Food for thought for juniors:  

How many colleges should you apply to?

Last fall The New York Times ran a front cover article (click here) describing high school seniors' fears of not being accepted into college. This anxiety has driven many high school seniors to increase the number of applications they submit to as many as 25. The article cites students who believe that they will increase their odds of being accepted (similar to the lottery) if they apply to more colleges.  

At Dunbar, while we advocate that our clients have a list consisting of a range of colleges that they would be happy to attend, we would disagree with this approach for a number of reasons. First, now more than ever, many colleges care about "demonstrated interest" which means that students need to show that they are genuinely interested in each college on their list. This can be accomplished through a campus visit, communication with the admissions office or meeting a representative at a college fair or at a high school visit, and having an admissions interview. We believe this can be difficult to do well at more than 10-12 colleges.  

Second, applying to each college takes time. Many colleges require one or more supplemental essays in addition to the Personal Essay that is part of the Common Application. During their senior year, in addition to time spent at school, participating in extracurricular activities, students are busy completing their applications. Given the demands on their time, what usually suffers? Academic performance and being engaged with their life at high school tend to be the first affected. Because senior fall semester grades matter greatly to colleges, this is not the time to back off from academic responsibilities.

Most notably, however, this strategy does not work.   We believe that it is not in the best interest of the student. With thoughtful guidance, we do our best to make sure that a well-planned college list will provide our students with multiple acceptances.  

Our advice for juniors is to stay involved and focused on your schoolwork and in your extracurricular activities, and don't think you need to apply to 25 or even 15 colleges. Challenge yourself in your selection of courses for senior year and if you haven't already done so get to know your teachers this year so they can write enthusiastic letters of recommendation for you. In addition to staying focused on your academics, we strongly believe that the college search process should be fun and exciting. It's a great opportunity to explore and begin visualizing what the future holds for you.

NEW SAT:

What's changed and how will it affect test-taking plans?

Last March, the College Board announced their plans for a major overhaul of the SAT, which will be administered to students beginning in March of 2016. What are the changes and how will they affect test taking planning for current high school sophomores and freshmen.

First, why did the SAT need to change? There are several answers to this question, but one significant factor is that the SAT was losing market share to the ACT. To address this, the College Board redesigned the SAT to align with Common Core standards (which means it can also be used by states to assess how well their high schools are performing) and will more closely resemble the ACT. In addition to wanting the SAT to become a measure of the Common Core standards, the College Board's goal was to design a test that is a better predictor of a student's college success.

Based on what we know today, the most significant changes are:

1.  Scoring will revert back to the old 1600 scale (vs. the current 2400 scale).

2.  It will no longer penalize guessing (wrong answers). It will score only right answers and thus students will be encouraged to select the best answer to every question.

3.  There will be 4 answer choices instead of 5 for multiple-choice questions.

4.  The Math section (80 minutes now versus previous 70 minutes) will have both a calculator section and a no-calculator section. There will be less geometry and more questions on algebra and data analysis, and pre-calculus and trigonometry will be included. While reading has always been integrated in the math section, there will be more word problems as well as problems with a focus on science and social studies. The emphasis will shift toward a greater depth of knowledge that demonstrates math fluency and conceptual understanding.

5.  Vocabulary will be assessed in context and is expected to include words that are less obscure than those used in the current SAT.

6.  Reading (65 minutes versus 70 minutes) will incorporate graphics (charts, graphs, pictures) for analysis and documents that will ask students to identify lines from the passage to support the answer to a question.   In addition, students will be required to read a US founding document such as the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence, or a text designed to deepen the conversation inspired by these documents called the Great Global Conversation. An example of a Great Global Conversation document cited on the College Board's website is Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. Students are not expected to have prior knowledge of these texts as all the information necessary to answer questions can be found within the document.

7.  Writing & Language (35 minutes versus previous 60 minutes.) will be passage-based versus sentence-based and will test rhetorical skills.

8.  The Essay (50 minutes versus previous 25 minutes and now technically optional, but many colleges will require students to submit an essay score) will ask students to read a passage and analyze how the author makes an argument instead of the old essay prompt that asked students to discuss their opinion about a universal theme or idea. The revised essay section is expected to be a better predictor of a student's readiness for college-level writing.

Clearly, the changes to the SAT are significant in content, but also in timing and scoring, and thus the first few administrations will be part of the transition period. Since announcing the redesigned SAT, the College Board has made multiple changes and we expect that there will be more to come as they continue to receive feedback from various constituencies.

Based on the latest announcements from the College Board and our discussions with numerous test prep companies, our belief is that colleges will accept either the current or new SAT during the transition.

Therefore, Dunbar Consultants recommends that current sophomores (Class of 2017), who will be the first class eligible to take the new SAT, consider the following:

• Ignore the new SAT and select either the current SAT or ACT. Take diagnostic tests of both tests this summer to determine which test format is best for you.

• Then, either stick with the ACT...you can take the test during the second semester of junior year when you have had more time in the classroom and ample time to prepare for the test. Also, there is plenty of test prep material available, which there won't be for the new SAT.

• ... or take the current SAT before the test changes. You have several options to take the SAT in its current format: October, November, December 2015 and January 2016. We generally recommend that a student not take any standardized test more than three times, so plan your test preparation and schedule accordingly.

The new SAT will initially be a work in progress as the College Board gathers enough data to scale the scoring and create a concordance table to compare SAT and ACT scores, and colleges will need more time to understand the scoring. We don't think there is any reason for students to try the new SAT and be guinea pigs during this time.

Freshmen, Class of 2018, will have the opportunity to take the revised PSAT in October 2015 to get an idea of what to expect on the new SAT. However, considering that the new SAT will still be in a period of transition, we may advise you to focus on the ACT. Stay tuned...

(Click here for Applerouth Tutoring information on the redesigned SAT)