College Counseling Archives

Managing Virtual College Visits

March 2, 2021 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

Ordinarily, spring is a popular time for high schoolers to pursue college visits. But with the Covid-19 outbreak closing or significantly limiting access to universities, those typical college visits are mostly impossible this season. Strong executive function skills which require nimbleness and flexibility as well as contingency planning and focused “future glasses” will be of great value during these rapidly changing times. Fortunately, prospective applicants can learn a lot about colleges through other sorts of college admissions research. Below are some ways to explore colleges when physical visits are canceled.

Set time goals

While many college admissions trips involve visiting lots of schools in just a few days, that speed is hard for students to replicate at home without a cheerful tour guide to direct them. Set goals that make it easier to approach your virtual college visits and to digest information — exploring one to three schools per day, or spending no more than two hours per day on college admissions research.

Set content goals

If your family had already identified certain college visits to prioritize this spring if possible, your child can use that list to begin their college research at home. If your child has not yet started any lists, we can certainly help. We also suggest making use of online resources to search for a combination of two or three appealing attributes — for instance, small liberal arts colleges in the northeast — and exploring the results. The U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges’ feature labeled “Students Also Applied To,” near the bottom of a college’s profile, is a good tool for building lists of schools similar to each other.

Make checklists and keep notes

Comparing colleges is easier if students gather the same points of information about each of them. To stay consistent in their college admissions research and virtual college visits, students can create a digital checklist or spreadsheet to fill in as they work. Some universal items are student population size, location, average SAT or ACT scores, and interesting majors or departments. Applicants can also add personalized items, such as relevant extracurriculars, study abroad opportunities, and special programs. Below the checklist, or in an additional spreadsheet column, students should make notes on anything else they want to remember.

Use Google to find solid sources

While every college’s website has a search function, it’s often faster to use Google to find content on those websites. In addition to schools’ own pages, the U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges site, referenced above, is a reliable source. Hint: for hard-to-find statistics, such as average test scores, try googling the name of the school plus the phrase “admitted class profile.”

Zoom in through a virtual tour

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram — admissions offices maintain a presence on all of them. We recommend taking the virtual tour that each school offers and reading their online lookbooks in addition to any opportunities for online information sessions or virtual open house events. We also recommend seeking out content that shares students’ voices, such as an admissions blog, Instagram stories, and student newspapers and magazines.

Reach out

One-on-one conversations are often the most impactful way for a prospective student to learn about a college. If your child has any acquaintances or relatives who attend a college that interests your child, this is a great time to ask the older student to chat about their impressions of the school.

Zoom out to the Common Application essay

When your child needs a break from researching individual colleges, they can brainstorm an essay for the Common Application, which streamlines the process of applying to multiple schools. While students must wait until August for the application form to open and for colleges to post their supplemental essay prompts, the Common App has already posted the prompts for the main essay, which is sent to all schools. Writers typically go through several drafts of this essay, so getting an early start will help their summer and fall go smoothly.

Prioritize

Finally, we want to acknowledge that no matter how central college visits were to your original spring plans, families have bigger concerns right now. While teenagers are experts at staying digitally connected, they will still miss their friends and their school routines. If college admissions research seems to be too much for your child right now, encourage them to press pause. The first deadlines are several months away. The top priority right now is what also should be their guiding principle when they eventually choose what college to attend: their happiness and well-being.

In these uncertain times, rest assured that your well-being and safety remain our highest priority. Everyone’s concerns are understandable and real. If we can help in any way over the coming weeks with e-tutoring or supplemental college counseling, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We sincerely hope that you and your loved ones get through this situation as well as possible and that we will be able to return to a reasonable amount of normalcy soon.

By Brad Hoffman, Faya Hoffman, Laurie Gross, and Elizabeth Walters

The College Search: Getting Started

February 20, 2021 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

For high school juniors, the fall term is the time to be researching and planning college visits, looking at requirements and applications, and seeing where you stand for the college application season next fall. Overwhelming? It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. There are thousands of colleges and universities in the United States, in addition to international programs, and many families don’t know where to begin when it comes to researching and applying to colleges.

To start your college search, narrow down the field by several key categories.

Distance

Some students want to stay close to home while others are looking for an out-of-state or really-out-of-state school. Start your search by deciding how far from home you’re willing to go. Going to school out of state or across the country can seem exciting, but it is a big decision that should be carefully considered.

Region

Rather than eliminating an entire state or region, narrow your search by considering the environment you’d like to live in. Are you looking for a busy city, quiet suburb or kitschy college town? A student spends a lot of time in the community surrounding his or her college, so it’s important to consider what environment you’re looking for.

Size

A school’s size should be a major factor when narrowing down your list of schools to research. Some students flourish at large universities, while others prefer a small campus community. There are also schools that are medium sized. Be sure to ask what the average class size is for each school you review.

Major

Your chosen major is obviously an important factor in narrowing your list of potential colleges. Find schools that offer your top major choices, or perhaps identify schools that allow you the flexibility to create your own major. Later in your search, you can score the schools on the rigor and offerings in your program of choice.

One last piece of advice: don’t just go on “brand name” when it comes to schools. You may be leaving out a school that is a perfect fit for you just because you’ve never heard of it. Keep an open mind and enjoy the excitement that comes with this phase in your life!

Work with one of our expert college admissions tutors to stay on track with your applications and choose your schools wisely!

Written by: Editorial Team, My Learning Springboard, Inc.

Vocabulary Development for Secondary Aged Students

February 3, 2021 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

Intentional vocabulary development for secondary aged students contributes to school success and establishes the foundation for the best possible future. The emphasis on reading proficiency by fourth grade often means that students who still need support get little attention thereafter. Sometimes students who did fine with elementary reading begin to show strain as reading expectations increase at the secondary level. Fun activities, using online software programs, can help grow vocabulary. The best way to help students become good readers isn’t to focus exclusively on academic reading. In addition, expanding reading to cover the multiple areas of interest in their lives increases their funds of knowledge and reveals the real contribution that reading can make to a full life.

Students who struggle with reading may give excuses like noisy surroundings, task difficulty, unfair teachers, or various forms of interference. These stem from a fear of lacking expected skills. They may avoid reading, by forgetting the books they need, claiming other work is more important, or simply procrastinating. Knowing words help readers appreciate narratives and that often helps reintroduce the pleasure of reading. Reading support grows confidence so students are better able to ask for help when they need it.

Ongoing vocabulary development ensures that students have support as reading assignments change: Quizlet allows students to develop their own vocabulary lists (Wordly Wise 3000 has a variety of activities and partners with Quizlet to help reinforce learning); Membean provides focused word building with an algorithm that recognizes when to repeat a word so that it sticks in memory. These vocabulary development activities are easy additions to a student’s educational routine.

Adolescent literacy requires more than fluent-sounding reading and context-based vocabulary explanations. At the secondary level, students need to develop the reading skills to recognize inflections of meaning. Sentence style and tone comes from the author’s vocabulary choices as well as word order. Recognizing such details helps students grasp the underlying meanings of a passage. The subtle distinctions among synonyms also contribute to text analysis.

Reading assignments at the secondary level are longer and more demanding. Textbooks may subdivide sections and provide key word boxes to help students learn new terms, but they do not show how to apply those words or understand their use them in other contexts. Guiding readers through the major vocabulary, however, shows them crucial concepts, develops stronger understanding, and eventually allows them to compare learning topics. This last skill is crucial to success on SAT subject tests and reading portions of standardized tests.

Literature readings shift away from chapter books to dive into texts from historical periods, global cultures, and an assortment of genres, each with their own formal vocabulary. Even contemporary short stories may prove difficult as postmodern plots and various devices create unusual narratives. Students often skip words they don’t know in an attempt to manage the length and density of the assignment. Unfortunately, that avoidance tactic increases confusion. As adolescent years are full of social anxiety, students typically avoid asking vocabulary questions in class where they are in front of their peers.

For a student missing a word in each paragraph, important information gets lost. With each passing page, they lose background context. Such students then struggle to make the kinds of inferences that are expected at the secondary level. Vocabulary development activities like membean or Quizlet provide an immediate response for this situation, but more is necessary. Guided support in how and when to apply background information or call upon a personal response to a passage, among other interpretation strategies, helps students regain confidence and become the independent readers that they need to be as they prepare for college.

Secondary level students who struggle with reading need reading motivation. This is where working with texts and topics that interest them is crucial. Here, they expand the vocabulary relevant to the area that already engages them. They learn how to read with concentration for an extended period of time. They discover when personal responses are appropriate or distract from a focus on the text. They adopt positions from which to argue or defend an interpretation. They recognize the value of research or background knowledge in discussing the topic. Through conversations based on the reading, they begin to produce more convincing arguments by learning how to present information in an orderly fashion.

Vocabulary development for secondary aged students helps them become engaged and proficient readers by cultivating motivation, decoding skills, language comprehension, and personal transactions with the text. Most importantly, it ensures they have the skills for success at school and for the rest of their lives.

By Charlotte Kent, Ph.D. and Private Tutor, and Brad Hoffman, M.S.Ed. and Learning Specialist

AP Exams and SAT Subject Tests

January 25, 2021 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

While SAT and ACT scores demonstrate comparisons of a student’s skills in reading comprehension, English language, and math, the AP exams and, previously, the SAT subject tests, allow applicants to shine by testing subjects they love and often plan to pursue in college.

SAT Subject tests — which the College Board abruptly “retired” in January 2021 — were an important part of the admissions process, especially for the most competitive colleges. Now, students need to leverage the College Board’s AP exams to demonstrate subject mastery. However, AP exams can only be taken once annually in May and are administered at schools. Particularly over the past decade, many private day schools and boarding schools stopped offering AP classes because their faculty didn’t want to be boxed into a curriculum scope and sequence designed by College Board and argued by many secondary educators to be “a mile wide and an inch deep.” Instead, many rigorous independent schools have argued in favor of leveraging their advanced or honors classes for this testing, but that often leaves both content gaps and lacking test-taking skills that need to be supplemented with outside preparation. Moreover, many of these schools stopped coordinating and hosting these AP tests, and it’s not so easy to find another host school, which is an obstacle we’ll face this school year and next school year as educators navigate this testing change.

The TOP 6 AP Exams in 2020 were:

English Language and Composition

US History

English Literature and Composition

World History

US Government and Politics

Calculus AB

The TOP 3 SAT Subject Tests from 2018-2020 were:
Mathematics 2

Biology E/M

US History

Ideally, students initiate their planning and preparation for an AP exam at least 6 months before their anticipated exam date. The good news is that all of these tests are highly coachable, and there are scads of success stories among our tutors and students–the key is to start your test preparation early enough, and work with a specialist who is intimately familiar with the test(s). The best results come from a careful and strategic approach.

As a person who has experienced the admissions process year after year, I find that students who are interested in a particular subject, such as Physics, Chemistry, US History, or French, tend to score very well on AP tests, or, previously, SAT Subject tests because they study something they already like more deeply.

By Brad Hoffman, Board Certified Educational Planner, and Grant Bergland, Private Tutor

College Admissions Test Preparation | ACT or SAT

January 22, 2021 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

Did you know that more students took the ACT than the SAT for the first time in 2012, ending the SAT’s reign as America’s most popular college-entrance standardized test? Since then, the ACT’s popularity has only continued to grow. Why is this? And which test is right for you? Is there an advantage for college admissions test preparation? And what are the implications with increasing test-optional policies?

This shift toward the ACT was at least partially the result of students often preferring the ACT’s more content-based style of questioning. Many students wanted to avoid the SAT’s more reasoning-based style of questioning that felt quite different from what they typically encountered in the classroom. However, in March 2016, The College Board released a completely revamped SAT, designed to be more similar to the ACT, and further complicating decision-making for college admissions test preparation.

As you consider taking the the ACT versus the SAT, think about the following:

Timing. Does it work for you or against you?

The most significant difference between the tests is that the ACT is faster paced and benefits students who push through questions quickly. The new SAT provides a less intense pacing experience.

The ACT Math section consists of 60 questions in 60 minutes (60 seconds per question) whereas the SAT Math sections spread 58 questions over 2 sections for a total of 80 minutes (83 seconds per question).
The ACT English and Reading sections pose 115 questions over 80 minutes (42 seconds per question) while the SAT Language and Reading sections contain 96 questions in 100 minutes (63 seconds per question).
If you have extended time accommodations, the pacing issue is largely mitigated.

How do you feel about Science?

The ACT has a Science section while the new SAT intersperses such questions throughout the test. In both cases, students are often surprised to learn that these question types are more skill-based than fact-based (e.g.interpreting graphs and charts) and don’t require outside scientific knowledge. With structured practice, students can greatly improve from their initial diagnostic ACT Science section score. However, for students who really do not like the ACT’s Science section, the new SAT may be a more appealing choice.

Are you confident without your calculator?

While the ACT allows a calculator on all math questions, the new SAT contains twenty “no calculator” math problems. While putting your calculator aside for about a third of the SAT’s math questions may initially sound intimidating, these questions do not require complicated arithmetic. Most students do not find the lack of calculator to be an issue. If anything, a calculator would probably slow students down on the “no calculator” question type.

How do you feel about writing a persuasive essay? The ACT provides three stances and asks students to choose one to justify, thus eliminating the challenge of developing a unique thesis statement. It’s a very manageable writing task. As of June 2021, the SAT is “retiring” their optional essay section, which asked students to evaluate somebody else’s argument. While optional, our students have always taken advantage of this opportunity to exceed admissions requirements, and the preparation for this optional essay provides an authentic vehicle for enhancing critical writing skills in a timed classroom setting. Students choosing the ACT will still have this opportunity.

Additionally, because the latest iteration of the SAT is still so new, far fewer practice tests and other preparation materials exist for it. This alone is often a disadvantage and cause for students to choose the ACT until more SAT data and materials exist. For now, there is still limited data in terms of concordance charts and interpreting SAT results. Moreover, the SAT was designed based on Common Core State Standards, which is a politically charged initiative and may not stand the test of time.

So, which test is the better choice?

It is a myth that one test is markedly easier than the other. Most students perform similarly on both tests. Making a decision between ACT or SAT for college admissions test preparation depends mostly on your personal preferences as a test taker. Therefore, it’s worthwhile to find out early if you have a clear preference for either test. Switching back and forth between tests or trying to prepare for both simultaneously is not an efficient use of precious test preparation time.

In addition, colleges and universities do not prefer one test over the other. Preparing for the ACT or SAT both require hours of dedicated practice and sustained hard work to master the relevant content and internalize the necessary test-taking strategies. A strong score on either test provides admission officers with the same information since the content and format of the tests are similar. And don’t forget, your standardized test scores are just one part of your college application!

By Brad Hoffman, M.S.Ed. and Educational Consultant