Weekly Wisdom

July 1, 2004

Welcome to Weekly Wisdom for Junior & Senior parents, your source for advice, news, articles, dates, deadlines, and anything else you might want to know about the college admissions and testing process. Look around, have fun, and forward this newsletter to your friends if you find it useful.

Weekly Wisdom for Sophomore, Junior & Senior Parents

We’re going to dive right in with the most often-asked question we field: what can you tell us about the NEW SAT? Here’s the lowdown, and our view on how to prep. The NEW SAT will look a lot like the OLD SAT if you popped the SAT II writing test on the back of it. Now, the SAT II writing test has long been the easiest test to coach. This is going to make the NEW SAT even more coachable than the old one. So don’t participate in the general panic; the changes are going to work in your favor.

But what about those students going into their junior year who can take either SAT? Well, here’s the rub: for the most part, they can’t. Soon-to-be juniors can take the current SAT if they want to, but only through January 2005. If they want to take the SAT after that, it will be the NEW SAT. Now we’ve been doing this for eight years, and it seems to us that every single one of our students, ever, has taken the SAT at some point after January of junior year. Which leads us to our advice: study for the NEW SAT, not the old one. The differences are subtle but significant, and we are ready to prep our students for the new version. This advice especially holds if you’re thinking of applying to a UC school – they won’t be accepting the old SAT, so there really is no choice for a well-informed person. Only people who are being roped into more prep than necessary will take both the old and new SAT. Our advice? Let your junior student start the year off with a bang academically and don’t worry about test prep until around Thanksgiving.

And don’t forget, the ACT is always a viable and recommended option, accepted by all major colleges and universities, and students tend to enjoy taking it more than the SAT, anyway.

Upcoming Deadlines

• August 20th – last day to register for the Sept. 25th ACT test
• Sept. 3rd – late registration deadline for the Sept. 25th ACT
• Sept. 7th – last day to register for the October 9th SAT & SAT II
• Sept. 15th – late registration for the October 9th SAT & SAT II
• Sept 25th – ACT Assessment Test
• October 1st – last day to register for Nov 6th SAT & SAT II
• October 9th – SAT & SAT II !

Articles in the News

Senior parents:

Here are a couple of interesting articles:

The first is about curing your Ivy League addiction, written by one of our favorite columnists, Jay Matthews. Read it here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wpdyn?pagename=article&contentId=A353382004Mar30&notFound=true

There is also a very interesting article about wait-listing available at:

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/package.jsp?name=fte/collegerejection/collegerejection

This article is a sure-fire conversation starter, and will be very important down the pike as you start the admissions process rolling.

Ask The Experts

asktheexperts@thepreptalk.com

Q: I’m a little worried about my daughter, who doesn’t know yet where she wants to apply. All her friends seem to have independent college counselors who are encouraging them to apply early. Is my daughter behind the 8-ball?

A: NO. It is normal for students and parents to delay the process of choosing a college. This can be for any number of reasons, not the least of which is an unconscious reluctance to start the long process of “leaving home.” That being said, it is important to remember one thing about early decision/early action plans: while it is true that the acceptance rates increase during these processes, take a minute to think about who is applying. Sure, a higher percentage of people get in, but most people who are “reaches” or “50/50”s don’t apply to schools early. So schools are picking from the crème de la crème, and that makes it a lot easier for them to say yes. Plus, the schools are padding their own yield, meaning they look better because a higher percentage of their accepted students say “yes” to them (because, in effect, they already have by applying early).

So, here’s the long and short of it – if you think you have a decent shot at a school, it might behoove you to apply early because you could be increasing your chances. If you are a reach or maybe a little less than 50/50 at a school, applying early essentially dumps you into a more elite applicant pool than otherwise – probably NOT a good idea.

Application & Essay Tips

Make sure your kids choose one or two “safety” schools that they actually like. The worst possible situation come March of next year is to have to choose a you picked out of a book because the statistics showed your son or daughter would get in, and then find out that he or she doesn’t want anything to do with the place. Safety schools are important, but a safety school that a student would actually like to go to is... priceless.

Featured College

Reed College in Portland, Oregon.