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Ivy Bound SAT Prep

Philosophies for the Modern Era of College Admissions

The ACT and SAT Tests

  1. The ACT and SAT I are decent tests of skills and knowledge. They are not a great predictor of success after college, but since competitive four year colleges have made them a major factor in their admissions decisions and merit scholarship awards, it makes sense for students seeking admissions at highly regarded colleges to prepare for the ACT and SAT.
    1. ACT/SAT test prep should not replace any efficacious part of a high school curriculum or wholesome extra-curricular activities.
  2. The ACT and SAT tests are a good standard to help in college admissions decisions, given disparities in high school quality and students' choice of courses.
  3. Colleges overweight the ACT and SAT tests because other measures, like GPA, moral character, and school competitiveness, are difficult to compare.
  4. Overweighting the SAT and ACT test gives a great opportunity to high school students who lack strong grades or are at less-highly regarded secondary schools.
  5. Overweighting the ACT and SAT means students with good grades and at good high schools have to protect them with a solid SAT test score.
  6. The ACT and SAT are not measures of fixed knowledge, skills, or "intelligence". (Ask any of our students who have raised their scores 200+ points after two months' preparation.)
  7. The ACT and SAT are coachable. Almost everyone improves with training. The question is how much.
  8. To be blunt, but real: almost anyone seeking a competitive college who doesn't attempt to master the ACT and SAT is unwisely sacrificing long-term fulfillment for short-term frivolity. We say this owing to the number of adults who rue their not having tried harder in high school, and to the trends that elite colleges carry MORE punch in hiring and grad school decisions than ever before.
  9. Though we try to make it otherwise, mastering the ACT and SAT is not particularly fun.
  10. Thus, we don't want to drag out the learning. A few intensive weeks with us over the summer, or once a week for a full semester is all, if you do it right. Consider it a part-time job. ACT and SAT prep is now one of the responsibilities of the college-bound teenager.
    1. We don't drag out class time either. A semi-militaristic attitude towards promptness and missed classes helps everyone. We offer extra help and encourage parents to prompt students to use the Help Line.
  11. The best time to study for the ACT and SAT test is when the student has the most free time, often summer.
  12. Even for good students, the SAT Math is difficult because it asks familiar concepts in unfamiliar ways.
  13. Even for good students, the SAT Verbal is difficult because it asks vocabulary that is often unfamiliar and demands reading skills many students have never used.
  14. All other things being equal, the best time to study is early - the summer before junior year, junior fall, or junior winter. (This assumes student has had a semester each of Algebra I and Geometry by then.) Holding a great ACT or SAT score before senior year makes college decision making easier.
  15. The SAT test is no longer a socio-economically biased test. It does test things related to American culture, but that is the culture familiar to almost every American high school student. Though the SAT test may be unfair to the recent immigrant, colleges tend to assess immigrant applicants by other standards anyhow.
  16. Highly-ranked colleges are inappropriate for some students. We simply want every child who might find it appropriate to have all options open.
    1. Highly ranked colleges merit your consideration BECAUSE JOB RECRUITERS AND GRAD SCHOOLS value that high ranking. Irrespective of the training students receive at the top-ranked colleges, the imprimatur of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, UChicago, Duke, Stanford, and CalTech carries significantly into the market for the first job, for graduate school, and perhaps even for promotions thereafter. Ask recruiters who unabashedly state that they have discrepant thresholds for interviewing candidates based on their school. Ask Nicholas Lehmann, who said in a PBS Frontline interview - "a good school puts you in the way of more opportunity".
  17. For students willing and able to prepare for the ACT and SAT test who do their college search early, applying Early Decision is sensible so long as there is no need to shop among financial offers. According to The Early Admissions Game published in 2003 by two Kennedy School professors and a Wesleyan University economist, at some schools "Applying E.A. (early action) boosts an applicant's chances by 18.9 percent - the same amount that a 100-point jump on the SATs would. The effects of applying E.D. (early decision, which is binding) are even more drastic, giving an applicant a 34.8 percent boost, which corresponds to a 190-point SAT advantage". This was reported in The Harvard Crimson in February 2003. Anecdotal evidence shows that among E.D. schools where the admissions offices are not "need blind" (i.e. they do take need into account), E.D. applicants who will be paying in full have a better chance. When a non-need-blind college takes a high number of non-needy students, it has more money to give to needy applicants in the next round of offers.
  18. The PSAT is worth preparing for only if the student needs a strong score for self-esteem, has a decent shot at National Merit semi-finalist recognition or would be greatly aided by a minority recruitment program. Otherwise, the PSAT is a useless test: colleges do not see your scores, and it is not a great reflector of the ACT or SAT test. (It is significantly shorter, with fewer hard questions, and lacks the essay tested on the new SAT.) We recommend to most students that their prep time target the ACT and SAT tests, and that they not be concerned about the PSAT.
  19. Plan to take the ACT and/or SAT at least twice following study. All colleges take the better score, and most (by our survey 75% of competitive colleges) cherry pick and combine the best Math on one sitting with the best Verbal on perhaps a different sitting. Thus there is no downside to a second test.
  20. The overweighting of the ACT and SAT tests in admissions decisions has caused anxiety and pressure. The best way to alleviate that anxiety is by being a well-prepared student.

Why the SAT Test is Coachable

Ever since the College Entrance Examination Board promulgated the SAT as a meaningful test for evaluating college applicants, its prominent members have publicly announced that marked score improvements are highly unlikely to be achieved by coaching. They point to the fact that few test takers show marked improvements upon taking the SAT a second time. What they omit is the motivation factor. Most of the students taking the SAT test a second time do not choose to undergo coaching in the interim. So it is no wonder that their skills have not embellished. Were the College Board to evaluate the performance of students who take a thorough preparation course, or who diligently study on their own, almost assuredly they would find a direct correlation between study time and score improvements.

I've been coaching high school students to improve their SAT scores since 1987. The College Board should know this too, and all but the most ostrich-like among them certainly do. The reason why smart academics who are part of the College Board and Educational Testing Service (ETS), the folks who develop and administer the SAT, won't publicly admit the truth probably owes to a perception that the SAT test loses integrity if it were determined to be coachable.

I don't share that view. There is nothing wrong with coachability, so long as it is helping students master useful skills and so long as students from all backgrounds are able to take advantage of good coaching.

Here is why the SAT test is coachable, and always will be: the human brain is incredibly fecund. The SAT is about knowledge and skills, and whether age 7 or 70, our capability to absorb knowledge and skills is limitless. Now, even a superficial look at the SAT shows areas that obviously can be improved with coaching and/or practice. It contains:

Each of these six skills is coachable. Applying these skills to the test itself is a matter of recognizing what the test will be asking, in terms of subject matter, format, and level of difficulty. The beauty of the SAT test is that the College Board makes the subject matter, format, and level of difficulty open for all students to see. The College Board publishes 10 previously released tests in a book called "10 Real SATs", and makes available other tests for individual purchase. Though nothing formally prevents the College Board from drastically changing the test, it would look very bad to be selling prep books at $24 apiece that turned out to be inappropriate. Furthermore, several states, New York among them, have passed "Truth-In-Testing" laws which require every testmaker to let the public know of a significant change in format or content of a statewide or nationwide test.

The SAT test is a standard and standards by definition can only change slowly. In order for any test to be a standard, students and their teachers need to know the criteria used for evaluations. That means at least some publication of the types of questions asked on the test. As soon as information is published, teachers can coach towards mastering those skills. This rests on the assumption that the SAT will have some consistency from year to year. It would be very difficult to markedly change the test each year because questions could not easily be pre-tested. Thus strong test consistency is the basis for every prep program.

The current version of The College Handbook (at over 1800 pages "handbook" is quite a misnomer) states that only 1 in 25 students who take the SAT test a second time improve their scores 100 points or more. That 1 in 25 figure belies a significant differentiation: some students actively prepare to better their scores the second time; most don't. For students who are dedicated to improving, a 1-in-25 statistic is no barrier.

Indeed, 80% of our students make 100 point improvements, and these kids are realistically shooting for 150 - 200 point increases. At least one test prep company, my own, is confident enough in the coachability of the SAT to make a double-or-nothing bet with any parent for the full cost of the student's tuition: a 100-point improvement for any uncoached student not yet at the 1400 level.

Parents and students who listen to admonitions that "you can't significantly improve your SAT test score" should at least try an easy antidote - attend a one-time seminar with a good instructor, and discover how much you can learn and apply to a test in a mere four hours. Those 200 point increases take work, over a period closer to 40 hours. But those with high college aspirations will probably find diligent test prep a small sacrifice.

Is the SAT Test Fair? Is it Valuable?

If there is to be a standard that helps college admissions officers assess academic abilities, the SAT is a good one. The SAT is one of the better measures of critical thinking skills most of us appreciate and expect of college bound students.

Vocabulary, Writing Ability, Grammar, Reading Comprehension, Improving Sentences, Logical Reasoning, Spatial Inferences, Data Interpretation, Arithmetic, and Basic Algebra comprise 95% of the SAT. It is difficult to call these skills irrelevant.

At one point the SAT displayed an unfair cultural bias. But the testmakers have changed and no longer are words like "regatta" and "wicket" tested on the SAT. To the extent there is cultural bias on the SAT, it is biased to American culture, a culture that any child raised in this country should be familiar with. The SAT will not test words like "bwana" and "sherpa", words the Nigerian and Napalese student would know well. Given that few Nigerians and Nepalese seek entrance to American colleges, the SAT is properly confining the tested vocabulary to American culture.

My only strong objection to the SAT is the fact that there are strict time limits. Neither academic nor professional life demands quick assessment of the skills listed above. Good reasoners should have the time to make sure of their answers, as any diligent academic or professional would make that time.

If there is one thing I'd like to see added to the exam it would be creativity. But creativity is among the most difficult things to objectively assess. To some extent the Geometry problems in the SAT do assess creativity. Using rules that virtually all test takers have been exposed to, students are rewarded for combining the rules, and/or creating spatial arrangements that help solve a problem.

The reason a nationwide exam like the SAT can and should have importance is that the results allow colleges to assess each student on an equal footing. Grades do not do that, owing to the vagaries of school grading systems, and to the varied populations at the schools. Even the most meaningful, standardized grading cannot replace a broad, equatable test like the SAT. The SAT is a far better determinant of merit than poise, primping, and lineage, the subjective categories the SAT largely replaced.

Those who dislike the pressure that can accompany the SAT test should recognize that in any meritocracy there will inevitably be pressure to excel at something. If not the SAT, then soccer, or thesis writing. Were the SAT filled with trivia, then I would not champion it. (One reason why I despise so many of the state-wide "proficiency" exams is that many of them test esoterics.) But when pressure to excel indeed leads to excellence, with minimal casualties, that is a positive.

Mark Greenstein has taught SAT test prep since 1987. He has taken tried and true coaching techniques and successfully expanded them into a regimented yet fun course of study. A licensed lawyer, Mark believes that he can make a stronger impact as an educator than as an attorney. By utilizing his intensive and systematic course of study and valuable test-taking strategies, today's student gains a valuable advantage. His company, Ivy Bound Test Prep, has helped propel students to 120+ score increases every year, markedly improving their chances for scholarships as well as admission to top-tier universities. His regular contact with university admissions offices helps all Ivy Bound students keep current with expectations. He personally teaches part of every Northeast class, and is especially passionate about spreading study skills and test-taking prowess to inner city students. Ivy Bound holds SAT Prep classes in 18 states. Ivy Bound instructors are primarily college and grad students who have all scored among the top 1% on the SAT, know the test thoroughly, and teach with zeal.