just last week, New York Magazine published an article titled “It Was A Tough February for New York’s Fanciest 5-Year-Olds” stating that the kindergarten-admissions season was a “bloodbath”. But taking a “Hunger Games” view serves no good purpose. For our clients who engaged in constructive, strategic planning with us and took advantage of all levers to exert their control throughout the process, we experienced great success!
An Increase in ADHD and Anxiety
Our children and teenagers are already stressed enough, and anxiety diagnoses have sharply risen over the past 10 years. In an article published last week – and updated this past Monday – by the New York Times titled “What’s Driving the Spike in College Students with Disabilities” reported that 21% of students at Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Chicago registered as having disabilities in 2024. These numbers were significantly lower in 2015 with 3% of students at Harvard and the University of Chicago, and 6% at Cornell. These increases are particularly tied to ADHD and anxiety, which are often comorbid conditions that negatively impact one another. The more anxious a student is feeling, the more diminished their attention span will be. This interaction further impacts other cognitive processes, including working memory, processing speed, and executive functions at large. So what do we do?
It’s not helpful for our students if we pretend things that matter don’t matter. And it’s not helpful for our students if we put unnecessary pressure on them. The middle ground is helping each student to put forth their best effort, paced out properly over a planful timeline, and provide skillful, compassionate instruction. Clear expectations matter along with supportive key messages about our belief that they can and will achieve their goals. With regard to admissions, there are pathways that require testing and alternative pathways that don’t. If your family’s goal is to keep all doors open at the outset of your planning, then leaning into standardized testing and starting early enough is really important.
Proving Academic Mastery
Before the pandemic the rules of the road were very clear, and this gray zone didn’t exist. From 2020 to 2024, things got really murky, which actually dialed up the stress levels – for students and for parents – from our vantage point. This time period was extremely uncomfortable and required a lot of soapboxing on our part to counter the illogical messages that parents were hearing from a variety of trusted sources. With academic reconciliation underway during the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years – and now a specific climate of grade deflation for course correction – it’s clear that proof of strong academic achievement is a litmus test for competitive admissions. The feedback from admissions directors at K-12 schools this year regularly cited test scores as a key consideration, and the competition for seats was indeed fierce, especially for 9th grade boys.
Standardized testing is imperfect in many ways, and it certainly brought me and Faya to tears in our own schooling experiences. Yet standardized tests are also a vehicle for lots of good instructional work and an opportunity to audit foundational reading, writing, and math skills. Many parents come to us wondering about the quality of their child’s current education and mastery of critical skills. Benchmarking often isn’t transparent at independent schools for a variety of reasons, thus parents paying significant tuition and wondering about the ROI make use of diagnostic assessments and standardized tests to ensure that their children are meeting or exceeding national standards. In fact, we see a wide range of performance, and some students need a very limited amount of preparation to achieve above average scores, while other students need quite a lot of instruction to achieve at that level. What’s important is that they do indeed ultimately achieve at that level with sufficient time, patience, skillful instruction, and practice. On average, students preparing for the ISEE, SSAT, ACT, or SAT need 60-75 instructional hours in our experience. But the only way to be more precise with instructional recommendations is to complete diagnostic testing and then discuss the data with you.
Beyond auditing foundational skills, standardized testing is also a way to showcase content mastery in specific subject areas. While the SAT subject tests no longer exist, unfortunately, the Advanced Placement program lives on, and our ambitious students take advantage of this testing to further differentiate themselves. At schools with robust AP programs – including CGPS, Browning, and competitive public schools – it’s normalized and expected to complete AP exams following coursework. But most independent schools and boarding schools no longer offer an AP program, and many of these schools won’t even host AP testing for their students who do want to engage, so we have to be creative and planful. Increasingly we meet students wanting to apply to competitive universities in the UK or other countries, which often require AP testing as part of their admissions process, so supplemental work is absolutely necessary. We have solutions in all of these cases, and making use of APs to bolster your application should be an important consideration as part of your college planning process.
Increased Confidence and Readiness
We know that standardized test practice is not glamorous. Sure, some of our students LOVE standardized testing and look forward to gobbling up practice sections and tests. But most of our students engage as means to an end with varying levels of worry or frustration at the outset with regard to the effort involved. Nonetheless, all of our students experience significant improvement and ultimately report increased confidence and readiness for the next chapter of their schooling. If we approach it the right way with a growth mindset and reasonable balance, it has proven to be a gratifying experience for students and for parents. Taking control of this important variable in the admissions process is a way to push back against the fear mongering and “Hunger Games” mentality that is often pervasive among competitive people. Focus on the things that matter and that you can control. We’re here to help you!
Scheduling A Planning Meeting
Whatever your educational consulting need or wonder may be, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We always have the option of scheduling a brief, complimentary call to discuss your needs and our services at a higher level.
Often a more substantive, initial school planning meeting is the best way to get started. These meetings can be 30, 45, or 60 minutes by Zoom, by phone, or in person per a family’s preference. A single planning meeting allows us to talk more substantively about your family’s specific needs, priorities, and goals so that we can determine possible next steps.
We’re committed to creating a meaningful experience for each family, and we’d love to hear from you regarding your school and college planning needs. Please reach out so that we can schedule a planning meeting to maximize the remainder of this school year and get ahead of the school year to come!
Warm regards,
Brad Hoffman and Faya Hoffman
Co-Founders and School Concierges, My Learning Springboard
The process of applying to colleges is an arduous one. Standardized tests, campus visits, alumni interviews, and navigating the complexities of Naviance and SCIOR all add up to hours of work, on top of the time students must spend actually doing their schoolwork. The biggest task, however, is writing the many essays universities require for admission – not just the Common App, but the countless supplemental essays and short answers, each with their own twists on “Why us?” Most students, when faced with the yawning chasm of work and the high stakes of completing it “perfectly,” choose to put off this part of the college admissions process until the fall of their senior year, or the summer before it. This is a mistake. Start your college essays early! 
“When I was still small enough to fit in the sun-drenched space between the armoire and the couch, I sat cross-legged and spun the world.”
To Test Or Not To Test