S24 doing one on one – tutor through a prep company. He loves her.
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S is doing one on one through a prep program in our town. The math tutor gives him homework from the big blue sat book or actual old tests and the. They go over each problem he gets wrong. The English person does the same thing but he hasn’t found that effective so we found another English tutor who teaches him how to apply rules on how to answer questions in general to every question (more like how I believe Princeton review did back in the day). He finds this very helpful so will meet with this person a few more times before the test next Saturday. If he doesn’t get the benchmark score he is aiming for he will stop prep and reassess if it is needed this winter.
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D24 is using Khan Academy, which is free. Hasn’t taken SAT yet, so no idea how much it’s helping.
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We are doing one on one because they can personalize where to focus and dissect any patterns in thinking that may be addressed to increase scores (or running out of time, or rushing etc etc). Plus I have read that with one on one, you can get away with investing less time to prep.
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D24 had a 1070 on PSAT last year. Her GPA is 3.7 UW with a number of honors and attempting first 2 APs this year. She has been doing 1:1 prep for ACT with a local company over the summer, taking the test 9/10 and then we will figure out whether to bother continuing to pursue or just go TO. Everywhere we are looking so far has TO.
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IMO, Khan Academy is a great resource for self motivated kids who want to learn the subject matter. But maybe not as helpful for those that need more hand holding, aren’t great test takers or already know their stuff and are looking to improve scores.
The latter type of student will likely benefit more from personalized tutoring.
Definitely have your daughter take a diagnostic test as soon as possible, if she hasn’t already.
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Yes our s24 falls under “already know their stuff and are looking to improve scores” and that’s why was hoping for 1:1 but lets see.
Dragged D24 to a Colleges That Changes Lives college fair this evening. She was mega grumpy because she wanted to stay home. It was still worthwhile. Reps from I think all of the CTCL schools except for 4 were there. We went to the tables for Austin College, Southwestern U, College of Wooster, & Centre College. Got promotional material, which I’m hoping D24 will read later on when she’s not grumpy. Asked some questions. 1 of the schools (can’t remember which one) said they offer a $500 travel voucher for students who do on campus visits.
I definitely think that Austin College is worth an on campus visit for D24. The admissions rep talked about this 9 week internship program that they have for pre-health students, which is done w/the local hospital. The students get to see and experience what working in various medical specialties is like. D24 temporarily went out of grumpy mode hearing that.
There was a big group of students from a HS in a socioeconomically challenged part of our metro area. They were all there w/1 of their HS teachers and a HS counselor. Made me really happy seeing them be guided through this process. All of the students were dressed in business casual, had resumes printed up. I hope that some of those students seriously consider applying to some of the schools at this college fair because a lot of them have some really great support services available for under-resourced students.
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DH went to Meet the Teachers night at school last night while we went to college fair. He went to presentations for D24’s teachers. Some stuff he shared which I found interesting:
- the Honors Physics teacher said that his class this year is entirely full of 11th graders who will not be taking AP Physics. Said that he knows they all have a lot of AP classes, so HW in this class will purposely be on the light side. D24 has found this to be the case so far.
- the AP Calculus AB teacher said that he has AP Calc AB test questions from the past 10+ years. All of the quiz/test questions during the school year are prior AP questions. Last year, 50% of his students who took the AP exam got 5’s.
- Calculus teacher is also 1 of the robotics club advisors. He said to DH, “Oh, YOU’RE the last_name kids’ dad!”
- AP Music Theory apparently involves sight singing.
- AP English Lit exam involves 3 essays: 1 on a poem, 1 on a short story, 1 on a book.
- History teacher is also teaching a capstone history class for 12th graders called “History of Food.” D26 said, “That makes sense since, after all, Mr. so-and-so is always giving out candy as rewards in class.”
- school gives teachers a $200 bonus for every kid in the teachers’ classes who get a 5 on the AP exam.
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Wow, that’s a huge spiff.
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We are not ready for school to start, but it is starting in just a few days :(.
D24 will be doing the IB diploma, so has a full schedule of IB classes, plus hopefully Spanish. She needs things moved to add that back in. Hopefully that happens Monday.
She is supposed to be working for the SAT next week. It’s been a terrible process. Much harder than it was to get S22 to work on it. But we will see how she ends up doing. She hasn’t taken a SAT or PSAT since 9th grade which concerns me a bit.
Marching band has started and she is having a good time. I’m glad she is doing it again!
I also have a 9th and 11th grader. A few of us it seems!
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She might surprise you and pull put a great score. My oldest had a mid 1000 PSAT Sophomore year and then made really high ACT and SAT scores. A lot of kids don’t put any effort into the PSAT plus it’s a different test.
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My S had an 1150 on the psat and tested in the mid 1400s on his first practice sat before any tutoring, so 10th grade alone may make a lot of difference. We found for him that one on one tutoring was much better than Khan or group since they can pick out the math problems that he doesnt know how to do and show him how to do it. The english has been a little more challenging, but they have taught him some tricks and grammar rules he didnt know. A lot of it seems to depend on how much you read. I totally agree though on TO being a possibility, a lot of the schools he is looking at seem to be 1520 or TO, crazy.
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I hope this is the case with mine as well- 1090 on his PSAT and I am worried he won’t do well on the real thing. He is starting prep classes in December for the March test.
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The other thing that I think is at play for a lot of them is that this is the first real standardized test they have taken. At least by us all of the state tests were cancelled for the last two years and even finals. Practice with the experience is important.
I recommend the Erica Meltzer SAT English books. The material is very dry but good and based on all my research, seems to be the best for English prep.
Also, speaking with our SAT math tutor, it’s a lot easier to improve on math than English. As a sophmore, my daughter got 1370 on the PSAT (730 English and 640 math). But based on her summer SAT practice exams, our tutor thinks she can score mid 700’s on the math part if she takes it right now.
There seems to be a huge jump in math skills betwen sophmore and junior year. You only need algebra on the math but there will be a few difficult problems where pre-cal will really help, especially being able to answer some questions more efficiently in a timely manner.
Our tutor emphasized that confidence plays a huge part when actually taking the exam.
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Yup, agreed, algebra 2 made a huge difference in the math.
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Hello! Just found this thread and have been skimming to catch up. I am excited to go on this journey with you!
I have TWO class of 2024s! S and D who are very different and likely will apply to very different schools. D is already excited about the process, toured some schools this summer, and has a preliminary list. S is not yet engaged, but starting to think about it.
S is taking the August SAT but has done zero prep. He’s taking it as a baseline and I’m thinking if he doesn’t do well maybe it will motivate him. D can’t take it in August but is ready to study for it.
A little about my twins:
S: has a big personality and is very engaged and I think does too much. He’s taking 4 APs this year, is Captain of the cross country team, student council representative, yearbook member, loves the Cricket club, will run V track in Spring (probably Captain), serves as tutor for Chemistry, Geometry, Algebra, and Latin, and has a part time job at a restaurant where he has worked for 18 months now. He wants a school in the south or possibly CA (he hates the cold and hates wearing long pants). Tentatively thinking of touring Tulane, Wake Forest, Miami, UF, W&L, and maybe Vandy/Duke depending on how grades and scores end up this year
D: my artist and serious academic, wants to go into academia eventually. She’s top of her class but it’s a tiny school (not same school as S) and her school doesn’t have AP, just “advanced” classes that they say are taught at the college level. For her ECs, she is on the editorial board of her school’s literary/art magazine, design editor of the school newspaper, does theater and robotics, plays guitar and cello, is on the leadership board at a couple of clubs, is a Prefect for her class, and works as a student tutor for Latin, Geometry, Algebra, and writing. She did a 6 week summer program at RISD this summer and learned she loves art, but doesn’t want to go to an art school. She dreams of Brown, but knows she needs some likelier options, too. Definitely focused on Northeast and mid-Atlantic.
Looking forward to getting to know you all!
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Welcome! Your D sounds like my S, serious student and artist but doesnt want to concentrate in arts! Wish you much luck in navigating this for two different kids at once!
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Welcome!
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