宝博体育 Education Downers Grove now serving the community

宝博体育 Education Downers Grove is now open! Our newest center in Downers Grove, IL is now open and ready to provide students with the expert help they need to succeed! For over 20 years, we’ve been working with students on their journey towards attending the school of their dreams. We’re bringing our test prep, tutoring, and college admissions counseling services to Downers Grove and the surrounding community to produce the great results tens of thousands of our students see across the country.

宝博体育 Downers Grove Stands Out from the Rest

What sets 宝博体育 Education apart from other tutoring centers? You’ll be impressed.

  • Small student-to-teacher ratio.At 宝博体育, you’re not just a number. Our small group sizes guarantee that you’ll get the attention you need.
  • Personalized study plans.We start with an academic assessment. That way, we can sit down with you and your parents and design a study plan that only considers your strengths and weaknesses, and what we can do to ensure your success.
  • Exceptional tutors.We only hire tutors who score in the 95th percentile in their field of expertise and put them through a rigorous training program. They really enjoy working with students. With lots of tutors on staff, you have oodles of experts at your fingertips.
  • College admissions guidance.Consider us your second guidance counselor. You and your parents can stop by anytime to learn and ask questions about the sometimes-confusing college admissions process.
  • Monthly progress reports.You won’t get lost in the fray. At 宝博体育 Education, we confer with you and your parents at least once a month to make sure you are progressing according to the study plan.

Start Today with 宝博体育

At 宝博体育 Education, we offer K-12 tutoring programs; test prep for the SAT, ACT, PSAT, AP exams; and college counseling services. We’re here to help get you into the school of your dreams. Our expert tutors are ready to create a custom study plan for you, so stop by 宝博体育 Education of Downers Grove today, or call us.

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ACT Study Guide – A Simple Step-by-Step Approach

After much deliberation (or perhaps none at all?), you’ve decided to take the ACT. Now what? We’ve put together a simple step-by-step ACT study guide to help maximize your score on test day.

Step One: Get to Know the Test

Sun Tzu said, “Know your enemy.” While the ACT isn’t the world’s coolest nemesis, it’s still a challenge to be defeated, so to study for the ACT, you should know the test inside and out. Check out our introduction to the ACT to learn about the test’s format, content, and scoring.

Step Two: Find Your Baseline

It’s hard to figure out how much work you need to do if you don’t know where you’re starting from. Take a full-length practice test under timed conditions to assess your current ACT skills. Bonus: Every practice test you take—including this first diagnostic one—takes you closer to your goal score. Read more about why practice ACT tests are key to boosting scores.

Step Three: Figure Out Your Score Goals

Now that you know where your ACT prep journey is starting, you need to decide where it should end: what’s your score goal? You can get a good idea of the ACT scores your chosen colleges expect by searching for them on College Navigator, a database of college stats.

Step Four: Strategize

Your approach to studying for the ACT will differ depending on your starting scores and your goal scores.

  • You have a high score, but you want a perfect (or almost perfect) score.

    You’re going to need to grab every point possible, which means you need to be prepared to handle even the hardest questions on the test. You’ll need to focus on:

    • Time management: You can’t afford to waste any time on easier questions, so you have to hone your speed. Your ultimate goal is to get fast enough to have time to double-check all of your answers. Check out this post on ACT time management.
    • Really tough passages: You can’t let a boring passage or a particularly difficult passage trip you up. Check out our post on handling boring passages here, and make sure you include plenty of dense and dry passages in your practice sessions. (Project Gutenberg is an excellent resource for material written in more challenging, somewhat antiquated language.)
    • The hardest math concepts: If you’re shooting for perfection, you need to be able to handle anything the ACT throws at you, including the toughest concepts like trig and logarithms.
    • The science-y science questions: There are a handful of questions on the science section that require basic science knowledge. Make sure to review basic concepts in biology, chemistry, physics, and Earth science.

  • You have a low score, and you want a higher score.

    If the bad news is that you’re scoring in the mid-twenties or lower on the ACT, the good news is that you have plenty of room to improve. At this score range, you’ll see a bigger bang for your test prep time because you’ll be able to start by gathering low-hanging fruit. You’ll need to start with:

    • Shortening the test: At this score range, you’re probably really struggling with that clock. You’d do so much better if only there were fewer questions! Good news: There can be! (Sort of.) It’s all about understanding the test.
      • Reading and English: If you get hung up on a question, circle it, skip it, and move on. If there’s time, you can always come back to it. If not, at least you’ll have gotten to all of the easier questions later in the section. Don’t forget—there’s no guessing penalty, so always guess if you run out of time.
      • Science: Passages get harder as you go, and within each passage, questions move roughly from easiest to hardest. After you get through the easiest passages, plan on skipping the last one or two questions on each of the remaining passages. Use the time you save to make sure that you get all the other questions right!
      • Math: Questions move roughly from easiest to hardest. The last ten questions on the test are almost certainly going to be the most time consuming. What’s more, they’re the ones you’re most likely to miss anyway. You’re going to score much better if you focus on doing really well on the first 50 questions than you are if you focus on getting all the way to the end of the section.
    • Memorizing math formulae: The SAT gives you a helpful guide to common geometry formulas (even though there aren’t very many geometry questions on the SAT). The ACT does not give you these formulas—even though a good chunk of math questions deal with geometry.

Step Five: Make a Plan and Follow Through

Once you know what you need to focus on, you can create a study plan.

  • When will you study? Be realistic. This needs to be a schedule that you can stick with, so consider school demands, extracurricular activities, and other obligations.
  • What will you study? Decide which specific concepts or skills you’ll focus on during each study session.
  • How many progress checks can you fit in? You don’t want to give yourself too many practice tests—not only will you burn out, but you will also likely become demotivated because you won’t have given yourself enough time for improvement between tests.

Make sure you incorporate study sessions for all four subject areas. You don’t want to ignore a subject you do well in because you could easily get rusty and lose ground. Check out our tips for each section of the ACT:

Step Six: It’s Showtime

Approach test day with good habits—a well-rested, well-nourished, well-hydrated brain will perform better than one fueled by Doritos, soda, and three hours of sleep. Don’t cram the night before—relax and de-stress. Do your best, and when the results come in, get ready to celebrate.

If you follow the steps in this ACT study guide, you’ll have a good understanding of what you need to do in order to study for the ACT effectively. If you’d like extra support, you can reach out to your local 宝博体育 Education center to take a free practice test and see how our personalized ACT prep can help.

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The Truth about High School Extracurricular Activities

Colleges don’t just admit students—they admit people. What you do outside the classroom can have a huge impact on your college applications, so in addition to grades, course rigor, test scores, and college essays, it’s important to consider your extracurricular activities.

“Be Well-Rounded” and Other Lies about Extracurricular Activities

There’s a lot of misinformation and misguided advice about extracurricular activities. Let’s break down some of the most common myths you’ll see:

MYTH: Participate in a variety of activities to show you’re well-rounded.

The advice to present yourself as well-rounded sounds like good advice on the surface. After all, shouldn’t you want to present yourself as a Renaissance man, a person of diverse interests and talents who will fit right in on nearly any college campus?

The problem with this approach is that it’s shallow. Colleges aren’t looking for someone who would fit in anywhere—they’re looking for someone who fits into their specific campus culture. You don’t want to be the well-rounded student whose application looks just like all the other well-rounded students’—you want to be a person with clearly developed interests.

Don’t approach your extracurricular activities as if you have a checklist of “impressive” clubs to join. Find things you truly enjoy and are interested in pursuing…and then pursue those things. Colleges would much rather see that you go after the things you want than that you forced yourself to participate in a set of activities just to get into college.

MYTH: The more extracurricular activities you have, the better.

It’s not about the quantity—it’s about the quality!

It’s easy to see where this advice came from. The typical college application offers eight to ten spaces for extracurricular activities. Over time, many parents, counselors, and students decided that eight to ten activities is the “right” number to strive for.

For most students, eight to ten extracurricular activities is just too many. It’s far better to be very good at a few things than it is to be mediocre at a lot of things, both in terms of college admission and lifetime success.

Colleges recognize this. For example, MIT revised its application to include only four spaces for extracurricular activities—and they’re thinking about cutting it down to just three.

MYTH: Certain activities are naturally more impressive than others.

What makes an extracurricular activity impressive is what you do with it. The debate team is not inherently more impressive than the philosophy club—most admissions officers would prefer an applicant who devoted himself to the growth and development of his school’s fledgling philosophy club than a mediocre debater who only competed a few times a year and rarely attended practice.

Don’t approach your extracurricular decisions through the lens of “what colleges find impressive.” Approach your decisions based on what you really want to do.

How to Choose the Right Extracurricular Activities

First things first: get rid of the notion that there is a “right” extracurricular activity. Your activities should demonstrate your interests, passions, and personality, not an imaginary list of things an “ideal” student should do.

With that in mind, here’s our guide to choosing the right extracurricular activities for you:

Explore your options.

Ideally, you’ll use freshman year to dabble. If there’s a time when you really should be involved in a dozen extracurricular activities, this is it. Try things on, see what fits, and get rid of what doesn’t.

Think outside the box.

Don’t feel limited by the offerings at your school.

Interested in theater but your school doesn’t have a drama club? Look for a community theater company to join. Interested in creative writing but your school doesn’t publish a literary magazine? Look for other publications to submit your writing to, publish your writing online, or—better yet—start a school literary magazine.

Get creative. Extracurricular activities include a lot more than the clubs you find at your school.

Narrow down your extracurriculars.

By the time you finish sophomore year, you should have had enough time to pinpoint two or three interests that you really want to pursue. Consider your schedule and how demanding your classes are, and choose the activities that best suit both your interests and your availability.

Follow through.

Once you’ve decided what extracurricular activities you’ll continue to pursue, throw yourself into them. Work hard, make an impact, and—when possible—seek out leadership positions to maximize that impact.

Keep notes.

This step sounds like a weird one, but hear us out: When you apply to college, you’ll need to write about each of your extracurricular activities and your contributions. It can be hard to remember the contributions you’re most proud of when you’re looking back over the last four years with an application sitting in front of you. Whenever you make a meaningful contribution—a suggestion that was taken up that changed the way things were done, a solution to a particular problem, a particularly successful event—write it down. You’ll have a jump start on your application (and you might just get some great essay ideas).

Ideas for Unique Extracurricular Activities

Sometimes extracurricular activities are a do-it-yourself project. If you have an interest you want to pursue, think of a way to turn it into an extracurricular activity. Here are some examples:

  • Start a business: Let’s say you like knitting or woodworking or graphic design. Open an online shop and sell your goods. Let’s say you love cooking. See if you can get a few catering gigs from family friends or community groups. Let’s say you love web design. Try to pick up some freelance gigs. Let’s say you have a lawnmower, some free time in the summer, and an empty wallet. Hire some friends and start your own landscaping business.
  • Start a club: If you share an interest with other students and there isn’t already a campus organization dedicated to it, start your own club. Not only do you get to pursue your interest with like-minded peers, but you also get the perk of calling yourself the “founder” on your application.
  • Use technology: The Internet is a powerful tool—you can create your own community using blogs, YouTube, or Instagram. If you’re knowledgeable and passionate about a particular area, share it. Create a website, write a blog, create a YouTube channel, curate an Instagram page. Make sure your particular interest contributes something meaningful to the online community. Colleges may not be too impressed by a YouTube channel exclusively dedicated to makeup tips, but they might be impressed by one dedicated to body positivity or health and wellness.

If you’d like help figuring out which extracurricular activities may be a good fit for your high school career, 宝博体育 Education offers a free high school planning session for new students. Be sure to contact your local 宝博体育 Education center today!

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5 Tips for ACT® Reading: Dealing with BORING Passages

On both the ACT® and the SAT®, reading passages can pose a challenge. It’s almost guaranteed that you’ll see at least one passage on any given test that you think is Just. Plain. Boring.

Boring passages are hard to read—you zone out, you miss details, you wind up re-reading the same paragraph three times, and you waste valuable test time. Worse yet, doing poorly on just ONE boring passage can seriously mess up your entire verbal score—miss four questions on a boring reading passage, and you could see as much as a five-point drop on your ACT reading score.

So how can you cope with these rather boring passages in order to boost your test scores? Here are some ACT reading tips for dealing with boring passages.

1. Read Actively

Active reading means that you’re actively looking for things as you read. It’s a lot harder to zone out if you’re looking for specific things while you read, so look for the main ideas, shifts in tone, and the purpose of each paragraph as you read the passage. You still want to get the gist of the passage itself, but by looking for these individual components instead of just trying to absorb the passage contents, you can help stay focused and (hopefully) only read the entire passage once.

2. Annotate the Passage

On the reading section, this means using your active reading skills to annotate the passage. Underline important sentences, jot quick little notes in the margins, and find ways to keep the pencil on the page in order to keep your mind from wandering. These notes will help you find the most relevant parts of the passage as you work through each question, so it’s a win-win! If you’re testing digitally, use the highlighting tools and scratch paper available to you.

3. Make It a Race

If you’ve got a competitive streak, make the reading section a race against yourself. Time yourself as you work through each passage and question set, and try to beat your previous time with each subsequent passage. This ACT reading tip makes you less likely to zone out if you’re determined to get through the passage quickly.

4. Remember Why You’re There

In the end, nothing is going to make a boring passage suddenly interesting. You’ll need a good amount of self-discipline to slog through a passage that you find dull as dirt. It helps to remind yourself of why you’re taking the test in the first place – you know the SAT and the ACT are important, or you wouldn’t bother reading about how to get your scores higher. The tests are certainly important enough to force yourself through some boring reading material. You got this!

5. Practice, Practice, Practice

The more you practice with realistic ACT or SAT reading passages, the better you’ll become at slogging through the boredom. On the March 2018 SAT, many students identified a Charles Dickens passage as being particularly difficult. It was drawn from Chapter 18 of Dickens’s American notes, which you can find here. If you really want to test your mettle, give it a read!

If you’d like some personalized help with your ACT prep, you can contact your local 宝博体育 Education center for a free consultation!

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Everything You Want to Know about College Applications

When it’s time to start applying to college, there are a lot of moving parts to keep track of. This is your one stop shop for all things college app related.

Different Applications

Let’s talk about applications. Almost every college has embraced online applications in one form or another, but different colleges use different application platforms. Here are some of the ones you’re most likely to see:

  • The Common App: Accepted by more than 800 colleges, this is by far the most widely used application platform.
    • Pros: User-friendly, review entire application before submitting
    • Cons: Errors when copy/pasting essays and supplements, occasional site crashes during high-traffic times
  • The Coalition App: Accepted by more than 140 colleges, this is probably the next most widely used application platform. Some state schools, including the University of Washington—Seattle, the University of Florida, and the University of Maryland—College Park, only accept the Coalition App.
    • Pros: Unique digital locker lets students store and share documents, ability to upload formatted essays and other files to attach to application
    • Cons: Less familiar to admissions officers, so some may still prefer Common App; lacks the same robust tech support as the Common App
  • System-wide Applications: Some university systems, such as the University of California, have their own system-wide application platforms.
    • Pros: Apply to multiple campuses at once
    • Cons: Separate application fees for each campus
  • School-specific Applications: A few schools, like MIT, have their own application platforms.
    • Pros: Tailor responses to each school
    • Cons: Heavier workload since there are more applications to complete

Different Application Deadlines

There are several rounds of application deadlines, each with pros and cons.

Early action programs let you submit your applications early (usually in October) and hear back sooner (usually in December). They are non-binding, which means that you’re under no obligation to attend the school if you’re admitted, and they don’t restrict you from applying elsewhere. Although you get the benefit of finding out your fate earlier, early action programs lack some of the benefits offered by other early programs.

Because they don’t require any commitment on the part of the applicant, early action programs are less useful to colleges—they don’t offer an indication of interest, so they don’t predict the likelihood a student will ultimately enroll. Some colleges have introduced selective early action or restrictive early action programs to solve this problem. These programs are also non-binding, but they limit the schools a student can apply to through other early action programs. These limits help colleges determine how interested early applicants really are.

A third early application option, early decision, is binding—students who apply through early decision programs are obligated to attend the school if they are admitted. Applying early decision is a commitment that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Regular application deadlines typically fall in January or February, and students can expect decisions by early April. Finally, there’s rolling admission, in which schools evaluate applications as they arrive and send out decisions periodically.

So which is best for you? It depends on where you’re applying and how badly you want to attend. On average, applying early offers a slight advantage (early action applicants are about 9.5% more likely to get in, and early decision applicants are about 11.6% more likely to get in), but the numbers differ pretty widely from school to school.

Learn more about early admissions here.

What do admissions officers see on your application?

A typical college application includes a lot of information:

  • High school transcript
  • Test score reports
  • Demographic information
  • Extracurriculars
  • Recommendations
  • Essays

But what do admissions officers see when they look at this information?

Transcripts

Your high school transcripts tell admissions officers which courses you took and what grades you earned. Transcripts also provide context for the information so that admissions officers have an idea of how your school weights grades.

  • Make sure what you enter on your application matches what will appear on your transcript.
  • Use the “Additional Information” section of the Common App if there are significant extenuating circumstances that add important context to your grades. (For example, if a death in the family resulted in a really bad grade one semester.)
  • Don’t worry about a lack of AP classes if your school doesn’t offer them—the transcript provides context for your classes, so admissions officers won’t dock you if your school didn’t offer a ton of AP courses.
  • Most colleges look at your unweighted GPA, so don’t rely on your school’s weighting system to boost your GPA.

Learn more about how college admissions officers view your grades here, and get more info about the role of course rigor in admissions decisions here.

To consistently earn good grades in rigorous courses, it helps to plan ahead. Check out more resources to help balance grades and course rigor in The College Admissions Process from Start to Finish.

Test Score Reports

This includes SAT scores, ACT scores, IB exam scores, and AP exam scores. In previous years, college admissions officers have consistently ranked SAT or ACT scores as among the top three most important factors in admission decisions. Under test optional policies, that calculus changes, but the data indicates that good SAT or ACT scores still give you quite an edge in admissions.

  • SAT and ACT scores allow for apples-to-apples comparisons of students from different schools with different course offerings and different grade weighting systems.
  • Along with grades, SAT and ACT scores act as filters to identify applicants who are least likely to succeed at the school. A particularly low test score can knock an applicant out of the running before the rest of the application is reviewed.
  • The good news: With thorough test prep, you can improve SAT or ACT scores a lot faster than you can improve your GPA.

We have some great resources to help you leverage your test scores to improve your chances of admission at your dream school:

Demographic Information

All applications ask about your family background and where you’re from. This information helps schools achieve diversity goals.

Most people think of race when they hear the word “diversity,” but a diverse freshman class goes beyond race. Admissions officers seek geographic diversity by looking for applicants from across the country and globe; they seek experiential diversity by looking for applicants of different backgrounds, such as first-generation college students; and, yes, they seek racial and ethnic diversity as well.

  • Most colleges strongly believe that a diverse student body improves the educational experiences of all students, which is why they may give some preference to certain underrepresented groups of students.
  • Students are not required to list their race on applications, though there is likely little or no benefit to leaving this information blank.
  • Students from certain geographic areas may have a slight advantage at some schools. For example, colleges whose students are mostly local might seek students from far-flung geographic regions.

Extracurriculars

Your application will include a place to list your extracurricular activities. Your extracurricular activities can say a lot about you, so use this to your advantage!

  • Ignore the common advice to be “well-rounded.” Instead, pursue the activities that you’re truly interested in so that you can demonstrate your passions. Your extracurriculars should say something about who you are rather than checking off boxes on an imaginary list of “what looks good to colleges.”
  • Seek leadership positions in at least one or two groups.
  • Use the character limit provided by your application to make your extracurricular activities pop. The same activity can be a lot more striking if it’s written about the right way.
  • List your activities in order of importance rather than in chronological order. This ensures admissions officers see the ones you care about the most.
  • Check out The College Admissions Process from Start to Finish to learn about how to pick the right extracurricular activities each year.

Recommendations

Recommendation letters from your counselors, teachers, coaches, and mentors offer admissions officers yet another perspective. Admissions officers highly value the input of their fellow educators.

  • Pick your recommenders carefully. Ask people who know you well and who you believe are likely to write compelling letters.
  • Always remember that a recommendation letter is a favor.
  • Ask if the recommender is comfortable writing a letter.
  • Provide the recommender with detailed information, including the evaluation forms available through the Common App or other platforms.
  • Waive the right to view recommendation letters—this lends the letters greater weight because admissions officers believe them to be more genuine.
  • Ask for recommendations well in advance of deadlines.
  • Follow up before the deadline to remind the recommender.
  • Write thank you notes.

Essays

Your application essays are the one place on the application where you have the opportunity to speak directly to admissions officers. Particularly at elite colleges, the essay can set your application above the rest of the pack.

The Application Process

Where to Start: Finalize a College List

Before you can start the application process, you need to know where you’re applying!

Most students apply to several schools—in fact, about 1 in 3 students applies to at least 7 colleges. However many colleges you apply to, you need to include safety schools, target schools, and reach schools.

  • Safety Schools: Schools where you’re almost definitely going to get in.
  • Target Schools: Schools with decently high admission rates where your grades and test scores match up with the grades and test scores of previously admitted students. (You’re “on target” for admission.)
  • Reach Schools: Dream schools where it’s a long-shot that you’ll get in. Any school with a low admission rate is a reach school, no matter how awesome your grades and test scores are!

Learn more about picking the right colleges to apply to here, and read about finding great safety schools here.

Make a Plan

Use our College Application Planner to help you create a detailed plan of action. Having a plan will help ensure that you aren’t rushed to complete applications at the last minute and that you don’t miss any important deadlines.

Demonstrate Interest

Colleges care about yield, which is the percentage of admitted students who actually enroll. They like to admit students they are fairly certain will enroll, so they look for demonstrated interest when they review applications. There are several ways to demonstrate interest in a school:

  • Go on an official campus visit.
  • Follow and interact with them on social media.
  • Open and interact with their emails.
  • Contact the admissions office.
  • Apply through early action (“I like this college”) or through early decision (“I LOVE THIS COLLEGE”)

Finalize Test Scores

Make sure you’ve got the scores you need well in advance of your application deadlines. If you follow the guidance in The College Admissions Process from Start to Finish, you should have no problem getting the scores you need when you need them.

Write Awesome Essays

Give yourself lots of time to perfect your essays by starting the essay process during the summer after junior year. Take advantage of every resource available to you, and make sure you revise, revise, revise!

Request Recommendation Letters

Give your recommenders plenty of notice by asking for recommendation letters a month or two in advance of application deadlines. Remember to follow up once or twice before the deadline.

The Application Itself

All of this leads up to completing the actual application. Most applications are fairly straightforward, but there are some things you can do to make sure your application is as strong as possible:

  • Give yourself plenty of time. Some things, like your address and birthday, are easy to complete. Others, like descriptions of your extracurricular activities, are worth taking some time to do right.
  • Take advantage of the Common App’s review function. The Common App lets you print a finished copy of your application before you submit it, so you can thoroughly edit any errors before you send the final version to colleges.
  • Edit every field thoroughly! Silly typos and other simple errors tell colleges that you didn’t care enough to take the time to review your application.
  • Try to submit several days before your deadlines. The Common App and other online application platforms have been known to experience glitches as major application deadlines approach. Avoid getting caught short by a technical glitch by getting your applications in before the rush.

All of this boosts your chances of admission at your dream school—but what if you still don’t get in? Super selective colleges disappoint even the most qualified students. If you missed your shot at your dream college, check out On the Bright Side: I didn’t Get into the College I Want.

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The College Admissions Process from Start to Finish

When you apply to college, colleges review your entire high school experience, which means that the college admissions process starts much earlier than many people realize. Everything a student does starting on the first day of high school becomes part of the cumulative academic record that will help determine college admissions decisions.

Since the college admissions process is long and complex, let’s break it down.

All Four Years of High School: Building a Strong Record

Throughout high school, students need to focus on building strong academic records by earning top grades in challenging courses and by establishing good relationships with the counselors and teachers who might write recommendation letters when it’s time to apply to college. Learn more here:

Freshman Year: Explore Extracurricular Interests

Freshman year counts—but it counts the least. Your freshman grades make up the cumulative GPA that colleges will look at, but since colleges are more interested in the person they might bring onto their campus, they’re much more concerned with who you are at 18 than at 14.

By the time you apply to college, you’ll need to be able to demonstrate a commitment to following through on clearly defined passions and interests—in order to do that, you need to find those passions and interests. Freshman year is your opportunity to explore.

Early in the school year, most school groups will hold informational meet and greets for prospective new members. Attend as many as you can! You won’t actually join every group that you attend a meeting for, but you’ll have seen what’s out there so that you can make more informed extracurricular choices.

When it comes to picking your activities, don’t worry about “what looks good to colleges” or “what makes me seem well-rounded.” Worry about what you’re interested in because “what looks good to colleges is an applicant who pursues well-defined interests with passion and gusto.

Learn more about leveraging freshman year in the college admissions process with College Admissions Timeline: What to Do Your Freshman Year.

Sophomore Year: Things Start to Get Serious

During sophomore year, you’ll want to continue doing all those things you should be doing throughout high school: getting good grades in tough courses and cultivating good relationships with the counselors and teachers who will help you on your road to college.

But there are a few other things you’ll really want to tackle as a sophomore.

First, let’s talk about extracurriculars. If freshman year is your time to explore, sophomore year is your time to narrow things down. By the time you apply to colleges a senior, you’ll need to be able to demonstrate commitment to your interests through leadership positions and carefully cultivated extracurricular activities. This starts with narrowing down your extracurricular activities so that you can become deeply involved in just two or three areas rather than shallowly involved in half a dozen activities.

The second big thing to consider as a sophomore is test prep. It may seem early to worry about SAT or ACT scores when applications are still two years away, but test prep is a marathon, not a sprint! The most successful ACT or SAT test-takers are those who prepared slowly over a long period of time, building the fundamental skills needed to ace these tests.

For those students hoping for top test scores, starting test prep in sophomore year has an additional benefit: students can simultaneously prep for the SAT/ACT and the PSAT in order to compete for the National Merit Scholarship as juniors. In 11th grade, the PSAT acts as the qualifying test for the prestigious National Merit Scholarship; students who advance in the scholarship competition have a valuable honor to add to their college applications.

Learn more about how your sophomore year can help you get into your dream colleges with College Admissions Timeline: What to Do Your Sophomore Year, and check out these test prep resources to get a jump start on your SAT, ACT, or SAT Subject Test prep:

Junior Year: Start Your Engines

The race is on. Junior year is when Things. Get. Real. You’re neck deep in the college admissions process now.

The start of the new school year features the lead up to the October PSAT/NMSQT, the qualifying test for the National Merit Scholarship. If you’re hoping to be one of the chosen few who can put this prestigious prize on your college applications, check out our Complete PSAT Guide.

But aside from the PSAT, there’s not much to distinguish fall of junior year from the start of any other school year. That will change in the second half of the year.

In the spring, everything comes to a head: you have limited time to finalize SAT/ACT scores; you’ll need to finalize your college list and research policies at those schools so that you know about any unique requirements; you’ll probably have a slew of AP exams to prepare for; if you haven’t already visited college campuses, you’ll want to do that during spring break and summer vacation; and don’t forget about searching and applying for scholarships.

It’s a lot. We’ve got you covered, though. Check out Junior Year Survival Guide for tips on navigating this busy semester.

Summer after Junior Year: The Application Season Begins

If you’re applying to college early, your deadlines are probably in October. In June, October seems light years away! You’ve got plenty of time!

Four months might sound like a lot of time, but there’s also a lot riding on what you do with the four months between now and your application deadlines. A successful application season means:

  • Triple checking application deadlines and requirements for every school you’re applying to.
  • Creating a detailed plan to ensure that all applications are completed, edited, and submitted on time.
  • Finalizing your SAT/ACT scores.
  • Following each stage of the writing process for each application essay or writing supplement—even the super short ones.
  • Carefully completing each application, curating supplemental materials like transcripts and test scores, double- and triple-checking each application for typos, and submitting application in advance of the deadline.
  • Requesting and following up on recommendation letters from teachers, coaches, mentors, and counselors.

We’ve put together some great resources to help you through the whole application gauntlet:

  • Download our College Application Planner to help keep yourself organized.
  • Check out Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about College Apps to learn about the whole process.

Senior Year: The End Is in Sight

The start of senior year will be dominated by your college applications. Life is a lot easier if you get as much of the college application work done during the summer as you possibly can. This way, you can focus most of your energy on your classes instead of scrambling to meet your application deadlines.

Make no mistake: your senior year classes are still important. You’ll want to take steps to avoid senioritis for several reasons:

  • It doesn’t happen often, but colleges can and do rescind offers of admission if a student’s grades slip too low.
  • If you’re waitlisted and you decide to remain on the waitlist, your grades from both semesters of senior year will likely play a big role in deciding whether you get in.
  • If you apply through regular decision, your first semester grades will most likely appear on your applications.
  • You can start out a lot stronger in your college classes if you maintain good grades by putting forth consistent effort throughout senior year.
  • If you’re in AP classes, the best thing you can do to boost your AP exam scores is to do well in class. Sustained effort will help you get the AP exam scores you need to earn college credit.

Once you start receiving admission decisions, you’ll have a whole new set of tasks before you. If you didn’t get into your dream school, you’ll need to process the decision and find other schools that pique your interest. If you got into several great schools, you’ll need to decide where you really want to attend. Visit the campuses of the top contenders; even if you’ve already visited some them before, schools tend to look different when you know there’s a spot there waiting for you.

Once you’ve made your decision, make sure to submit your deposit by College Decision Day (May 1), and explore your financial aid options. Fill out the FAFSA, even if you think you won’t qualify for aid.

And finally, you’ll be done with the whole college admissions process! Now the next challenge begins: College.

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Rock the New School Year with These Back to School Tips

So you’ve finished your back to school retail therapy and there’s a pile of folders, binders, highlighters, and pens waiting to be organized into your backpack. Ready or not, it’s time for the new school year to start. Take advantage of the clean slate of back to school season by setting some new school year resolutions. Here are our favorites:

Don’t Procrastinate

This one is a pretty tall order for a habitual procrastinator—but it’s also the resolution most likely to make a huge difference to your grades, test scores, stress levels, and overall quality of life.

The problem with kicking a procrastination habit to the curb is that the immediate gratification of doing literally anything other than the reading assignment/study session/essay/whatever that you’re supposed to be doing is so much more attractive than the delayed gratification of finishing the thing you’re supposed to do in a timely manner.

And immediate gratification is, well, extremely gratifying.

There is no secret shortcut to breaking a procrastination habit. It takes willpower and self-discipline. But it helps to have a plan. Here are some tips for becoming a reformed procrastinator:

Create short-term goals and rewards.

Giving up the immediate gratification of procrastination is slightly easier if you give yourself short-term gratification in the form of rewards. Start with small goals. For example, maybe you start with 5 minutes of phone time for every 10 minutes of studying, and then for every 15 minutes, and then for every 20 minutes, and so on.

Write down everything.

One problem with procrastinating is how easy it is to forget about tests or due dates that are more than a couple days away. Get a planner and write down everything. The visual will help give you a reality check on just how much time you have left before something has to get done.

Break big tasks up into little ones.

Let’s say you have a big essay due in 3 weeks. Three weeks is a long time away—you’ve got plenty of time! But before you know it, 3 weeks has turned into 3 days, and you haven’t even started. Instead, break your big essay down into small tasks and set yourself shorter deadlines: have all of my research done in 7 days; I’ll have an outline in 10 days; a rough draft done in 14 days; in 18 days, I’ll finish editing; by the due date, I’ll have my final draft done. This way, you can still procrastinate a little bit on each individual task, but you stay on track to finish the bigger project in time.

Get Organized

Einstein once said, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” You could probably replace “desk” with backpack or locker and arrive at the same conclusion. But there’s cluttered, and then there’s open the locker door and a pile of stuff falls out.

Life in general—and school in particular—is a lot easier when you can find the things you need, so it’s worth taking some steps to get and stay organized this school year.

Clean out your stuff.

Schedule time to clean out your backpack, binders, and locker once a week. If you do it every week, cleaning out your stuff only takes a couple of minutes.

Create a system.

You’re more likely to stay organized if you spend time creating an organization system. Maybe you’re a three-ring-binder-and-color-coded-dividers type of gal, or maybe you’re a manila-folders-and-labels kind of guy. Whatever floats your boat.

Avoid loose papers when you can.

Loose pages are the enemy of organization for students. It’s so easy to stuff them in the front of a binder or in the bottom of a backpack, never to be seen again. There are a lot of loose pages you can’t eliminate—like all of the ones your teacher hands you. But when you can avoid loose pages, you should. For example, take your class notes in spiral notebooks. Notebooks don’t get crumbled and lost in the bottom of a book bag, and they provide a natural chronology to help you locate specific items.

Build Better Study Skills

You study and study, but your test scores don’t go up. Things go in one ear and out the other (or, in the case of reading, in one eye and out the other?).

You’re studying wrong.

Here’s how to do it right:

Don’t cram.

To really learn new things, you have to space out your learning over time. Cramming for a test is a really short-term solution with some bad long-term consequences.

Don’t ignore health.

You’re young and healthy, so clearly you can subsist on Doritos, Gatorade, video games, and four hours of sleep! Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Good diet, exercise, and sleep habits literally make you smarter.

Study in different places.

The old advice to set up a quiet study spot and always study in that same spot is actually wrong. Science suggests that your best bet is to study the same material in different places to build stronger associations with the information.

Teach it.

Studies show that you’re more likely to retain information if you learn it with the intent of explaining it to someone else—better yet, really master the info by actually teaching it to someone else!

Test yourself.

The more often you have to recall information, the better you get at recalling it. If you test yourself on the stuff you’re studying, you’ll have an easier time remembering key info on your actual test day.

Learn about the science behind these study skills tips with our Five Tips to Help You Prep for Finals (or literally any other test).

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宝博体育 Education’s College Essay Resource Hub

Our students often tell us that the hardest part of applying to college is the college essay, so we’ve put together plenty of college application essay resources to get you through the process.

College Application Essay FAQ

Let’s start with some quick questions and answers.

  1. What are the 2019 college essay prompts?
    Most students will apply to one or more colleges that use the Common Application. The 2019 Common Application essay prompts can be found here. A lot of colleges that use the Common App also have supplementary essay tasks, so you may have additional prompts to respond to.
  2. How important is the college essay?
    In national surveys, college admissions officers consistently rank the essay as the fourth most important factor in their admission decisions, after grades, class difficulty, and test scores.
  3. Why do colleges care about the essay?
    The essay is the only chance you have to inject your voice into your application. Admissions officers strive to admit people rather than just statistics; the essay gives dimension to your application by allowing you to share meaningful personal details that go far beyond your grades, test scores, or the number of activities you participated in.

College Application Essay Resources

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