A+ Test Prep & Tutoring Blog

In this issue:

Featured Student: Jessica Savitz

We are pleased to report on the achievement of Jessica Savitz, who completed A+’s one-on-one SAT prep program this spring. Jessica, who is going into her senior year at Council Rock North High School, took the SAT in May and got a score of 1630, which represents a 270 point increase from her PSAT score from the previous fall.

Launching of the New Common Application for College

The new 2010-2011 Common Application is now available at commonapp.org.  Over 415 colleges accept this application both online and in print versions, but it is important to note that not all schools accept it.

Saving Money on College-Related Expenses

Funding a college education is a major expense for any family, yet there are many ways in which students and parents can cut corners on college-related expenses such as books, food, and travel once their son or daughter is on campus. Here are a few of our favorite frugal tips.

FREE Proctored SAT and ACT Exams

Mark your calendars! Due to the popularity of our free proctored exams, we are once again offering free, no-obligation, proctored ACT and SAT practice exams. These exams are open to current students and to members of the community.

Writing is the most complex activity that most students will encounter during their years in school.  If  you stop to think about it, writing requires students to bring to bear a wide variety of different skills, all at the same time. Here are just some of the skills required:

• Fine and gross motor skills for handwriting
• Vocabulary
• Punctuation
• Understanding parts of speech
• Working memory
• Organization
• Analysis
• Making an argument
• Providing support
• Persuasive skills
• Spelling
• Grammar skills
• Research skills
• Reading comprehension
• Editing
• Revising
• Proofreading

And the list goes on and on.  In fact, learning to read and write go hand in hand, and students develop both sets of skills incrementally as they progress through school.

Children should be given a lot of “slack” by their parents as they develop their writing skills in the early years. This means that students should be encouraged to put their thoughts down on paper in a “stream of consciousness” style initially. When children are young, especially in kindergarten and grades one and two, we want to foster their sense of creativity and not stifle it by making writing so daunting and rule-bound that they get frustrated and lose interest in writing. Remember that the writing process is complex and will take years to develop. We don’t want to derail the train before it gets out of the station!

As children get older and have become comfortable with putting their thoughts down on paper we can begin the process of  teaching them to “fix” their writing and improve upon what they have begun. At this point we can slowly blend in the editing and revising skills listed above.

All Kinds of Minds, an excellent education-related website, has a wonderful blog post with suggestions for helping children learn the process of revising their writing.  It’s definitely worth a read.

And don’t forget to give your child an opportunity to do some writing this summer. After all, reading and writing skills can get awfully rusty over summer vacation if kids don’t use them once in a while.

Here are a couple of website which list some great ideas for fun summer writing activities:

Suite101.com

Education.com

Enjoy the rest of the summer. School will be back in session before you know it!

From the Today Show on NBC, a student with a perfect SAT score talks about how he did it, and gives some advice to other students on good test preparation practices.

Some of his suggestions include chewing gum, having a motivational theme song, taking at least 8 real SAT practice exams, and doing your homework and practice exams in a noisy environment.  Check out the video… Preparing for the SAT.

The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, passed in August of that year, requires colleges to provide a ‘Net Price Calculator’  on their websites by October 29, 2011. What this means for families of students applying to college, is that they will now have the ability to determine the actual cost a student will incur if they decide to attend a specific college. Whereas in the past, many families would just consider the “sticker price,” the published cost of tuition, fees, books, housing, etc., now they should have a more realistic idea of what they will actually have to pay for college, after all aid has been calculated into the price.

It is hoped that with this new tool, students and their families will be able to make better informed choices based upon the realistic cost of attending an institution. One potential benefit of this new requirement is that some families may realize that they do not have to rule out a specific college or colleges that may seem out of their price range if they are just considering the “sticker price.” Often it is hard for families to get an accurate picture of what they will ultimate have to pay for college.

Some colleges have put net price calculators on their websites well in advance of the law’s deadline. These include several Ivy League schools, M.I.T., and locally, Albright College.  Families should be aware that the federal government has created a net price calculator template that colleges can use in developing their own versions. In some cases the calculators created based upon this template may be less accurate than ones developed by the colleges themselves, since they may not take into account some of the variables specific to an individual school. Therefore parents should make sure to ask someone at the financial aid office at each school they are considering whether the college created its own net price calculator, and how accurate the results tend to be.

Good luck with your college search!

Two of the major book store chains are offering kids an incentive to read this summer.

Borders has a summer reading program called ‘10 Summer Reading Double Dog Dare.  If your child (any child 12 or
under) reads 10 books and then completes a form and takes it to Borders, he or she gets to chose from one of the books on
the list. What a great program! Here is the link.

Barnes and Noble has a similar summer reading program this year.  Children who read 8 books this summer can choose a free book from their list.  Simply print the passport from the attached link and bring it to Barnes and Noble before September 7th. Here is their link.

Happy reading, and have a great summer!

A recent article in the Washington Post questions the value of requiring students to take the SAT and ACT under time constraints. Should students be given the opportunity to take these exams without having to worry about time limits?

Here are some pros and cons to consider when thinking about changing the policy of setting time limits on the SAT and ACT.

Untimed Test Administration of the SAT and ACT

Pros:

• Decreased time-induced pressure for test-takers
• Results would be a ‘truer’ indicator of student’s ability
• Removes one advantage wealthier students have (being able to get tested and receive the diagnosis allowing for them to receive extra time to take these tests)

Cons:

• Untimed testing has the potential to make it easier to cheat, since some students will finish the test while others are still taking the test
• Due to this increase in the potential for cheating, tests will need to become more secure, which will increase the costs to administer, and will ultimately increase student testing fees
• A possible unintended consequence would be that some students would spend much more time than necessary sitting for the test, due to an erroneous belief that the extra time would improve their score.

Interesting food for thought!

In This Issue:

Making the Most of Summertime College Visits

During the summer many rising high school juniors and seniors hit the road with their parents to visit colleges. Here are some tips for making the most of these visits.

Better Communication with Your Teen

John Scardina is a certified school psychologist, child development expert, and parent educator.  In this interview, he reflects on ways to improve communication with our teenage children.

Tennis Anyone?

We are proud to announce an exciting new partnership between A+ Test Prep and Tutoring and Upper Dublin Sports Center (UDSC) in Ambler, PA!

Sign Up for Summer Tutoring and Save $110!

Participate in all of your favorite summer activities AND maintain and even get a leg up on academic skills and test preparation! Offer Expires June 15, 2010.

Sanjoy Mahajan, an engineering professor at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) can come up with an extremely close estimate of almost any quantity you can think of. For example, do you know how much money a Brinks truck can carry? Or the annual budget for the State of Delaware? Professor Mahajan discusses how he comes up with spot-on estimates when starting with almost no information. Click here to read the full article, in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In This Issue:

What are the SAT Subject Tests and What Do I Need to Know About Them?

SAT Subject Tests (formerly known as SAT II’s) are one-hour, multiple-choice exams that are designed to measure your knowledge and skills in particular subject areas.

Sign up for Summer Tutoring Now!

Summer is a great time to improve your academic skills or prepare for an upcoming exam. We offer tutoring all summer in a wide range of subject areas, test prep, and help with your college admissions essays.

A+ Teams up With New Jersey Y Camps for Summer 2010

This summer A+ Test Prep and Tutoring is teaming up with New Jersey Y (NJY) Camps to provide 3 one-week PSAT preparation sessions at their teen camp location in Milford, PA.

Featured Student: Fred Kucherovsky

Fred’s SAT score increased almost 300 points from his October PSAT scores!

Steven Strogatz, a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University, has a wonderful series of essays in the Opinionator section of the New York Times website. Strogatz attempts to explain some of the more fundamental concepts of mathematics in terms understandable to those of us not pursuing our Ph.D.s in the subject.

These essays cover ideas as fundamental as the concept of the number, using a Sesame Street video to help illustrate the concept, on up through mathematics, to his latest posts on the Calculus concept of limits. This is a wonderful series of essays and I look forward to even more to come!