Coping with the College Entrance Exams
The year-round cycle of college entrance exams is truly impressive. Just last week I learned that there are some schools which are now utilizing the SAT college entrance exam writing section as the gauge for freshman composition courses. I’m not referring to large publics. No. On this list were some very small private universities and colleges. Why are we being told that the writing section of the SAT or the ACT college entrance exam doesn’t matter when it so clearly does? What should the students focus on in order to gain their best admission opportunity when it comes to these college entrance exams? And how far should a student go to make the exam convey who they want to be, as opposed to just who they are?
Photo by Cushing Memorial Library and Archives Texas A&M
These are each thoughtful questions and ones that are appropriate to be asking. So let’s consider each. First, the reason we’re told that the writing section of a college entrance exam does not usually count in admission decisions, is because it does not. Sure, perhaps it counts for placement into courses once one has already gained admission. However, the majority of schools use the writing section of the college entrance exams to match up and verify other aspects of a student’s application, such as the writing sample and college essay, or the grades earned in writing or literature courses in high school. These actions do a few things: help validate that a student did in fact write their own college essay, and determine whether or not grade inflation might be rampant at the student’s high school. In other words, if the writing score is extraordinarily low yet the grades are extremely high and/or the college essay is very well-written, perhaps there is a deeper issue at work.
As far as where to focus one’s energy when preparing for these various college entrance exams, the answer, in my opinion, is very clear: the critical reading section. Unless you’re applying as a math, science or engineering major and you’re taking either college entrance exam, the SAT or the ACT, then the math is obviously extremely important. However, for nearly every other major available at universities and colleges today, the bottom line is that if you can’t read, think critically or utilize an advanced vocabulary, college is going to be a big challenge. This is the information that admission offices really want to see. Some are even moving more toward using the SAT II college entrance exams and weighing the AP exams more heavily because of the fact that these demonstrate a greater breadth and depth of knowledge in many ways than do the standard college entrance exams. The best thing to do is to pick up the phone (the students NOT their parents) and call the school(s) that you’re really interested in applying to and ask them what their college entrance exam requirements are and whether they accept any substitute assignments, essays or exams.
As for how far a student should go and how focused one ought to be in order to score the absolute highest that he/she may be capable of on either/any of the college entrance exams, my answer may be vague but it’s practical: if you study for 25 minutes each day on worksheets or practice tests for the exams, a student will be completing one entire practice test almost every week. This adds up to a lot of experience and familiarity with the college entrance exams, if you get started early enough. Now, obviously, I am a huge advocate of being able to do some quality reading on the side from sites such as the Nytimes.com or wsj.com, but if 25 minutes is all one does, each day, for three months leading up to the first sitting of a college entrance exam, the difference will be clear and tangible. It’s better to be consistent than to take some weekend cram course which claims to teach the tricks of the test. Believe me: these college entrance exams favor preparation. Preparation does not happen over one weekend seminar.
And if you have any more questions, just drop me an email. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful holiday season and New Year.
