Your child needs to learn to self-advocate in order to communicate with others, become independent, and grow into a self-sufficient young person. Self-advocacy includes: taking responsibility for communicating with others, speaking up for yourself, knowing how to get help, and being able to listen to others.
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We are excited to share some new updates to the reports in our educator tools with you. If you're a tutor, teacher, or administrator who works with us, you may have already noticed a few changes. If not, you can see them by logging into your account. If you don't yet work with us, and are interested in learning more about what we do for schools, shoot Annie an email.
Highlights
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Scientific research shows that taking practice tests improves learning and memory retention more than studying and reviewing material alone, a phenomenon termed the “testing effect.” Practice tests have also been shown to defend memory against the effects of stress and identify content gaps important in learning.
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We all know that cramming before a test is not the best strategy for success, especially when it comes to exams like the ISEE or SSAT that could affect a student’s academic future. So, when is the best time to start preparing? Short answer: early. Longer answer: at least six to eight months before test day.
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As you research the admissions process for different independent and private schools, you may notice that many schools’ admissions offices mention a holistic review process. What does this mean exactly, and how does it affect your application specifically?
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About the ISEE Essay Section
Did you make it through the ISEE’s four multiple-choice sections? You’re not quite done yet!
The fifth and final section on the ISEE is an essay section. Students are given 30 minutes to write an essay in response to a single prompt. Although the essay is not graded, as we’ll discuss below, it is still a critical part of the test.
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Understanding the SSAT Writing Sample:
For the first section of the SSAT, you will have 25 minutes to produce a sample of your best writing. For the writing sample, you will choose from two prompts: one is a creative prompt in the form of a partial sentence. The other is a question that provides the starting point for a more traditional essay. You should choose the topic that is most interesting to you, and that you feel confident writing!
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The ACT, like many standardized tests, is designed in order for colleges to be able to clearly see the academic differences between the one million and a half students who take the same test each year. In order to have a standard for doing so, the test must be designed to result in a variation of scores.
A common technique to design a test like this is to not only have complicated questions, but also an unforgiving time limit, making it difficult for any student to answer all of the questions correctly in the amount of time they are given.
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The SSAT’s analogies are one of the very hardest parts of the test, especially for first-time test takers. To perform well on the analogies section, students not only must be adept at finding relationships between concepts, but also must have a solid mastery of above-grade-level vocabulary.
The Test Innovators platform gathers and provides data on how many students answer each question correctly, and we were curious to see which SSAT Upper Level verbal question stumped the greatest percentage of students.
First, check out this question – can you answer it correctly?
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Applying for a school that requires the Character Skills Snapshot for admissions? We have the 5 W’s (and the H) of the newly developed Character Skills Snapshot.
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