Test Prep and Tutoring

Ever since most schools switched to test optional admissions during the early days of the Covid pandemic, students and parents alike have been confused about whether to even prep for and take the SAT or ACT.  The confusion is totally understandable, but it’s actually not that hard a decision to make once you understand the situation in full view…

The Simple Answer

Let’s start with the simple advice before we get into the nuance of the situation:  if you are someone who is likely to score near or above the average/median SAT or ACT score at the schools you would like to attend, you should prepare for and take the one of the two tests.  Even if it’s not extraordinarily likely but possible, it’s probably worth prepping for and taking the SAT or ACT (for reasons we will explain below).  And lest you read the above too quickly, let us repeat:  near or above the average/median is the key.  If the average for the schools you are considering is 32 on the ACT and you think you are capable of a 30 or 31, it’s definitely worth preparing for and taking the test.  We’ll explain why below!

A Fuller Explanation

Yes, schools are admitting many, many students without SAT or ACT scores.  This is true.  Still, the assumption that admissions officers tend to make is that if you are not submitting a score, it’s because you are not capable of a score at or above the school’s average.  So if you are capable of a score that is in line with what admissions officers are expecting at that college, you should try to demonstrate that ability, since failing to do so will lead to the assumption that you might not be capable of such a score.  

Now, if you are a shoe-in based on your grades, extracurriculars, etc., then it may be that you will be admitted with or without SAT or ACT scores.  And if you don’t believe your final SAT or ACT score will be in the range of what admissions officers are expecting, then it might be better not to waste time, money, and effort preparing for the tests.  But if you are closer to the edge based on your high school grades, extracurriculars, etc., then submitting scores will give admissions officers one more point of confirmation that you have the ability to handle the academic rigor of that school.

A Hidden But Very Important Factor to Understand!

Another factor that is VERY important to understand is that once test optional policies became near-universal at colleges, average/median test scores of the students admitted to competitive colleges became inflated.  This is because most people who didn’t have SAT or ACT scores in the range of what the previous average had been at the schools to which they were applying just opted not to submit scores anymore.  Imagine a school whose average ACT score was 30.  Obviously there would have been many students submitting scores of 32, 34, etc., but also many who had scores of 28 or 25.  Well now imagine what happens to the average when almost no one who has below a 30 submits a score: the new average will increase to something like 32 or 33!

This is why it’s good advice to consider prepping for and taking the SAT or ACT even if you think your final score won’t quite reach the average/median for the schools you are considering.  Even if you think you could land NEAR the average, it is probably worth studying for and taking the SAT or ACT.  Consider the following: It might be that students whose scores are at the 25th percentile of those admitted to a college are actually at the 50th percentile of all students admitted.  In other words, if you added in the data on what the scores would have been for the students who were admitted without submitting scores, that would “push up” everyone else, and someone who was at the 25th percentile might then land at the 50th percentile!

A Couple of Additional Considerations

There are some other factors to think about in deciding whether to prepare for the SAT or ACT…

First, while nearly every school went test optional during Covid, at the time of this writing (2022), the pendulum seems to be swinging back a little.  In March of 2022, MIT announced that it will begin requiring the SAT or ACT for undergraduate admission again.  The dean of admissions wrote a long justification (probably anticipating the fierce blowback that would follow) that is very interesting to read.  The most important point he makes is that MIT just feels like it needs SAT and ACT scores in order to properly evaluate applicants.  The other less obvious but perhaps more interesting justification was that MIT began to view its test optional policy as unfair and misleading to students: if MIT admissions officers really feel like they need SAT or ACT scores from applicants and if they are likely to preference applicants who submit scores then it’s misleading to claim they are test optional since students who don’t submit scores might not realize that they are at a disadvantage.  Fascinating, really!

The other consideration, while perhaps less important to some parents or students, is that preparing for the SAT or ACT is not just about getting great scores on the tests.   Of course that is our primary objective here at Reason Test Prep, but it’s not our only goal.  There is a reason that the SAT and ACT are useful to schools:  the skills that they test ARE important for success in college.  Again, our primary objective is to help students reach their highest potential on the SAT or ACT, but in driving towards that goal we are also helping students become better problem solvers, better critical thinkers, better readers, etc.  And developing these abilities is a worthy goal in its own right.  Of course it wouldn’t make sense to spend the time, effort, and money preparing for the SAT or ACT for that purpose alone, but in the edge cases (ones in which it’s not clear whether or not it would be worth preparing one of the tests), it’s useful to remember that good SAT or ACT prep teaches skills that are beneficial in college and life beyond.  One of our greatest rewards here at Reason Test Prep is hearing from students who tell us that they learned life-lessons that they carry with them beyond the SAT or ACT.

If you read the some of the test prep books on the market on how to ace the ACT Science, you’ll notice a strategy they all share in common: don’t read first.  The basic idea is that you should read the questions first, and then let them guide you to the places in the passage that contain the information you need.  This strategy strikes me as a bit odd: doesn’t it put the student at risk of not understanding what they need to do? 

At its core, this strategy assumes that there can be a difference between how a test is “designed” and how a test should be “taken.”   My argument is that by creating a strategy that diverges from the intent of the test, tutors and test prep professionals are opening the possibility that a student will not see the things that they need to see, since they are going to be focused on gaming the test in the way that they were taught.  (Not to mention that they will learn markedly less in general if they approach the section with this strategy.).  A good ACT Science strategy, just like a good ACT Reading strategy, should have an emphasis on understanding and purpose.

The ACT Science section, like many of the ACT sections overall, has an emphasis on ‘search and find,’ or locating specific data points or trends in the material.  In addition to this, the ACT Science tests whether you understand the nature of the scientific process by asking test takers to analyze different experiments or compare alternate theories and explanations.  

As you can see, if you approach the questions from a ‘no reading first’ strategy, you will not fully appreciate what the ACT is supposed to test.  While search and find questions may be tackled more or less reliably in this fashion, by not reading you are missing the purpose of an experiment as well as its findings.  Even if you get questions right, it will be through a side-stepping of the skill that the test writers are looking to test.  (Imagine pursuing a science degree with this sort of training under your belt?)

But even from an accuracy standpoint, it’s not entirely clear that this is the best approach.  One of the main difficulties in the ACT Science section is being able to understand what’s going on in a passage where you may not understand many of the words, or have a deep background knowledge of the subject.  If you don’t actually read the passages, you will be even more in the dark on what is happening!  Many of the questions will reference compound names, formulas, explanations, etc., and it can be potentially bewildering to the reader to try to make sense of those things and answer the questions.

It’s understandable why tutors and test prep companies would come up with this strategy: the ACT Science has a huge time crunch (even without reading the 6 passages, you have approximately 53 seconds per question).  But instead of trying to sidestep this issue by gaming the test, students should instead be taught how to read quickly, how to pick out trends while they read, and how to pick out which things are more important than others.  If you approach the passages reading like this, you will notice that you can answer most of the questions almost instantly; you’ll understand what things are, and you’ll understand what things should be.

Stat tuned for another post on how to read ACT Science passages efficiently.  Knowing what to focus on and what not to get caught up in will allow you to get the key information in a timely fashion and move on the questions with the advantage of having a broad understanding of the passages and a knowledge of where to look for the specific details needed to answer some of the questions.

More and more of my tutoring these days takes place online, and I often get questions from parents and students alike as to the effectiveness of online SAT and ACT tutoring. So I thought it might be helpful for me to opine on the topic to help preemptively answer people’s questions.

First, let me start by saying that I have been doing online SAT tutoring for nearly a decade (my online ACT tutoring has been a little more recent, but even there I have been doing it for many years).  Before trying it I was skeptical of the enterprise and really didn’t think it could be as effective as in-person tutoring.  But there are ways to do it exceptionally well and there are ways to do it that are not very effective (I have seen some rather shocking examples of that from other tutors and test prep companies).  Actually even some of the platforms that one can use are better than others, so even that matters (for example, I don’t think Skype is the best platform for online SAT or ACT tutoring).  So if you are going to commit to online tutoring, you should be aware of what tends to make it go well and what does not.

I don’t want to give away all of my trade secrets, but the first essential thing is obviously that the tutor and student need to be able to see each other at all times.  I know of expensive tutors who will do online tutoring via phone or in a manner that does not allow the student to see the tutor. I honestly can’t believe that anyone would do this (I can, however, believe that parents and students who don’t know any better would go along with it), but I know of many cases where a student was subjected to this.

Additionally, in my opinion, there really needs to be a shared whiteboard that the tutor is writing on (not typing on but writing on).   I know of tutors who will just have a student look down at a page or book and answer questions there instead of loading the content into the shared whiteboard so that both tutor and student can see the questions on the screen together. It’s enormously useful to be able to make eye contact with the student while he or she is looking at and thinking about a question.  In a way, this is one hidden advantage to online tutoring – with in person tutoring you are generally not looking face to face with a student when they are looking at and thinking about a question, but with online tutoring (when it is done right) you are.  

And the ability to mark up the questions or passage is also essential.  This is another advantage to online SAT/ACT tutoring.   When you are sitting with a student, it’s a little uncomfortable to have to lean over a shared page or book and mark things up, but on the screen you don’t have that problem.  And although I don’t usually have my students marking up the screen as well (they usually do their workings on paper), I have had students use a tablet and write on the screen as well, so we both get to see each other’s workings. 

This actually leads to one more hidden benefit.  Some people just find it much more comfortable to have some on the other side of the screen as opposed to right next to them.  As the tutor, I don’t personally find it uncomfortable, but there is something a little unnatural and intrusive about sitting almost on top of someone and watching as they work out a problem.  Some kids seem not to even notice, but others are clearly self-conscious and distracted by it, so online tutoring creates a little separation that some people clearly find more comfortable.

There are of course down sides to online SAT and ACT tutoring.  Perhaps the most obvious, though not the most important, is that the tutor cannot see what the student is writing (unless the student elects to use a tablet and write on the screen).  The truth is that this is really a minor impediment.  For Verbal questions it is really not much of an impediment at all.  There is very little writing that takes place on Verbal questions, and anyway the job of a tutor is to get at WHY a person is doing what they are doing, and this really comes from probing the student as to the logic of their decisions.  On Math, it is definitely more of an issue, but if you are dealing with a very experienced tutor who not only knows the questions very well but also knows the typical paths that students take, it is very easy to anticipate what a person is doing even when they are not writing on the screen.   And I usually write what the student has done (once they verbalize it) onto the screen so that we can look at it together.  Again, it is not ideal, but the truth is that even when you are tutoring someone in person, it is often difficult to see what they are writing until they are finished because their hand often covers their workings and you don’t want to be leaning over them watching them do what they do!

In my experience, the main issue with SAT and ACT tutoring online is the attention and focus on the student.  This is really the main variable that determines whether or not it will work well. When you are dealing with a student who just doesn’t care and whose ability to focus is really limited, it is very difficult to conduct an online session, and I have occasionally had to stop working with a student online because he or she just wasn’t focused enough and it was clear that the sessions were not as productive as they should be. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it can be difficult to hold the attention of a 16 year old, even in an in-person session, but when you do the tutoring online, it gets that much more difficult. There are just too many potential distractions and this can really just make the tutoring virtually impossible to do effectively.  That said, I have only had that happen in a handful of cases…perhaps I am lucky to often be approached by the parents of fairly motivated and focused kids, but my experience has been that most kids really want to do well on the SAT and ACT and understand that tutoring is very expensive and that they should try to get as much out of it as they possibly can.

The truth is that online tutoring enables me to work with students all over the world, so it clearly has its benefits.  I have had the opportunity to tutor people in places as far flung as New Zealand, Russia, the UAE, and Panama to name just a few, and obviously I would never have been able to reach those students without the ability to see them online.  

Now obviously if I am tutoring someone who lives down the street, it probably makes sense to meet them in person.  But what online tutoring does is allow tutors, and by extension students, to be completely free of their geographic constraints.  So if you have a fantastic tutor who lives down the street, well then great.  But if you have a choice between a mediocre or even decent tutor who is local and a great tutor who you could meet online, there is really no question that you would be better off with the online tutor.   

If you do choose to hire a tutor for online SAT or ACT tutoring, you obviously want to do your due diligence to make sure the person is an excellent tutor and that he or she conducts the online meetings in a way that makes them optimally effective (and again, those two do not necessarily go together…I know of several very respectable tutors who conduct online meetings in an embarrassingly ineffective way). But if you feel confident that the tutor is good and knows how to navigate the online aspect of tutoring (and especially if the tutor comes referred by someone who used them online) then you might be better off with an SAT or ACT tutor who can only meet online than one who you can see in person.