by Erica L. Meltzer | Dec 22, 2016 | Blog, College Admissions, Parents, Students
Ah, Christmas break… A whole week to sleep late, hang out with your friends, and stuff yourself with leftovers. Unless, of course, you’re a senior trying desperately to finish your college applications. Even if your main essay is done, you might still have a bunch of supplements waiting to be done. And if that’s the case, then chances are some of those supplements include the perennial “why this college?” question.
In some cases, you may not be able to answer entirely truthfully (I needed another safety school, my parents are making me apply), but even assuming that you actually want to attend most of the schools you’re applying to, this question can be hard to get started on.
If that describes your situation, this post is for you. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Dec 18, 2016 | Blog, Parents, The New SAT, Tutors
Reuters’ Renée Dudley has come out with yet another exposé about the continuing mess at the College Board. (Hint: Coleman’s “beautiful vision” isn’t turning out to be all that attractive.)
This time around: what will happen to the new supposedly Common Core-aligned SAT if Common Core disappears under the incoming, purportedly anti-Core presidential administration?
As Dudley writes: (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Dec 14, 2016 | Blog, College Admissions, Parents, Students, Tutors
If you’re a senior still in the throes of writing your college essay, or if you’re a younger student/parent of a younger student trying to get a jumpstart on the college admissions process, you may be in possession of book entitled something like 100 College Essays that Worked, or 50 Successful Harvard Essays.
In general, I have no particular bone to pick with such compilations. I think they often provide a helpful glimpse at a variety of topics, styles, and structures that successful applicants have used in their essays.
Just as importantly, they offer clear reassurance that students need not demonstrate they have imbibed a thesaurus in order to gain admission to the college of their dreams.
So yes, for a student who isn’t sure how to get started, these books provide a highly useful service. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Dec 10, 2016 | Blog, Parents, Tutors
A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a colleague who teaches high school, and she told me about a recent incident that had left her thinking.
One of her students was enrolled in a dance class (in-school) that was holding an open house, and the student invited my colleague to attend. As my colleague watched the class, she became aware that the atmosphere was one of calm and focus. The students were disciplined and respectful, yet the teacher and students seemed relaxed, and the students were clearly enjoying the class.
My colleague was struck by the contrast between that atmosphere and the far more tense atmosphere of her own academic classes, in which she alternately had to plead with, threaten, and cajole students who consistently seemed surprised if not downright annoyed when she expected them to so much as pick up a pencil and copy a couple of sentences from the smart board.
How, she wondered, could this possibly be happening in the same school? (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Dec 6, 2016 | Blog
After my recent post about the College Board’s announcement that students already receiving accommodations in school would automatically be granted equivalent accommodations on all College Board exams beginning on January 1st, 2017, I started wondering whether/how the test-taking population receiving extra time, etc. had changed in recent years.
As I was browsing the web searching for information, I came across an interesting 2006 article by Jed Applerouth of Applerouth tutoring.
Written just after the previous round of changes to the SAT (2005), the article details the effects of the College Board’s (forced) decision to stop flagging the scores of students who had received accommodations. Unsurprisingly, requests skyrocketed (the percentage of students taking the SAT with accommodation grew about sixfold between 1988 and 2004), and the CB responded by granting accommodations more sparingly. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Dec 4, 2016 | Blog, Issues in Education
The College Board has announced that beginning January 1, 2017, students who receive accommodations in school will automatically receive equivalent accommodations for all College Board exams (PSAT, SAT, SAT II, AP).
According to the Washington Post:
Early this year, as more states began to adopt the SAT or the ACT as a required test for high school students to take, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division began to look into complaints that the testing organizations were too stingy with accommodations to eligible students, Education Week reported.
In a new statement, David Coleman, president and chief executive of the College Board, said: “Educators, students, and families have asked us to simplify our process, and we’ve listened. The school staff knows their students best, and we want to cut down on the time and paperwork needed to submit a testing accommodations request.” (more…)
