Changes to the SAT
February 9, 2022Get Smarter Prep

More Changes to the SAT

CollegeBoard made the announcement that they will make the transition to the digital SAT at international test centers in March of 2023 and at U.S. schools and test centers in spring of 2024. What stays the same and what will change?

The digital SAT will continue to measure the knowledge and skills that students are learning in school and that matter most for college and career readiness. The test will still be scored on the same 1600 scales as before and will be administered in a school or in a test center with a proctor present, but not at home. Students will continue to connect directly to scholarships and will also be given accommodations for those students who receive them.

Now let’s review more changes to the SAT that are being made below.

Changes to the SAT

Get Smarter Prep will continue to offer Semi-Private and Private Tutoring for students moving forward with the SAT.

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Choosing ACT or SAT
July 7, 2021Get Smarter Prep

Choosing the ACT, SAT or Both

Choosing the ACT, SAT or Both

This debate may be familiar to many of you. ACT? SAT? Both? Some students and families enter junior year with a perfectly clear answer to those questions, but the reasons behind those decisions may be less clear. Do any of these sound familiar?

  • He’ll take the ACT, of course. He wants to attend a school in the Midwest.
  • We’re an SAT family. Her older brother scored much better on the SAT.
  • Of course I want to prepare for both exams!

The ACT and SAT originated in different places, for different purposes, and developed different reputations over the years. Despite the many changes to each test, some of those perceptions persist.

The SAT, originally developed by the College Board for use in admissions to elite, northeastern schools, remains more popular on the coasts than in the Midwest. The ACT came later, designed to provide an admissions test for regional and public universities that didn’t use the SAT; it is still more popular in the Midwest than the SAT.

Although these regional patterns persist regarding which test students tend to take, the initial reason for those patterns – which test your college of choice might accept – no longer holds. The final school to accept the ACT finally did so in 2007, meaning that the choice of which test to take is really up to the individual student.

So, choosing the ACT, SAT, or Both? There are differences, though, between the ACT and the SAT, that one should consider when deciding between the two exams, and they don’t have anything to do with the geographical distribution of your college list.

First, how strong are you at math? On the SAT, math counts for half of your score, while on the ACT math makes up only ¼. That’s a significant difference. Consider, also, how well you’ll fare without a calculator, as the SAT has a section that must be completed without one.

How much do you want to improve your score? Because of changes to the SAT in 2012, there is much less practice material available than for the ACT, which means fewer opportunities to practice and improve your score. If you’re looking for a significant boost, you might lean towards the ACT.

How much do you struggle with timing? The timing on the ACT is more difficult for some students. The SAT provides more time per question, which might be an asset. Taking a practice version of each will help you to know if that is the case for you.

A final consideration is that the SAT, during and since the redesign, has been a bit unstable. There have been data breaches, score delays, and debates over how the new scores stack up to the old ones.

If you know you’ll be taking an ACT through school, or (for those who haven’t already taken it) you plan to prepare for the PSAT, those factors might influence your choice as well. The goal is to prepare for only one exam.

The ACT (or SAT) is only one part of your college applications, and your college applications are only one part of your life. Preparing for both tests – or choosing the wrong one – is a recipe for doing more work than necessary and taking time away from other activities and classes that make up your high school career.

By Audrey Hazzard, Premier-Level Tutor

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PSAT Prep
July 6, 2021Get Smarter Prep

PSAT Prep?

PSAT Prep? 

This is the time of year that parents come back from vacation to the reality of standardized tests.  Many have just received their child’s PSAT scores.  Here’s one Rockhurst parent’s email to us: “My son, a junior, just got his PSAT scores and is pretty heartbroken about his 210.  Great score, but most likely a point or two below what the cut-off will be.”  I know, it takes some explanation.

Wait a minute, the SAT isn’t a test of how smart you are?

Yes and no. As heartbreaking as this may be for those who did well on their entrance exams years ago, and carved out a life of success for themselves based on these scores, these exams have nothing to do with academics.  It doesn’t even have anything to do with test taking.  It has everything to do with understanding how this particular test is constructed and attacking it accordingly.

Sure, there are plenty of “A” students who do well on this test, but there are also plenty of “A” students who test fine in school who don’t do so well on this test.  What does this mean?  Well, either it means that they’ve fooled teachers and parents for years, and are really not intelligent, or that this test is not about intelligence.  All the SAT (or the ACT) provides is another method colleges can use to eliminate candidates in an ever-competitive pool of high school students.

When do I get started?

The PSAT, which is 2 hours, 45 minutes in length, is offered nationally every year in October. However, for juniors who take the PSAT/NMSQT in October of their junior year, high scores are the basis for National Merit Recognition and subsequent scholarships.

Each section is scored on a scale of 160–760, making a “perfect” score 1520. There are also test scores, cross-test scores, and subscores. There are 2 sections: Math and Evidence-Based Reading and Writing.

The 3 big scores you should look at:

  • Total Score
  • Evidence-Based Reading & Writing Score
  • Math Score

The PSAT is scored on the same rubric, but a slightly different scale, as the real SAT. While the SAT is scored in a range of 400–1600, the PSAT is scored in a range of 320–1520. However, the PSAT is not an entirely accurate predictor of SAT performance. The conventional wisdom is simply to “add a zero” to the 2 digit PSAT scores, but while this helps give a general idea of scores, it is far from accurate for two reasons:  1) The PSAT is shorter than the real exam, has easier questions than the real SAT, and brings none of the real life actual pressures that that test brings, 2) The scores are set as curved against every single other Junior in the country taking the test that day, making an enormous curve that never occurs on any one of the individual 7 SAT national dates.  This explains how a student can miss one question on a PSAT and lose as much as 5 points – the curve is very steep.

While being a National Merit Scholar brings some cachet to any college application, it also (more importantly) brings cash – be it as far away as USC (a half-tuition scholarship for any Finalist who designates USC as their first choice school) or as close as KU ($10,000/year for the same conditions).

Will prepping for the PSAT help?  If you are a serious contender for a top-tier school, yes.  The reason is that the test is not the only determinant of Semi-Finalist or Finalist status.  If the grades and resume aren’t there, your time is better spent improving the resume you do have and doing well in the classes you are taking.

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College Admission Scandal
October 23, 2019Get Smarter Prep

College Admissions Scandal – Update

It’s been a hot topic since this spring when the story first hit the press, but what’s the latest information in the College Admissions Scandal and what does this mean for parents?

When the story first broke about famous actors and uber rich parents buying their way into colleges, everyone was shocked. Now that there are more details coming out and those same parents facing additional charges, the scandal has become quite the headline.

Charges and Outcomes

Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli, along with nine other parents, now face additional bribery charges.  Conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy fraud are two charges these families are already facing.  

Some parents are already in prison, including actress Felicity Huffman, who after pleading guilty, received 14 days in a low-security prison for paying $15,000 to increase her daughter’s SAT score by 400 points.

Some parents apparently paid as little as $200,000 and upwards of $6.5 million to have their students admitted to various colleges and universities throughout the United States. A few of those colleges include USC, Yale, Wake Forest, Georgetown, and Stanford among others.

Honesty is the best policy

Was it worth it? Of course not. You know what is worth it? Hard work and dedication for starters. There are things in life that will not be handed to you. You simply have to work for it. Getting a good ACT or SAT score is one of those things.

That’s why here at Get Smarter Prep, we offer eight different levels of tutoring to help students study for the ACT. We offer an ACT Prep Course, Semi-Private Tutoring as well as Private Tutoring with three varying levels of tutors for both Semi-Private and Private Tutoring. Each student is different, that’s why we like to customize tutoring sessions to fit the student.

Our goal with each student is for them to get the score they need for the school they want by them working diligently towards that said score. We help students reach their goals through strategies and knowledge gained from each session with their tutor, completed homework, and attending Office Hours to ask additional questions.

To find out more about the college admissions scandal, listen to our podcast, Simply Smarter, where Premier-Level Tutor, Caleb Pierce and Marketing Director, Jill Purcell unpack the details of the scheme that rocked prestigious colleges and universities across the United States.

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Adversity Score
May 22, 2019Get Smarter Prep

Adversity Score

The College Board is rolling out an adversity score calculating each students’ level of adversity based on a scale from 1 to 100. They named it the Environmental Context Dashboard.  The ECD is designed to provide admissions officers with information about where a student comes from, but is it an accurate tool?  In today’s blog post, we are going to break down how The College Board is rating adversity and what students and parents need to know moving forward.

Collecting Data

First, let’s look at how The College Board rates students on the 1 to 100 scale. The scale is broken down into two categories: Neighborhood measure and high school measure. Neighborhood measure is comprised of income, family structure, housing, educational attainment, and likelihood of being a victim of a crime. High school measure is comprised of income, family structure, housing, and educational attainment.

The collected data is taken from public data sources, including census data and The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, as well as College Board’s own data, which presents a view of school and neighborhood context for a student. Based on the data pulled for each student’s categories the Dashboard then gives that student a rating from 1 corresponding to the least disadvantaged and 100 to the most disadvantaged.

Adversity Scale
A screenshot of the Dashboard

The thought process behind the adversity score is to show how a students’ SAT score compares to those of other students in their school and provide admissions officers with a better context about an applicant’s neighborhood and high school.

The ECD was piloted to 50 colleges. Among those colleges and universities were Yale, Florida State, Michigan, and Trinity. Ultimately, the hope was to “make it more likely that students who demonstrate strength and resourcefulness in overcoming challenges are more likely to be admitted to college.”

Adversity Score Algorithm

Exactly how is the algorithm calculated? That’s a good question. Only The College Board knows. They aren’t divulging how a student is specifically rated on the adversity scale. Why? Who knows? Maybe it’s because there are a number of flaws within their system?

Since this ECD was brought up to level the playing field of adversity, it would be ironic if everyone knew the rules of the ECD. What if wealthy parents started playing their own version of College Admissions Scandal to make sure their students are admitted to a certain college. If everyone knows the exact breakdown of the adversity scale, who’s to say what people would do to tip the scales. Would you move to a different neighborhood? Switch schools? The possibilities are endless.

In a perfect world, every single student would be able to study hard, have equal opportunity, overcome adversity, and get into the school they want. However, that’s simply not the case. We understand what The College Board is trying to do, but what we don’t understand is how they can generalize every student.  Each student is different and has a different background story. An algorithm isn’t going to calculate their history.

What we do know is that the ACT and SAT are both widely accepted in every region of the United States. There is no regional bias between one or another. It’s also safe to say the ACT hasn’t produced their own version of an adversity score.  So, if you’re wavering between the SAT and the ACT, but don’t want to get pinpointed with an adversity score, stick with the ACT.

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