4 ms·
No teenager has a passion for SAT prep. I grew up in the generation when no one in my region of the country (the Midwest) had heard of test prep. The students
by tokenadult 11y ago
No teenager has a passion for SAT prep.
I grew up in the generation when no one in my region of the country (the Midwest) had heard of test prep. The students who did best on standardized tests (my friends and I) simply enjoyed reading for fun. Really, it's that simple. Read books and articles that are not assigned by school and that you choose for your own reading pleasure. Students who score high today on standardized tests are still avid readers. Nothing has changed about that at all. This even works for the math section of the tests.
To learn how to score well on a standardized test reading section, the number one piece of advice is READ, READ, READ, and READ. Read about what you like to know more about. Read things that are fun for you. Find books and magazines about interesting topics and read them. Turn off the TV and read. Put away the video game controller and read. Read hard things, and read easy things. Read a lot.
For years, I wondered why it came so readily to mind to write "READ, READ, READ" in all capital letters like that when I give advice on this subject, as I have frequent occasion to do. Recently, I reread the section "Suggestions for Study" in the front matter of John DeFrancis's book Beginning Chinese Reader, Part I, which I first used to learn Chinese back in 1975. In that section of that book, I found this passage, "Fluency in reading can only be achieved by extensive practice on all the interrelated aspects of the reading process. To accomplish this we must READ, READ, READ" (capitalization as in original). Yes, that works for Chinese, and it works for English too. By practicing reading, you gain reading comprehension and reading speed, and speedy reading with good comprehension gives you time to complete standardized test sections with time to spare. That reduces the pressure and lets you relax and think while you take the test. Try it. You may like it, and anyway reading is fun.
- setpatchaddress 11y agoYour knowledge is out of date, I'm afraid. Simply being a geek is no longer sufficient. Teenagers today are competing in a much larger pool of increasingly sophisticated candidates; there's an entire class of businesses dedicated to getting students into colleges.
- morgante 11y agoThat's not true. I just went through the college admissions process a few years ago and being a smart and geeky teenager without obsessive parents is still a valid strategy.
- turar 11y agoWhat college did you get into?
- morgante 11y agoMany. Dartmouth, Brown, Williams, etc.
- MagnumOpus 11y agoNot to be a dick, but none of these are top ten schools, and you don't get the same connections or the same signalling power of being in the top 0.5% of the bell curve by going there. Yes, they do have some prestige, but for good or bad, when an HR rep has to choose between the average Stanford/MIT/Harvard/Yale/Princeton grad and the average Dartmouth/Brown/Williams grad, you know the outcome.
- morgante 11y agoWow, way to be an asshole. First of all, I didn't apply to larger universities but I'm pretty sure I would have gotten in. Secondly, Williams is literally the #1 liberal arts college. LACs are ranked separately from large universities. [0] Thirdly, if you think acceptance rate is the most important indicator (which I'd argue it is for this thread), Brown is #7 and Dartmouth is #12. [1] I'm not really sure why you think they're somehow second-tier. Do you really think the 80 basis point difference in the acceptance rates of MIT and Brown (for example) means that MIT requires intensive prep but Brown will just accept anyone? Give me a break. > when an HR rep has to choose between the average Stanford/MIT/Harvard/Yale/Princeton grad and the average Dartmouth/Brown/Williams grad, you know the outcome. No, I really don't. They're pretty much equally competitive and are recruited to the same prestigious companies. [0] http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-liberal-arts-colleges http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/... [1] http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/data/sort+r_c_accept_rate/sortdir+asc http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/...
- wfo 11y agoI did just fine because I liked to read too, but I talk to younger students and that is something that has fundamentally and seriously changed. Things are MUCH more competitive now than they have ever been, and everybody is studying the system and learning how to game it. People who focus on the things the metrics are supposed to be measuring (like reading) will lose to the people who game the metrics themselves, every time. Putting a college education up on this pedestal like we've done as "the thing you MUST HAVE to succeed" or "the key to any future besides gas-pumping" is like throwing a chunk of meat into a pit of rabid hyenas.