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Top 10 Reasons The New SAT Will Still Be Tough
The College Board recently announced that the 2016 SAT will have several important changes. While on the surface some of these changes may seem to make the test “easier,” here are some reasons why you’ll still need to practice, practice, practice. 10. You may have heard that the College Board is changing the SAT to get rid of obscure “SAT words” and thought that meant you could throw away all your flash cards. Think again! There’s no magic list of words that won’t be tested, and they will still test on words that will come up repeatedly in college work, such as “empirical,” or “synthesis.” 9. Along the same lines, each SAT will feature historical documents for your analysis, such as letters by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Declaration of Independence. Do you know what “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes'” means? That’s a direct quote from the Declaration of Independence, which also features vocabulary such as “endowed,” “usurpations,” and “arbitrary.” 8. The penalty for wrong answers may be gone, but you’ll still need to focus and manage your time wisely to get as many questions right as you can. 7. The days of finding the answer for a reading comp passage right in the text are potentially gone. Instead, questions will feature graphs and additional information you’ll need to use to analyze an issue and come to a conclusion for your answer. 6. There will be more diverse reading passages from different subjects, including more of a focus on science, that are designed to reflect college-level work. 5. The math section will involve multiple steps to find a solution, and the questions will be presented in real world contexts. Get ready for a whole lot of word problem practice! 4. The College Board announcement stated that the new exam will focus on three main areas in the math section: Problem Solving/Data Analysis, Passport to Advanced Math, and the Heart of Algebra. If that doesn’t sound very straightforward, you’re probably right! The test preparers want to see your familiarity with subjects such as ratios, percentages, proportions, linear equations and systems, and complex equations. 3. The Writing portion has been replaced by the new Essay section, which is designed to mimic a college-level writing assignment. You’ll need to analyze the text, come up with an argument, and support with evidence from the passage using clear, persuasive sentences. The essay is currently optional, but some schools may require it. 2. On the bright side, one change that won’t make the exam harder in and of itself is that it is now offered digitally as well as on paper. However, even if you’re more comfortable taking an exam on your computer, you’ll have to make the judgment call of whether it’s worth the risk of tech issues. 1. It’s still the SAT! It’s a 4+ hour long exam, with math problems, reading comprehension, ands writing that is a large part of your college application process. None of the new changes change the fact that you’ll need to work hard and practice to get your best score. |
Top 10 Reasons The New SAT Will Still Be Tough
March 26th, 2014Finding Your Dream College
March 18th, 2014- Kind of college- Are you looking for a two year or four year school? Public or private?
- Location- Do you want to be able to do your laundry and eat dinner at home, or only fly home for winter break from a whole new environment?
- Size/Setting- How do you feel about being at a school where everyone knows your name? Or would you rather find your niche in a large, diverse student population?
- Life Outside the Classroom- Do you see yourself in a fraternity or sorority? How important is school spirit to you? Do you want to be able to go to “the big game” every weekend? What about volunteering, or an active student government? What kind of balance are you looking for between being academically challenged and having a fun-filled social life?
- Major- If you’re not sure what you want to do with the rest of your life, or want a lot of variety before you work on a major, don’t worry! That’s totally normal. If you want a specialized degree, such as engineering, it’s important to find schools that have the right program for you.
- Cost- This is one of the most important factors in choosing a college. Talk with your parents about college costs, look into applying for financial aid, and research different scholarships.
How to pick a major
December 10th, 2012So long high school! After countless pep rallies, homecomings, track meets, debates, field trips, assemblies, and a prom, you are now ready to become the proud owner of a shiny new diploma and apply for college. But how on earth will you choose a major? After all this is THE most important decision of your life. Your entire future rests on this one choice. And once a decision is made, it can’t be unmade…right? Wrong.
Undeclared. Let’s take the pressure off! Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to know what you want to do with the rest of your life by your eighteenth birthday. Many students enter college with an undeclared major. If you have a variety of interests or if you lack direction completely, this is the major for you. All first and second year students are required to take classes across multiple subjects. This is going to help a lot! Once you find a topic that is especially interesting to you start taking more classes in that subject. Before you know it you will have a major (or two) emerging.
Declared. You might already have an idea of what you want to study. Maybe you are passionate about cooking, or science, or Spanish. In that case, jump into those classes with both feet! On the other hand, you might pick something because you have a vague interest in it or because you think you can get a stable career in that field. You might end up loving it or you might hate it. Not to worry if it’s not the right path for you. Many students change their major a couple of times before graduation. Not only that, but several majors have overlapping course requirements. That means that multiple classes can be taken that help narrow down options without having to spend excess time (or money) in college.
Employment. After graduation there’s no guarantee that you will actually work in the same field that you received your degree in. But a college degree says more about you than “student is proficient in math”. It shows that you are responsible, capable, teachable, and intelligent. Simply having a degree, no matter what the major, will give you a marked advantage when it comes to getting a job. The 3 most important things to remember as you enter the college years are study hard, play hard, and change the world. Good luck grad!
Leaving the Bubble of Home
December 5th, 2012
One of the biggest decisions senior’s face in the waning stages of High School, is the decision of where to go to college. Some kids have dream schools, schools they have had their heart set sense the moment the concept of college was introduced. However, most kids do not really know what school they really want to go. We make lists of what schools have fun and eventful sports programs, offer the major we think we want to achieve, and look at where our friends are applying. The best advice I can give to a soon-to-be and undecided college students is to think outside the “box.” Take advantage of these 4-5 years of college and go someplace new. Look at schools in places you never though you would ever go. Life outside your hometown is different. There are many many new and different experiences that you will never experience at home. Some you may hate, and others you may love.
I went to school to a far far away place in Northern California at Davis. Even though Davis is in California, anyone who has been knows that Northern California is not the same as Southern California. Looking back I am very great full to have logged a few years up there. I love LA, and Davis is far from the coastal cities I grew up in. But I learned a lot from time I spent there. Many of the things I did for fun were things I never heard of back home. The people and food were new and different too.
So, leave home for college. Go see and live in a place totally new from what you have known growing up. When thinking of potential colleges, look at a map. Look at places you have never been but want to go to. There is a whole lot to be learned while in college outside of the classroom.
Should I Choose a Major Before Submitting My Application?
December 4th, 2012Most colleges are looking for particular students with particular sets of skills, but not all them. It is important to research what your top choices are looking for. Stanford is looking for different types of students than is Berkeley, for example. Many universities are eager to accept students that fit within a narrow range of strengths and weaknesses which means that often times, they want to see your strengths articulated into the major that you’ll be studying. If you are quite strong in a particular area, you will be showing your potential university that you are committed to that strength and show a particular passion in that field of study. At the end of the day, universities want to see dedication, diligence, and passion based on your strengths in high school. Choosing a major upon applying to a university is just one more way to “brand” yourself as a unique student with a real drive for the subject matter.
However, some statistics show that around 80% of college students change their majors, and on average, a college student will change their major THREE TIMES during the course of their college education. While this may be “normal” it is one of the main reasons college is taking students closer to five years to graduate. When we get to college each major has specific classes that we need to take, so if we have been studying Psychology for two years and switch to Marine Biology, we are going to have to take a whole new set of classes, rendering the majority of the classes we took for Psychology useless. While we may have enjoyed the classes we took, we are now two years behind in our Marine Biology coursework. So in order to get the most for our time and ourselves it is most efficient to pick something we will love to do and stick with it.
If you are not so lucky as to know what you want to study right when you get accepted, there are important strategies that can help us use our time efficiently and not waste priceless time on taking unnecessary classes. Many undecided students tend to study Psychology and Business, both very popular choices with a large range of opportunities in the future but they may not be what we really want to do. Here is one strategy that will work well:
There are two main types of classes in college, General Education and Major Specific classes. General Education classes are usually entry level and have few or no prerequisite classes (classes you need to take before you can take your major class). While Major Specific classes usually build on themselves so they take more investment time wise. If we do end up going into a major we are unsure about, it is best use of our time to take mostly General Education classes, and perhaps one major class our first semester. This way we get our General Education classes (the classes we have to take no matter what) out of the way while still getting a little taste of how we like the major.
If we pay close attention to the classes, we may find there are some major classes that overlap with General Education, these would be best to start your Freshman year with because they give us a taste of the major while also chipping away at the General Education classes we have to take anyway.
But again the number one thing you should consider before you choose your major is “What do I LOVE to do” because in the end that is what will make you happiest, and when you are happiest you will perform your best. Good Luck future of America!
What Colleges Care About Beyond Your GPA and SAT Score
November 14th, 2012
Ask any high school student, or their parents, what they consider the most important things to work on when applying for college and most of the time the answer is GPA and SAT scores. While your high school GPA and SAT scores are extremely important factors in getting into college, in many cases, there exists a 3rd factor; a factor can get you into your reach schools or get you rejected from target schools. That important 3rd factor is your extracurricular activities. It should be stated that different school systems weigh extracurriculars different than others. For example, UC’s put a lot of weight into an applicant’s extracurricular activities, while the Cal-State Schools (SDSU, Cal Poly, long beach, etc) essentially do not. Although if you intend on going to a Cal-State, you should still invest time into extracurricular activities in case you change your mind about your college destination.
I cannot emphasize how important these application builders are, as they act as a double edged sword: having many activities significantly helps you, while a lack of them significantly hurts you. Colleges want to accept unique well-rounded students. They prefer not to fill their student bodies with mundane cookie cutter students. They want their student body to be diverse and full of students that have experienced more of the world than exists outside the schoolroom. Extracurriculars demonstrate this to colleges. They show leadership skills, your personality, and other qualities not measured with test scores and grade averages. They can take a student with less than average grades, and transform him/her into an interesting and accomplished applicant. As I stated earlier, the reverse is true. Just as a lot of strong extracurricular activities can say a lot of about you, so can a lack of them. Having no strong extracurricular activities makes you appear dull, boring, and uninspired; especially when you consider the fact that many of the other applicants you are competing with have them.
The best part about extracurricular activities is that they are abundant and easy to get involved with. They range from holding positions in clubs and other organizations, to volunteer work, to sports outside of school, to community events, and in many cases to your own hobbies. Do you feel particularly strong about an issue, subject, or cause? Chances are there is an organization you can get involved with that addresses it. When preparing for college apps don’t get too obsessed with your GPA and test scores that you neglect the 3rd piece of the application pie: extracurricular activities.
The Common Application revealed
November 13th, 2012With all of the questions surrounding the college application process, the Common Application is designed to alleviate confusion and help streamline the application process. With all of the follow up concerns we field at Study Hut about the Common App, it is clear that there is still plenty of confusion regarding how this process works.
The Common Application membership association is a non-profit organization that allows first-year and transfer students to apply to over 500 colleges and universities using one simple application. For nearly 35 years this organization has supported countless students in applying to a variety of schools including private, public, bi-coastal, Midwestern, and even international.
Applications are available in both online and print versions to member institutions that promote student access to education through using a well-rounded evaluation and selection process. With the help of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) students have been provided with reliable services that promote success in the college application process.
In more simple English, certain colleges and universities accept the common application in place of an application specifically to that particular school. This is advantageous to students; it allows students to fill out the common application, including the essay and short answer questions, and then select which schools to apply to. Any student or parent who has ever been through the arduous college application process knows how tedious it can be to fill out application information over and over and over. With the Common Application, students can apply to any participating school by simply clicking on that school and selecting it for application. Obviously, there is a cost for this, as there will be will all college applications, but it is no more costly than any other application. With the Common App, students can focus on making sure that their essays and responses are perfect, and then move on to focus on the bigger, more important question: what college do I want to attend?
College Essay Help
November 8th, 2012Study Hut Tutoring is happy to help and assist with every student’s college essay from start to finish. College essays, or personal statements, are weighted heavily. Students who have recently graduated from Mira Costa High School, El Segundo High School, Redondo Union High School, Palos Verdes High School, and Peninsula High school received acceptance letters into their top choices after receiving one-on-one college essay help from Study Hut Tutoring.
We are professionals in this department– not only having earned acceptance into top tiered universities around the country ourselves, but we are trained by current officers that sit on the Boards of Admissions at schools like UCLA. All of our college essay specialists have had students who have successfully met their goals. When student’s show up unannounced several weeks after their last session, with their acceptance letters in hand, it tells us we’ve done a good job executing. The proof is in the pudding!
We know what universities are looking for, to say the least. We know that admissions officers are incredibly busy around this time of year. They are the gatekeepers to their prestigious universities. They are responsible for admitting and denying tens of thousands of applicants. Many admissions officers read the essay first, and then decide if the rest of the application fits with that persons credentials.
The first step to writing a strong college essay is the discovery process. We do this to avoid trite topics such as, “The reason I want to be a veterinarian is because when I was little my dog was hit by a car.” As true as that may be, universities have seen that formula played out thousands of times. We want to avoid, at all costs, an overdone essay.
How to Write the College Essay
November 5th, 2012As anyone who has ever attempted to write an essay knows, the hardest part is always the first sentence. However, when writing your college application essays, the difficulty often does not stop there. The essays for the common application may seem trite and cliché to many students, which makes them nearly impossible to write about. Furthermore, it is incredibly difficult to write an essay that highlights your attributes without sounding feverishly self-promoting. For some schools, the supplemental essays can be even more challenging, with prompts that seem obscure or overly complex. No matter what the topic, there are a few valuable tips for mastering the college essay that can help any struggling writer.
The most important aspect of the writing process is picking a topic. To begin with, it is important that the story be true. It is almost impossible to create genuineness out of a fabricated story. Choose a story that shows improvement or perseverance, even if you have to admit to being sub-par to begin with. It is exponentially more impressive to see upward trend than stagnation. Secondly, choose a topic that demonstrates your character; while great achievement is always impressive, great achievement in the midst of strong values and ethics is more impressive. For instance, use an example in which you were forced to make a choice and show how your decision reflected your morals and priorities. However, it is worth noting that a great deal of the value of the essay is based on writing style and ability: no one assumes that people around age seventeen have had a plethora of life-altering encounters. Thus, it is certainly possible to make up for a less than flamboyant and awesome story with your ability to artfully recount the story.
The next important consideration in drafting the college essay is length. There truly is skill in conciseness. The guidelines for the common application ask for two essays totaling no more than one thousand words between them; that means stick to approximately five hundred words per essay. If you use the majority of your word allowance on one essay, you may end up shortchanging the other. Conversely, using too many words on an essay may become redundant. Part of the limitation is about showing that you can tell a brilliant story in a small number of words. Anyone can tell a story with unlimited space; it takes much greater skill to tell it quickly by choosing your words wisely.
Lastly, it is important to meticulously edit your paper. Grammatical mistakes can take a beautiful essay and reduce it to an unsavory mess. You should pay careful attention to structure and mechanics whenever writing an essay.
The college application process can be intimidating and scary for many students. However, with some simple planning, it can prove an easy task. When you get stuck, walk away for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes. If you follow these steps, you will be on your way to a great essay!
Helping with the College Application Process
October 17th, 2012The overall majority of high school students, if not all, have the ultimate goal to complete high school and move onto the bigger world of colleges and universities. Now we are in the major season of application process with students taking final SATs, narrowing down schools and writing entrance essays. With so many things that go into getting into college, choosing a school out of the over 2,000 universities in America and almost 4,700 universities worldwide, the daunting and often times confusing application process and trying to find scholarships, many students often end up rushing through applications at the last minute or not even going through the effort. However, it does not need to be that way – with the proper preparation and effort, the process can be a breeze!
I recommend having a student start the application process around the summer before their senior year in high school. Generally the student has lots of free time to surf the internet and read through lots of information about different school, which is the first and most important step in the process: deciding which schools to apply to out of the thousands to choose from. The best way to do this is scour the internet for information, visit the campus and talk to friends and relatives that have attended the schools they are interested in. After this preliminary survey, try and narrow the potential schools to a list of 25-30, then go into a full depth research of those schools and start eliminating the ones that fall out of favor. From this new research, try and get to between 10-20 schools. Then you will want to visit these schools to narrow it down to your final 7-12 schools to actually send applications to.
The next step after choosing the schools is to actually apply! This process may seem daunting as almost every school has a different application process and requirements. The solution to this should have come from the earlier research done from choosing which schools to apply to: Application deadline, online application process, essay and letters of recommendation requirements.
The final step after applying to these schools is hopefully finding some free money to pay for the schools since we could all use some free money. Often times high schools have school programs or scholarship binders to send to local businesses, but there are countless scholarships for almost anything and everything you can think of, and all this requires is more research.
However, if after all of this you still have no clue – never fear! All of us at the Study Hut have gone through the process of applying ourselves, and have helped many other students get into their dream school. We offer a comprehensive College Application program to help with every application need, be it writing personal statements, getting scholarships, or even just filling out the applications. Time is running out – many deadlines are in November and December of this year, so let’s get a move on!
College Application Packages
