Anna Ivey gives you ruthlessly practical admissions advice
Dear Ivey Coach: Please settle our family debate about the number of APs my son needs to take in 11th and 12th grades. He was in all Honors classes in 9th grade and this year he has taken 2 APs and 4 Honors classes. He attends a big public high school and he could take 6 APs both years for a total of 14 APs by the time he graduates.
Dear Ivey Coach: We just found out that my daughter’s school is eliminating all of the advanced art classes in favor of offering more music classes (the school has a highly reputed school orchestra and marching band, so music always wins). She’s crushed because art is HER THING and now she doesn’t have any good options for electives. Any ideas for her besides adding a study hall?
Anna recently spoke to the Harvard Crimson about Harvard's decision to drop the SAT and ACT Writing Requirements. Read more here.
Every year, we’re fascinated to read people’s answers to the Really Short Answer questions on college applications.
For 2016-17, for example, we’re seeing those questions pop up on the applications for Yale, Stanford, USC, Princeton, UNC Chapel Hill, and Columbia, among others.
What’s a Really Short Answer question?
Wise words from the dean of admissions at Smith College:
Students have many options. Focusing on the narrow list of so-called top colleges ignores the rich diversity of the nation’s higher education choices — including community colleges, online courses, residential colleges and large research universities.
Are you a non-traditional (read: older) student planning on taking the new SAT (aka rSAT) this weekend? If so, our friends at ArborBridge test prep are reminding us that there are special rules you need to be aware of, and might need to work around asap:
All of us adults who registered to take the March SAT this weekend so we could see the new test received an email from the CB [College Board] today telling us we had been booted to May instead.
Are you struggling with math? There is hope for you, and "hope" is the key word here.
I came across a great post on the Education Week blog that summarizes the findings of a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a big international organization that tracks things like math performance country by country.
Were you under the impression that the College Board and the ACT are primarily in the business of making and administering those standardized tests that drive you batty?
Actually, their real bread and butter is mining students' personal information and selling it for a lot of money.
If you're a high school student (or the parent of a high school student), you probably thought that the ACT is just in the business of creating and administering the ACT test, right?
Actually, they do quite a bit more, and one of their "side" businesses can affect your college applications without you even knowing it. Please read the following advice carefully:
In order to increase its profitability and market share, the ACT has been developing other "predictor" tools to sell to colleges.
As you may already know, there were problems with the June 6, 2015, SAT Reasoning test because of misprints in the instructions on some of the test booklets. It took a little time for the dust to settle and for the College Board to decide how it was going to respond. As of now, the College Board has decided to do the following:
If you are a planner by nature and like to avoid last minute rushes, there’s some foundational prep work your 11th grader can be working on now before crunch time hits in the fall of 12th grade. One of the foundational exercises we go through with rising seniors is to have them create an old-fashioned resume.
That might sound strange at first.
If your child is testing low on the SSAT, PSAT, PLAN, or Achievement Tests in grades 7-10, that’s a sign to start thinking about adding a test prep protocol, or reevaluating one you might already have in place. That’s also a sign to do a full battery of learning disability testing to figure out the underlying cognitive issue.
The goal isn’t necessarily to get accommodations for standardized tests, because not every kid with learning problems has those kinds of learning disabilities.
I'm pre-ordering this book, VERY excited to read it:
Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania The title alone is a great reminder not to conflate your whole identity with where you do or don't get into college (or grad school for that matter). My immediate reaction is this, and it's something I've been mulling over for some time now:
One of the real downsides to the current "holistic" approach to elite university admissions in the United States is that the schools give the impression that they're evaluating you (judging you) *as a human being*.
Happy Veterans Day! As some of you already know, I also help run a non-profit called Service to School, which provides free application help to veterans. Our goal is to help veterans get into the very best colleges and graduate schools as they transition into civilian life and navigate the sometimes strange world of higher ed.
Today, one of my S2S colleagues and I have an op-ed in the New York Times on the subject of veterans' education, the G.
