Great College Advice

Time Magazine reported the other day that the College Board has developed a new pre-PSAT to administer to 8th graders.  The test, called “Readistep,” is supposed to provide an early measure of academic ability and readiness for college.

This argument is a bit rich, given all the debate about whether the SAT itself measures predicts anything [...]

Sometimes peer pressure is a good thing.

I read an article the other day in Inside Higher Ed that Baylor University had implemented a policy to pay admitted students to retake the SAT scores, in a bid to build an appearance of greater selectivity and (so Baylor officials said) to give away more scholarship money.

On Thursday, [...]

I just finished reading Jeremy Miller’s article in the September issue of Harper’s. It’s entitled, “Tyranny of the Test:  One Year as a Kaplan coach in the public schools.”

The focus of the article is Kaplan’s corporate foray into the tutoring business, which has mushroomed since the implementation of No Child Left Behind, which requires school [...]

Just a couple of weeks ago, the National Council for College Admissions Counseling issued a report calling on colleges to reduce the importance of standardized scores in the admissions process.

But as long as public rankings of colleges and universities, such as those issue by US News & World Report, it’s unlikely that colleges will dump [...]

The big show at last week’s conference of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling was a report by NACAC examining the role of SAT and ACT tests in the college admissions process.  Essentially, the report called upon colleges to look more carefully at the role of these tests, and called into question their true [...]

The National Association for College Admissions Counseling is releasing a report this week to coincide with its national convention that questions the importance of standardized testing in the college admissions process.

For the first time, NACAC takes the stance that standardized testing may not, actually, be essential in evaluating candidates for admission, and encourages colleges and [...]

It it no surprise whatsoever that black and brown students score lower on standardized tests than their white and yellow peers. This fact is one more indicator of the “achievement gap” between minority students and white students in the United States. (For more on this, see the article from Inside Higher Ed).
Some analysts [...]

A colleague in the college counseling business compiled a comprehensive list of the colleges that require or recommend SAT II subject tests.  The list is very helpful and comprehensive.  If you’d like a copy, please contact me.  The author of the list, Cigus Vanni, is a member of the New Jersey Association for College Admissions [...]