The college identification and visiting process can be overwhelming to plan and implement, however, technology, and specifically YouTube, can help narrow down your trips with virtual college visits to the admissions office, chats with current students and even visits to classes.
Click below to read The New York Times coverage of these virtual college visits and planning resources on YouTube or watch some of the sample videos.
https://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/
In tenth grade, my class had a group meeting with my high school’s college guidance counselor about SATs, ACTs, and the like. After being overloaded with information about scores and numbers, we were given pins that read “you are more than a test score.” Definitely a little cheesy, but these seven words resonated with me throughout my college application process and through my first year of college.
In the same vein of school being about more than just grades, the New York Times published a piece about the Posse Foundation. This organization selects dynamic, creative, intelligent students, who exhibit impressive leadership qualities, but not the test scores to get into top schools, and gives them the opportunity to attend high-level schools. About 600 students are selected per year. Then, ten students from the same city are put into a “posse” and attend college together. Ultimately, says the New York Times, the success stories of so many of these students “tell us not just that the SAT is an inadequate predictor of college success, but that it can be malignant.” These students are selected through an interview process that tests their “problem-solving, leadership, communication and collaboration skills, their initiative and resourcefulness.” Ultimately, “the Posse program reveals the poverty of the conventional wisdom governing academic success. Our rules for college admission, and ideas about college achievement, are linear, but in reality, college achievement is complex. The factors are much more diverse than our educational system is built to accommodate. So are the people who succeed.”
My high school was small, and for reasons I do not know but greatly appreciate, the administration chose not to calculate GPA’s or have valedictorians. As an almost-sophomore in college, I have taken the liberty to extend the pin I received in high school’s message of “you are more than a test score” to “you are more than your GPA.” These three letters—an acronym I had never been confronted with until college—terrify me. They paralyze me. The thought that just two integers, with a decimal point no less, accurately measured my success in college scare me, and also made me wonder—aren’t we supposed to be pursuing our academic interests and challenging ourselves, and not obsessing over grades and searching for easy A’s?
In response to my frustration, countless people have told me that while naturally your grades must reach a certain standard, your GPA is not the end all and be all. A professor who has been on graduate school admissions boards advised me that they’re looking for students who are “interesting” and that this, more often than not, can mean imperfect GPA’s. The college experience, like people, is complex, comprised of much more than a few numbers. There are so many other factors to determine success: just look at how the Posse students are selected—through their “problem-solving, leadership, communication and collaboration skills, their initiative and resourcefulness.” From what I’ve experienced so far, learning happens in so many more places than the classroom. Students join groups and attend events that may have no direct connection to academics, but still add to their personal growth and sense of achievement. It is the combination of all these experiences that leads to a successful, satisfying, and challenging college life.
By LeeLee Borzak, Private Tutor
On April 13th and April 15th, Anna M. Phillips from the New York Times published two articles about the tutoring scene in New York City: After Number of Gifted Soars, a Fight for Kindergarten Slots and Tutoring Surges With Fight for Middle School Spots. Fueled by competition for limited seats in highly sought after kindergarten programs, middle schools, and high schools, tutoring companies across the city are poised to benefit from this school frenzy and family fear factor. Beyond admissions testing for these types of public school programs, there is similar energy surrounding admissions testing for independent schools at every level from kindergarten through high school. Then begins preparation for the SATs or ACTs or both. In an educational environment with high stakes testing and scarcity of resources, this increase to seek tutors and specialists shouldn’t come as a surprise, and parents will do anything they can to set their children up for success.
As parents prepare for these types of school transitions, it’s really important to be clear about goals and values before reaching out for any supplemental tutoring or test preparation. It’s one thing to familiarize students with a test format, but it’s an entirely different matter to push for admissions into a school where a child may ultimately feel frustrated and unsuccessful. We should not compare preparation for kindergarten or G&T testing (administered by the DOE) with preparation for the SATs. Older students are prepared to sit for extended study periods and to practice the required drills for college entrance exams. They are able to be a part of the strategic thinking and planning that goes into the college admissions process. Preschoolers are just having their first experiences with education, and we send a sad message when we expose them to paper and pencil cramming. Instead there are ways to embed these skills into structured play in order to build stamina for difficult tasks and comfort working one on one with a new person.
This is the approach that our early childhood educators take at My Learning Springboard when working with very young students ranging from ages 3 to 5. Our preschoolers love their tutors and usually ask for sessions more than once a week. For parents who have the resources to support private tutoring, their experience has been hugely positive. Articles about preschool and kindergarten tutoring usually cause readers to imagine some insane scene with helicopter parents on the sidelines and tormented children being drilled on practice questions. Sadly, this scene probably exists in many tutoring circles. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
When tutoring is developmentally appropriate and planned over longer periods of time, we can really get to know a student and enrich his or her learning in a way that follows the child’s rhythms. The experience is positive and creates a joy for learning. Our teachers also provide parent education so that families are empowered to support learning beyond the tutoring sessions. If the intention is thoughtful and genuine, the tutoring experience can be an amazing one.
For parents considering test preparation for their rising kindergartners or sixth graders, I would encourage them to carefully consider the messages they want to send their children and their value set as a family. Have they visited the schools they’re so desperately clamoring to get into? Are they sure the end justifies the means? Do they feel the tutoring company has their child’s best interest at heart or do they feel that they’re being engaged in transactional tutoring?
Just because it feels like everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you have to. I’m all for being honest about the admissions process in New York City, which is indeed intense and overwhelming. But I also believe strongly in the integrity of teaching and learning. There are ways to engage in test preparation that are strategic and reasonable. If done well, test preparation should add to a family’s investment in developing successful, lifelong learners.
By Brad Hoffman, M.S.Ed.
Senior year….finally. Whether you’re excited or terrified about embarking on this new, post-high school chapter of your life, there is definitely still a lot going on during these last 2-3 months of your school year.
Although your senioritis has surely kicked in to some degree, it’s important to remember not to let your grades slip a considerable amount. You may already be accepted to college, but your dream school can very well revoke your acceptance. You may not have been able to read past the “Congratulations!”, but your acceptance letter said that you are accepted to said college on the condition that you complete high school with the same personal and academic achievement on which your acceptance was based. According to Phillip Ballinger, the Director of Admissions of University of Washington, “We see it as a matter of fairness to students who were not admitted or wait-listed.” This is not meant to scare you, though. The cases in which high school seniors had their acceptances revoked were cases in which students had a considerable decline in their grades. If you’ve had mostly A’s in high school and received a B or two, you definitely should not be panicking.
While the end of senior year means caps, gowns, and commencement addresses, it also means AP exams. If you are enrolled in AP classes and have upcoming exams, it is very tempting to slack off. After all, you don’t need to even send the scores in to your college! What you may not realize, though, is that passing an AP exam can give you college credits and in some cases exempt you from introductory courses in college. Having credits from before college will not only give you a little peace of mind, but can also help financially: you may be able to graduate a semester early, thus saving that much tuition. If your score on the exam exempts you from an introductory course, it can allow you to jump right into more advanced, and perhaps more interesting, classes. It is important to remember, though, that you are not at a disadvantage if you do not have AP credits, so don’t worry!
One of the more underrated parts of the new college phase is the shopping for dorm room furnishings and school supplies. Major store chains such as Bed Bath and Beyond and Target have entire sections dedicated to helping you get everything you need for your room, offering vast selections of things you didn’t even know you “needed.” Buying the necessities really adds to the exciting “fresh start” feeling of your upcoming freshman year experience. Before you check out of the store though, be sure to find out the measurements of your room. The first day of college is stressful enough; unpacking your twin-sized sheets only to find that your new bed requires twin XL sheets (I didn’t know the difference until 6 months ago) would certainly not help matters. If your school doesn’t give you specifics, the most valuable resource in this regard would be someone who currently attends or attended your future college: he or she will (hopefully) know how much closet space you will have, whether or not your will really need those bed risers, and if the beds come with attached drawers underneath. If you don’t know anyone, reach out the your college’s residential life and housing department.
LeeLee Borzak, Private Tutor
I read Diane Ravitch’s book Death and Life of the Great American School System, which piqued my curiosity to learn more about the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. In this fabulous book that I highly recommend, Diane Ravitch makes the case that investing in the development of one national metric, along with a national curriculum, would be a huge game changer for American public schools. As it currently stands, our nation has 51 different state assessments and benchmarks—including the District of Columbia’s Comprehensive Assessment System. It’s possible that investing resources in the development of one well-regarded metric might be best for teaching and learning, but that’s only true if so many other factors also change in the educational ecosystem of our public schools.
NAEP is the “largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas.” It is run by the Commissioner of Education Statistics, who heads the National Center for Education Statistics in the U.S. Department of Education. Tested subject areas include mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, and U.S. History. In order to provide a common metric, these assessments are standardized and administered uniformly across all states and selected urban districts according to a set schedule outlined from 1969-2017. Tests are essentially the same year over year in order to document changes and provide a clear sense of student progress over time. According to the website, NAEP has two major goals:
Aside from gifted and talented, college, and admissions testing, my conversations with public school families concerned with test preparation are almost exclusively focused on state testing—the New York State Math, ELA, Science, and Regents tests; the Maryland School Assessment; and the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. The subject of NAEP almost never comes up because it doesn’t have any real bearing on daily school life, and it only impacts a small sample of the total public school population. NAEP scores don’t impact student placement, school system funding, or admissions. This data also isn’t shared with administrators or teachers in any way that is particularly meaningful to adjusting instruction, providing strategic interventions, or improving schools.
NAEP provides test results from populations of students (ex: all 8th graders) and groups within those populations (ex: 8th grade males). Results for the NAEP are “based on representative samples of students at grades 4, 8, and 12 for the main assessments, or samples of students at ages 9, 13, or 17 years for the long-term trend assessments. These grades and ages were chosen because they represent critical junctures in academic achievement. At the state level, only students in public schools are tested. But at the national level, students from both private and public schools are tested. NAEP does not provide test scores for individual students or specific schools, and NAEP results become part of “The Nation’s Report Card.”
While state participation is voluntary, Title I grant money is only given to states that commit to NAEP participation under No Child Left Behind legislation. Each state has a NAEP coordinator to serve as the liaison between the nation-wide agency and the specific schools in that state. For state assessments, an average state will administer the test to approximately 2,500 students representing about 100 public schools. For national assessments, probability samples of schools and students are identified in order to represent the diversity of our nation’s schools.
NAEP asks students both subject-area questions and general questions. Subject-area questions test students’ content knowledge. General questions ask for students’ demographic characteristics and general education-related experiences. Question types include multiple-choice, pictorial representations, and written responses. Tests are generally 90-120 minutes. Click here to view sample questions from 2006-2012.
According to NAEP’s official website, there are four (4) different types of assessments:
National assessments include many subjects, including mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, and U.S. history. These assessments follow the frameworks developed by the National Assessment Governing Board, and use the latest advances in assessment methodology. Each subject is assessed at grades 4, 8, and 12—although not all grades are assessed each time. Both public and private schools are assessed.
State assessments began in 1990; results for each participating state may be found using the State Profiles tool. At the state level, assessment is in public schools only and includes testing in mathematics, reading, science, and writing, usually for grades 4 and 8.
Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) is a multiyear study of the feasibility of a trial district-level NAEP in selected urban districts that is supported by federal appropriations authorized under the No Child Left Behind Act. The first TUDA took place in conjunction with the 2002 state NAEP reading and writing assessments. TUDA again took place in 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, and is scheduled for 2011.
The long-term trend (LTT) assessments are given at the national level only, and are administered in a manner that is very different from that used for main NAEP assessments. LTT reports results in mathematics and reading that present trend since the 1970s, and are given every four years. Find out more about how the long-term trend assessments differ from the main assessments.
Written by: Editorial Team, My Learning Springboard, Inc.