Tomorrow is the Nov. 5th SAT, which I can guarantee is freaking the crap right out of teenagers across the nation. Poor bastards. When I took the Rite of Passage for American High School Students (standardized tests written by pain-in-the-ass adults whose heads are shoved so far up their exit ramps that they can no longer navigate reality), I must say I had a rather cavalier attitude about the whole thing. Almost twelve years of public school had made me quite the badass standardized test taker; I was unconcerned.

Most students don’t have that attitude. To them I advise chilling the eff out, this is not the end of the world. I promise. Shite of a much higher magnitude will befall you in the course of your lifetime, I can guarantee it. So quit your whining and suck it up, kiddos. You walk right in there with your #2 pencils and kick some standardized ass! Or don’t, and head for your 5th choice school. No biggie.

Need some advice on SATs and ACTs and how they may affect your future matriculation plans? Allen Grove is a font of information about college admissions. Here are four of his bits of wisdom:

Low SAT or ACT Scores? These Colleges Don’t Require the Tests
What ACT Scores Do You Need to Get Into College?
Are My SAT Scores Good Enough?
Low ACT Scores? What Now?

Further Reading (my cranky attitude toward standardized tests in general):

Secret SAT Scores
Colbert’s Wickedly True Take on the SATs
Testing Season Begins
An Excellent Argument for Abolishing the SAT
The Newly Unfabulous SAT
Awesome Parent
The SAT Is Not Good
College Admissions Testing: For and Against
January 23rd SAT Results
Calculating Potential
Kaplan SAT Prep Tools on Facebook

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: panic)

Hate high school? Want to get the hell out and be done with it already? Indiana’s got a new plan to have high school last a slightly less excruciating three years in lieu of the standard four. If you like high school (which I kind of did, but please don’t judge me), feel free to stick around and have the full experience and give your teen self time to mature a bit before throwing yourself into college or reality or wherever it is you wish to escape to.

Reasons behind the reduced high school experience: Indiana will save between $6,000 and $8,000 per student, which will then be used for college scholarships; and most college-bound teens are done with their core requirements and have sent their paperwork in to their future colleges and universities and spend most of senior year decompressing and having fun (the humanity!) instead of focusing on their studies.

One might argue that any high school senior who has managed to get him/herself pretty much into college by junior year deserves a year to just be and relax before they start the rat race all over again in college. And then again in post-college real life and on and on until old age does everyone in.

From The Hechinger Report article:

[Indiana Gov. Mitch] Daniels said he came up with the idea after years of asking seniors he met across the state what they were up to and too often being told “not much.”

“I kept bumping into seniors who said, ‘Well, I’m done,’ “ he said. “They’d laugh and tell me they were having a good time. We are spending thousands of dollars on students who are eligible to move on.”
Senior year has long troubled educators and policymakers, well aware that tests required to graduate often are passed by junior year. The National Commission on the High School Senior Year found in 2001 that senior year was “a lost opportunity: a year where we have significant drift and disconnection.”

Solutions over the past decade have trended toward mixing college and high school courses through dual-enrollment programs or early-college high schools, where students can earn an associate degree and a diploma. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: senioritis)

Slacking off now is probably not the best plan. Perfection to the 80-billionth degree is no longer necessary, but there are a few deadlines and dates to be aware of so you don’t hose your future completely.

Allen Grove has a simple but detailed list of everything a high school senior needs to do between now and August/September, when college newbie frosh head for the dorms. Hang in there, follow the list, and it’ll all be fine. And breathe (you have time for that now). And perhaps unclench just a little.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(AP calculus 0/10; atomic to do list)

One family has managed to get it right—or do it well or actively walk away from being total whack jobs when it comes to dealing with their children’s higher education situations or whatever. However you’d like to put it, the Demarees of Bethesda are lovely in their lack of over-control. The parents have raised happy, successful kids. Three of them. Not one has flunked out of life due to the freedom allowed them by their parents. During the kids’ college-admissions-gauntlet years, Debby and Larry didn’t show a single SAT score to a single kid. It’s a good message: this number is not what it all comes down to. Move on.

It has been fully documented that there is no love lost between myself and the high-pressure helicopter parents of this country. I yammer on frequently about them and their crappy parenting skills. Classes are taken and volumes of how-to books are read so they can raise their offspring excellently; then unconditional love is tossed out the window so the whole damn family can focus on getting junior into a fantabulous college someday. The goal to be perfect, loving parents lasts until around preschool admissions time, and then it’s all about higher education for the next sixteen years or so.

Education is a right, and we all deserve to have as much of the learning as we can stand. College is a marvelous place; I’d live there if I could. I am all for higher education. But it’s not life or death, I promise. Relax, give your kids the tools and support they need, allow them their options, and then, for the love of all things holy, let them go. They’re not as stupid as some parents seem to think.

Previous Posts:

Tightly Wound Parental Units
Awesome Parent
What Makes A Good Parent?
Colbert’s Wickedly True Take On the SATs
Have Some Perspective
Media Frenzy Around High-Pressure College Admissions
Testing Season Begins
“Bursting the AP Bubble”
Play-Doh Smeared Credentials
Find Your Happy Place
(Possibly) The End Of Helicopter Parenting

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(freedom)

The parents who will be driving their offspring to insanity as soon as the kids can spell S-A-T start in on the psychotic haranguing early:

Try to stay off of my sh*t list, lesser humans.

Further Reading:

What Makes A Good Parent?
Media Frenzy Around High Pressure College Admissions
Testing Season Begins
Play-Doh Smeared Credentials
Find Your Happy Place
(Possibly) The End Of Helicopter Parenting

Posted by Alexa Harrington

This is what I’ve been saying! Although, Mr. Colbert does it ever so much better.

Previous Posts:

Testing Season Begins
An Excellent Argument for Abolishing the SAT
The SAT Is Not Good
The Newly Unfabulous SAT
Awesome Parent
College Admissions—Looking Good Only On Paper
Media Frenzy Around High Pressure College Admissions
Inequality in College Admissions
Getting Into College Without Taking the SAT
Acceptance
“Rethinking Admissions”
College Admissions Testing: For and Against
“College Panel Calls For Less Focus on SATs”
Wake Forest University Drops SAT Requirement

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(via AssortedStuff)

While high school juniors and seniors are in full-on panic mode because the college application and acceptance process is hitting the fan in earnest for both groups of students, I’m hopeful everyone can manage to remember that college is not a life or death situation. Every adult involved in the life of an upperclassman tends to make it seem as though it is, but I promise you it’s not.

Breathe, people, and read this post in the NY Times education blog, Mom U. Regular columnist, Caren Osten Gerzberg, had her daughter write the post. Nicole is a high school junior and makes some excellent points with regard to the college admissions process and how it relates to the grand scheme of things.

Seriously, you are a single, unimportant speck in the universe. No one actually gives a rat’s ass which institution of higher learning chooses you for matriculation. And in ten years, neither will you. Perspective is a priceless tool.

Further Reading:

Community College vs. University
College Comparison Tool
Awesome Parent
The Coolest College Application Essay Ever
How To (Not) Screw Up the College Apps
Avoiding Six Common College Application Slip-Ups
College Admissions Testing: For and Against
Taking Your Personality Into Account When Making Major Decisions
Media Frenzy Around High Pressure College Admissions
College Admissions—Looking Good Only On Paper

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source*)

Kay M. McClenney, whose day job involves being the director of the Center for Community College Student Engagement, is a contributing writer for the NY Times blog, The Choice, which focuses on college admissions advice. Dr. McClenney just posted part 5 of a week-long series answering readers’ questions about community college.

Guidance Office Posts:

Answers About Community Colleges, Part 1
Answers About Community Colleges, Part 2
Answers on Community Colleges, Part 3
Answers on Community Colleges, Part 4
Answers on Community College, Part 5

Further Reading:

Too Much Enrollment, Not Enough Funding
The Community College Guide
Community College Before the Four-Year School
Community College vs. University

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source*)

Many smart, powers-that-be types in the realm of higher education are having an open-to-the-public conference on April 15th and 16th, 2009 to discuss building a better College Admissions mousetrap. It’s been somewhat biased and lacking over the past few decades or more, and it would be grand if they could make it a little spiffier.

One of the items on the agenda is standardized testing and the good, the bad, and the ugly wrenches it throws into the college admissions works. See? Happy Dance. Progress, forward thinking, and not putting everyone into boxes—all good stuff.

On April 15 and 16, 2009, Wake Forest University will host top admissions officers and leading researchers from Berkeley, Duke, Harvard, Ohio State, Princeton, Texas, Virginia, Yale and other universities along with the director of data research for U.S. News & World Report for the Rethinking Admissions conference. Participants will present papers and discuss the latest research on standardized testing, diversity, creativity, college ratings and how to evaluate success in college. The two-day event will be followed by a public lecture on April 21, featuring Robert Sternberg, Dean of Tufts University, who will report on Tuft’s experiment with essay questions as predictors of success in college.

Further Reading:

Beyond the SAT: Rethinking Admissions
The Impact of Dropping the SAT

Previous Posts:

College Admissions Testing: For and Against
“College Panel Calls for Less Focus on SATs”
The SAT Is Not Good
Wake Forest University Drops SAT Requirement
An Excellent Argument for Abolishing the SAT
The Newly Unfabulous SAT
Awesome Parent
Testing Season Begins

Posted by Alexa Harrington

The National Review Online has an illuminating article up pointing out the illogicality (and foolishness) of putting too much faith in the warped college rankings system. I’ve said about all I can say (using professional language) about the rankings, so I’ll hold back and let Frederick M. Hess and Thomas Gift from NRO speak wisely (and way more professionally) instead:

Some of the schools with higher rankings may truly have improved, but the most significant factor is that two of the Barron’s criteria — high-school grades and percentage of applicants accepted — don’t mean what they did a decade ago. Grade inflation, and students’ applying to more schools than they used to, have juiced the numbers to make students look more qualified and schools more selective.

Grade inflation, dubbed “high schools’ skeleton in the closet” by Lehigh University education professor Perry Zirkel, has been a creeping phenomenon for two decades.

Also, whereas college-bound students used to limit applications to a few top choices, it is not unusual for students today to apply to many more. UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute has reported that the percentage of high-school seniors who applied to four or more colleges increased by more than a quarter from 1996 to 2006 and now stands at over 60 percent….. when students in general submit more applications, colleges in general get to reject more applicants — making schools across the board more “selective” by the Barron’s criteria.

And that is why trusting the evil genius rankings machine is a mistake. Be aware of who’s in charge and make decisions accordingly.

Previous Posts, Venting Language Included:

Acceptance
College Rankings
Unigo.com
New System for Ranking Colleges

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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