SAT format

SAT/ACTs are important for college admissions. That begs the question if parents should be heavily involved in the SAT prep or not? I have always enjoyed standardized tests because I have always been good at them. However, standardized tests are not fun for everyone. Hence, we have to be careful about how we approach the topic of SAT with kids.
My daughter is finishing up her 5th grade and has six more years before she takes the test. However, I have my own experience with standardized tests and I will use that in addition to the numerous books I have read on this topic, to shine some perspective on this important process.

Responsibility: First and foremost, it should be very clear that the test prep is the child’s responsibility and not the parents’. This is very important because this creates a sense of control in the child’s mind which is very healthy for internal motivation. Fear tactics might work in the short run but for the long run, a healthy sense of self-motivation is a much better alternative. And we as parents, need to let that blossom by not taking on our child’s responsibility as ours. Of course, that doesn’t mean not being involved, it just means that our job is to provide information, exposure, and tools but it’s the child’s job to decide whether he/she wants to use them. There are tons of worldly successful people battling depression and anxiety. They made it to the Ivy League schools but were robbed of their control and creativity by years of regimented instruction. And there are others who made it to the Ivy Leagues with a very healthy sense of self-motivation and self-discipline. We want our children to be self-disciplined, not well-disciplined.
Stress: The neuroscientist Sonia Lupien uses an acronym for stress generators called N.U.T.S.We all agree that a small amount of stress is necessary for good performance but a lot of stress will clearly undermine performance. So, the parents’ role here would be to cut out the large stressors.
N- Novelty: Anything new or Novel tends to create some amount of stress in human beings. For eg. going to the test center for the first time on the day of the test, finding parking, trying to find the way from the parking to the exam room, etc. Another example could be not taking a practice test so the test seeming very novel on the day of the test. Here, parents can help by taking the child to the test center a day or so before the test day so that the child can familiarize herself with the surroundings. Parents can also suggest that their child take some practice tests before the real test.
U- Unpredictability: Unpredictability is also a known stress generator. A child could have practiced all sorts of problems and could have prepared to answer questions in a predictable manner by following certain processes. However, she could get surprised by a completely unpredictable type of question. In that event, children should be able to try other techniques like “plugging numbers in”, trying to eliminate answers which look unlikely and other creative strategies. In simple words, children should know that the tests, like life, are not always predictable and they should be ready with some creative strategies on the fly to deal with them. Also, parents should try to keep the atmosphere at home fairly predictable in the days leading to the test day.
T- Threat to Ego: This is probably one of the most important issues to handle in the context of SAT tests. Parents should have a clear understanding with children that SAT scores are not a reflection of their intelligence and self-worth. Parents should themselves not try to derive any self-worth from their children’s SAT scores. When humans feel a threat and are under stress, their cognitive capacity diminishes. In a wonderful book called The Self-Driven Child, the authors suggest that the kids should be in the predator mode instead of the prey mode on the test day. They can prep for this by listening to uplifting, motivational music and feeling confident and ready for the kill (not literally please!).
S- Sense of lack of Control: Control is fundamentally important to living anxiety and stress-free lives. Unless you are spiritually enlightened, lack of control could induce a lot of stress in you. We talked about control in our discussion of responsibility. Kids should know that they are in control of their future and the outcome of the test and college admissions is partially in their control as well. It’s important here to note that we can never be fully in control of everything but partial control or even an illusion of control helps in cutting down stress. Talk to your child about the fact that doing well at SAT is well within the child’s control. The child should also feel that she is driving the decisions around the test prep and test taking so that she feels internally motivated to put in the hours needed to do well on the test.
At a later point, I will post some specific tips around the preparation material itself. It’s more important to first lay down the psychological framework before talking about the technical framework. So, stay tuned.

What if I told you that all the pundits who are asking you to drown yourself and your kids in activities for college admissions are dead wrong.  What if there is a simpler and a more organic way to cruise through college admissions. I read a book written by Cal Newport on this topic and I totally buy this new philosophy. Buy the book here: How To Be A High School Superstar. Read below to find out how this works.

The basic premise of this philosophy is that admission officers are bored to death by looking at the same kinds of applications over and over again, with lots of activities in different fields. Nobody will disagree that SAT scores and GPAs are important but how should kids approach the extracurriculars. Cal Newport argues that there are three main laws to follow, to position yourself as an interesting candidate for college admissions.

• The Law of Underscheduling.
• The Law of Focus.
• The Law of Innovation.

These laws can be explained with examples.

• The Law of Underscheduling
  • This law argues that there should be plenty of time in High School for unstructured and leisurely exploration.
  • This kind of unstructured exploration has the potential of making you interesting. 
  • He gives the example of Olivia, who earned a prestigious full-scholarship at the University of Virginia. She was exploring marine animal life in her leisure time, which led to an internship at a Marine Biology Lab because a neighbor worked there and she had shown interest. This led to her exploring the behavior of Horse Shoe Crabs. When the scholarship committee interviewed Olivia, they were amazed by her depth of understanding of her research topic and she won full scholarship even when her competition was with other high school students with more activities under their belts. The scholarship committee found her very interesting. 
  • He also gives the example of a relaxed kid, who took a gap year after high school, published a book and became a public speaker at radio shows and universities. This guaranteed his admission at a good college.
• The Law of Focus
  • The main premise of this law is that one should not be distracted by too many activities. This will lead to a better outcome and again, will make you more interesting. Also, one should NOT use the law of under-scheduling to be lazy and play video games all day.
  • Cal gives the example of a boy Michael, who while being in High School, focused on Clean Energy initiative (and nothing much else in the way of extracurriculars) and ended up prototyping and deploying solar-powered golf carts. He made it to a good college easily.
  • Cal suggests that when the kids start practicing “The Law of Focus”, three effects start showing up in their lives:
    • The Superstar Effect: There is plenty of research that suggests that the best beats the second best by big margins in overall outcomes, even if the two are separated by a very small margin in their performances. The Law of Focus helps you in getting the Superstar Effect.
    • Matthew Effect: This just means that Good Begets Good. When you focus on one or a small number of things and get good at it, many other good things start happening to you. An example would be that if you focus on your ability to help other kids at school, you will be naturally selected for many or all leadership roles at school.
    • Countersignaling: This suggests that once you get really good at what you are interested in, you don’t have to talk about your abilities and your work. Others start paying attention to you and your work and hence your side channels and your references do the talking for you (which is way better), instead of you yourself.
• The Law of Innovation
  • The main premise of this law is that the Law of Underscheduling and Law of Focus have given you the opportunity to first explore and then hone skills in a particular area and with the Law of Innovation, you can innovate in that area, which will put you in a much better position, compared to the other children who are drowning themselves in myriad different activities to fill their resumes.
  • Failed Simulation Effect: Cal suggests that your innovation should lead to a Failed Simulation Effect. This means that when people read your accomplishments, it should not be easy for them to simulate in their minds as to how you would have achieved the results.  For eg., somebody won a violin competition. This does NOT create a Failed Simulation Effect since it’s not very hard to understand what a violin player would have done to reach such skill levels.  A lot of practice and a lot of training. However, if you hear that Kara designed a health curriculum for tackling diabetes, which was adopted by a few organizations; that leads to the Failed Simulation Effect.
  • Cal proposes three rules for innovation, for high schoolers:
    • Don’t think up innovations from scratch.
    • Innovators join closed communities and pay their dues.
    • Innovators leverage their way up to the innovation.
  • An example to explain the rules of innovation:
    • Kara’s curriculum for tackling diabetes was a revamping of a previous anti-drug curriculum of an organization where she was working.
    • Kara joined the organization in question and did a lot of small tasks for them (paying her dues).
    • Kara first finished a reasonably important project with full commitment before proposing the revamping of the curriculum project. Hence, she leveraged her way up to the innovation.

The overall summary is that if you follow the three main laws properly- Underscheduling, Focus and Innovation, you will come out with some interesting achievements, which will strongly differentiate you in the college admissions marketplace.

Some parents asked me to list a few private college prep high schools in bay area. Here are some:

• Bellarmine, San Jose
• Harker, San Jose
• St. Francis, Mountain View
• Mitty, San Jose
• Saint Lawrence Academy, Santa Clara
• BASIS, San Jose
• Oakwood High School, Morgan Hill

To help get into these High Schools, there are high school placement preparation agencies like SASO- HSPT.

Of course, there are popular public high schools like Cupertino High or Lynbrook High.

Advanced Placement (AP) is a buzzword among high school kids and their parents. This article is an effort to understand what it means and how can you benefit from it.

Advancement Placement Classes are college entry level classes which can be taken during High School. Why would you want to do that? There are lots of benefits. Listed below are some:

• Making a major choice early-When you get to take a college level class early, you get to decide whether you like a certain area or not early. For eg. if you always wanted to be a Psychologist and you took the AP Psychology class and hated it, you will understand it better if you truly enjoy Psychology or not.
• Increasing your High School GPA- AP Classes are graded on the scale of 5 and High School GPA is on the scale of 4. Hence, if you get an “A” or “5” in an AP class, that increases your GPA and if you are straight As High School student, your GPA will turn out to be greater than 4 on the scale of 4.
• College admissions- An AP Class on your transcript informs the admissions panel at colleges that you are serious about college and hence made the extra effort of trying out college level classes in high school.
• Advanced Placement itself- AP means that when you enter college, you will be given preference for intermediate/advanced classes of the subject whose AP exam you have already passed. The preference is needed because college classes have limited student intake and not everyone who wants to take a certain class, gets to take that class.
• Saving money- High School (if public) is free while college (public and private) is expensive. So, if you knock off some of your college credits in High School, you save money paying for college.

So, how would you proceed about AP?

• Try to take classes in summer after 9th/10th grade etc. so that you can knock off some other classes in place of which you will take an AP class in Spring or Fall Semester of High School.
• Take the AP class in the regular school year.
• At the end of the AP class, you take the standard AP exam through College Board, offered in your High School itself.
• Once you pass the class, the grade appears on your High School transcript.
• Here is the link to understand what colleges accept:
  • https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/creditandplacement/search-credit-policies

Hope this information was helpful!

It’s important to know about the different tests out there because they offer opportunities in some form or other. Take the example of PSAT. Not many people know about it but it is a very useful test for college bound kids.

Kids take this test in their 11th grade. The scores are used for the following:

• Scholarship screening of National Merit Scholarship Program.
• Recognition of Outstanding Hispanic/Latino students- offered by College Board.
• National Scholarship Service- college preparation guidance for African American kids.
• Telluride Seminar Scholarships- scholarships for gifted 11th grade kids.
• Feedback on SAT preparedness and a study plan- since the pattern is same as SAT.
• Feedback on strengths and weaknesses for SAT- you receive a personalized analysis.
• AP Success Potential- you know if you can do well in Advanced Placement classes (I will write about AP later).
• Online College Planning Starting Guide.
• College Connection- financial aid information.

Kids can test twice, by taking the test once in 10th grade and once in the 11th.

Happy PSATing!!