Don't Force It: How to Get into College without Losing Yourself in the Process

More Testing Changes?! Decoding What Colleges Want in 2025

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In today’s episode, I’m sharing a replay of a recent webinar on test prep. I break down key updates to the SAT and ACT, including the ACT’s shift to digital and its new optional science section coming in April 2025. I also discuss test-optional policies, when to start prepping, and how to use the Common Data Set to make informed decisions. Plus, I share tips on managing stress throughout the process. Don’t miss this essential guide to navigating college admissions testing!

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Sheila Akbar:

So you may not be feeling the kind of frustration that the title of this webinar suggests, but believe me, there are a lot of people feeling this way, and what I want to do today is just sort of take the stress levels down, help you understand what is going on with testing. What do you need to know about the SAT the ACT test, optional potential policy changes, and then how do you navigate it? Right? Hi folks. Welcome back to the podcast. I can hardly believe it's the end of March. I'm sure many of you are in the same kind of disbelief, but here we are, and in springtime, I tend to start thinking about testing. Of course, that's maybe very specific thing that I start to think about. But you know, if we're working with juniors, I really want to make sure they have a clear plan. They're either about to take the test, or they've started their prep, and we've got a plan for if they're testing, it will be done by the end of the school year or into the summer. If we're working with sophomores, they start to put testing on their radar. Not that they need to start prepping or doing anything, but we need to start thinking about a plan. Are you going to test? Which test are you going to take? When are you going to study? When are you going to take it, all of that stuff. So for me, Spring is the season of testing, and this spring we are expecting some changes to the ACT, and we know last spring we had a big shift in the SAT over to the digital version. So today, what I'm sharing with you is a replay of a recent webinar I did, kind of explaining those changes and helping people understand, what do they need to know about how the testing landscape has changed, what's the timeline they should be operating on? And, you know, sort of brass tacks around. How do you choose which test to take? How do colleges see it? How do you get a hold of data that helps you make the right decisions, both for your child and for their college applications? And so I do you know a couple of these sessions a year, actually, because there's been so many changes in the testing landscape, and this one is no no different. So I hope you find this helpful. One of the things that you'll hear me say, here is everybody should get some data on how they're going to perform and then talk to somebody they trust who can really help them understand what's going to be the best decision for them. And so if you are curious if your student has already done a PSAT or a pre ACT, and you just want an opinion on should they test? Should they not test? Well, what's going to happen? Please just give us a call. Most test prep companies also do these sort of free consultations, but like I said, just be aware of who you're talking to, and get good information and make the right decision for your kids. All right, take a listen to the replay, and I'll see you on the other side. Well, I'm Sheila. I'm signets, President and CEO. And you know, in my line of work, I focus a lot on college admissions, executive function, navigating High School and, of course, standardized testing. We are really paying attention to what is going on in the testing world. And so when I hear, oh my gosh, the ACT is now changing format, this is my reaction, like more testing changes. And for me, it's sort of my lifeblood. I need to know what's going on here. But for a parent who is just starting to test the waters in high school, thinking about, does my kid need to test? You probably don't even know that how many changes have been going on. So you may not be feeling the kind of frustration that the title of this webinar suggests, but believe me, there are a lot of people feeling this way, and what I want to do today is just sort of take the stress levels down, help you understand what is going on with testing. What do you need to know about the SAT the ACT test, optional potential policy changes, and then, how do you navigate it right? You probably don't know yet whether your kid needs a test score or not. Hopefully you have some time to plan ahead before they get to that phase of their college application process. But I want to give you a sense of how you can move through this keeping your child's best interest in mind and their actual goals in mind without feeling like, you know, you're listening to 15 million voices and the story keeps changing and you don't really know what to do. So we are going to dive in with just sort of an emotion check here. I was talking to a colleague of mine, and we were saying, like, you know, the fact that you have to take the test is just sort of the tip of the iceberg. The thing that's really stressful about it is not necessarily the sitting for a couple of hours on a Saturday morning and filling in the bubbles. It's all the emotions that are coming up around it, and some of them come way. Before you even start the process of looking into what you need to do, right? I get calls from parents all the time who are convinced that they are too late or so worried that even bringing up testing to their child is going to spike their anxiety through the roof. We're not sure what colleges really want. Who do I listen to? Maybe your kid is one of those that's a little bit more disengaged from their academics or thinking about college, and so that's another worry. But I just want you to know, I know there's a lot going on for you. Is one of the reasons we do these free webinars every month, just to try to, like, connect and like, get the right information and make sure you have what you need so you can parent with confidence through this process, I want to start with just kind of grounding us and what is the reality? What is on these tests? We have a couple of options these days when it comes to testing for college admissions, you can take the SAT, you can take the ACT, or you cannot take a test. And I'll help you think about when is that appropriate for your child. If, like me, you applied to college in the 90s, you probably took one of these tests. Most colleges required them. We have the SAT which definitely at that time was a little more popular among test takers, not necessarily among colleges, but among test takers on the coasts, or if you're like me, you grew up in the Midwest, the ACT was the one we all talked about. Colleges today do not have a preference between the two tests, and so it is in your best interest, your child's best interest, if you're going to take a test to figure out which one they are more naturally suited to, which one they feel is easier for them. Now, neither of them are just easy. They require some practice and preparation, but because they are in different formats, some students are just going to respond better to one or the other, and it's worth figuring out which one that is for your kid. So the SAT is scored out of 1600 it is now a digital test given on a computer screen. It is also computer adaptive, which means how you do on one section determines how you do on the next version of that same topic that you get. You have four sections to our reading and writing, which I'll just shorthand is verbal to our math. The verbal questions are based on short text. So you might be used to the idea of reading comprehension, having a long passage and then having like, 10 questions about it on this new digital SAT, which came out last year, you have two or three sentences, and that's what they call a text, and there's one question per text. So students are getting, you know, 54 texts over the course of this test, the math section doesn't really change much from how you knew it, though. There are some questions which are of the type, like the ACT science questions, which I'll explain in a minute, which are more like data analysis type questions, or maybe you have to read a graph. Those are actually sprinkled throughout the SAT they're not just on the math question. You'll see them in a reading passage or in a grammar question, but that content is pretty similar across both tests. It's a little bit more jargony on the ACT, but the skills that are being tested are still being tested on the SAT as well. There is no essay on the SAT. There used to be required when they got rid of that during COVID, and then the whole test takes about two hours and 14 minutes. That's not really including the breaks or the slow process of, you know, filing into your room and all of that, but the testing itself is two hours and 14 minutes. Now the ACT is a pretty different test. Generally. We think of one as having more time per question, the SAT and the ACT being a more speeded test where you don't have quite as much time per question, the ACT is scored out of 36 It is currently paper based, and it is a linear test, meaning how you do on early questions does not determine the difficulty of the later questions as it is on the SAT, section by section, there are four sections on the ACT we have in English, which is really grammar, math, reading and science. Those reading questions are based on the longer passages, and science is really just a technical reading section. I described some of those questions that you might see on the SAT you're going to read, you know, a scatter plot. You're going to read a description of an experiment. You're going to see a table with results, and you're going to have to answer questions about those experiments or results. There are a few questions in each section that assumes some outside scientific knowledge, but they tend to be more basic science facts, like, what is DNA? What is, you know, the greenhouse effect and things like that. But the vast majority of content in that section is actually given to you in the passage. So it's like an open note test. Students just have to be comfortable reading that kind of technical language and those graphs and charts the ACT still offer. An essay, though no college requires it, and it is a longer test at two hours and 55 minutes total. Now there are changes happening to the ACT, which I'll talk about in my next slide, but I want you to keep in mind the perspective that these two tests are competitors. The SAT is run by the College Board, which is technically a nonprofit, has very large revenues. The ACT was just bought by a private equity firm, and so they are no longer a nonprofit. They are a for profit company, but they are a B Corp, a certified Benefit Corporation. So you know, it's supposed to be like doing good things even though they're a for profit corporation. But keep that in mind, because you'll see a lot of the changes that are happening between these tests and the way that they are communicating with parents is really just marketing to compete for test takers, right? They are competing for market share, and that hopefully will help you remember that these tests are not necessarily measuring intelligence, or you don't necessarily have your child's best interest in mind. You're a hoop that we have decided as a society is important for students to jump through on their way to college. But of course, we have more and more schools being test optional, and I'll talk about those policies in a second. As I said, the changes to these tests are motivated by market share. So the SAT for a long time. Was a paper test. They turned their international test digital in 2003 and then last year, here in the US, they turned their test digital as well. They shortened it quite a bit, they gave students even more time per question, and they change the format of the questions a little bit. This tends to happen about every eight years with the SAT and it's really obvious that they are just looking at what is the ACT doing? How many more students is the ACT taking on? How can we get those students back? The ACT is now responding in kind. The ACT, for a very long time, didn't make radical changes. They did make some changes, like they added a comparison passage in the reading section, but they didn't overhaul the test and change the scoring and all of this stuff that the SAT likes to do whenever they make a change. So this change that is coming for the ACT supposed to happen in april 2025 a lot of folks in the industry are a little skeptical that the change is going to roll out the way that it was described to us in September when they announced it, because they haven't really given us, like, detailed updates or released more practice tests or anything like that. So, you know, remains to be seen how this transition is going to go. But they are transitioning to a digital format, so a computer based format, but it will not be adaptive. It will stay a linear test. The questions you do earlier will not determine the questions you get later. The way that that happens on the SAT they are making the science section optional. A lot of colleges have not told us what their policy is going to be on the science section, whether they're going to still require it or not. I would imagine that even if a college says, well, the science section is optional at the most selective colleges, I think we can be fairly sure that the majority of candidates applying will take the science section to be as competitive as possible. And so if your student is applying to a test required school or a highly selective school and decides to take the ACT, I would say you're probably going to need to do the science section. I actually love the science section. It's my favorite section of any of these tests. If one can have a favorite, it's like a puzzle, and you do have to move quickly, and, you know, be accurate, and so there's this, like element of a race in there, but the ACT is making it optional, because they know the science section is the thing that scares a lot of people off of the A, C, T, even though you all know now that it's just a technical reading section. It's not like you have to have an advanced background in physics or something to do well on it. But a lot of kids feel that way, or they're just sort of turned off by the charts or the technical jargon, and so they decide, by default, they're going to take the SAT instead of actually trying the ACT, which is my recommendation, this new digital format is also going to have some small format and content changes. So we know right now, the ACT has four reading passages, long reading passages. They are going to introduce two short reading passages into that mix as well. We know that science generally covers, you know, these topics. They are expanding the list of topics to include some engineering type passages, again, not requiring outside background knowledge. It's all going to be in the passage, but the topic is going to be more related to engineering and design. Instead of five answer choices in the math section, they're going down to four, so mostly cosmetic changes. Students who have been preparing for the ACT in its paper form will probably not find it too hard to move to this. Test digital form. But it's important to know that the paper form is not going anywhere. The ACT has said we'll always offer a paper test so you can choose whether you want to do a test on a computer screen or paper. And that does really make a difference for students, whether they can mark up their test or, you know, do math, scratch work right on the diagram, instead of looking at on a screen and having to write it somewhere else, or just like eye fatigue, right? That changes things for students. So that's definitely something you're going to want to take into account as you're planning your students testing strategy. But this paper version is going to stay in the old format of the ACT until the July test, and then in September, the paper version is going to change to match this new digital format, but it'll still be available in paper, so you'll have a little more flexibility there. Now, if you have a junior who is considering taking this digital ACT, I would say, don't do it in April, unless there are constrictions on their time, and you really got to get a test done in April. And for whatever reason you can't do the paper, maybe you have to. But this is a little bit of a like guinea pig situation I wouldn't want you to be in, right? So if you don't have to do it, don't do it. Stick with the paper ACT. We have lots of practice materials. We know what that test looks like, and then hopefully you'll be done with testing before it switches. I'm gonna keep it moving a little bit. There are many different policies out there. There are some schools that are requiring tests. There are some schools that say, Hey, even if you have a great test score, we're not going to let you submit it to us. We're not using test scores in our admissions policy or admissions evaluation. And then the majority of schools are test optional. So those tests required schools, some of them are just like the public schools in Florida are all tests required, and that seems to be a political choice. There are a lot of highly selective schools, so like a lot of the Ivy League schools, brought the test back last year, MIT has required the test, Georgetown has brought back the test, and then on the test blind side, the University of California system is probably the most famous set of schools that are test blind. But you know, we can count how many test blind schools there are and how many test required schools there are. Probably just on my fingers and toes, test optional is over 2100 right? So the majority, vast majority of colleges are test optional. And test optional really started becoming a thing in the 80s. And then, of course, with COVID, we had like a major switch. But even before COVID, there were over 1000 schools that were test optional, and then COVID made almost everybody test optional. And these are just the major categories here. Each school kind of talks about their policy a little bit differently. So you'll see some schools that are technically test optional, but if you read the fine print, they say, we really expect you to have a test score, and they might call their policy test expected. So there's a lot to navigate in here. So when you're building your college lists, really important to look at what the policies are right now, consider whether they might be changing, because colleges are changing their policies every year. And then, you know, as we'll talk about in a moment, think about what your students abilities are on these tests as you make your decision, it's also important to know that a student may be applying to a variety of these schools. Maybe some of the schools are test required, and some of them are test optional, and some of them are test blind, Even so, it might not be a question of, are they going to take the test or not. It might be more of a question of, are they submitting their score or not. And that may have to do with the policies of the schools. It may also have to do with how competitive their score is with the average scores of the applicants to those those schools. So like I said, it's very nuanced, as if this process didn't need to be more complicated, is very complicated, all right? And then one note of caution, as I sort of tease, colleges are changing their policies. So I'll give you an example. Harvard said that they would be test optional until 2026 Well, guess what? Last year, they've canceled that policy, and they said, Just kidding, we're bringing the test back next fall. And that didn't give people a lot of time to get a test score together if they needed it, if they didn't have one already. There have already been a couple of schools that have decided to go from test optional to test required this year. University of Miami is one that just comes to mind. And at the same time, there are still schools whose test optional policy was set to expire this year, and they decided to extend it or make it permanent. So this is a changing landscape. And one other thing that I really have to mention is there's a whole lot going on at the Department of Education right now, and one of the things that happened in a letter that the Department of Education sent this to the colleges perhaps test optional policies are illegal. Most people in my industry are receiving that with just like complete disbelief like this is not going to change, but remains to be seen. And how that's going to be playing out, and a lot of that uncertainty is why I'm going to recommend to you that everybody take a good look at their testing plan and have a backup plan in case some school that they just love ends up becoming test required. Okay, not to freak you out more. Sorry, but have to say it, I also think it's important to make sure you all understand the role of test scores in admission. Now, the reason colleges say that they want to see test scores is because it provides this additional data point on a student's academic preparation or readiness, ability to succeed in their college. A lot of research shows that it doesn't really add that much more information they can get that information pretty reliably from looking at things like the GPA, the rigor of the coursework that students are taking, things like that, but some schools have just decided they want that extra piece of information. Now, even when the test scores are required, they are still never the top factor in deciding whether somebody gets in or not, we've been tracking, not me personally, but the industry has been tracking the factors in admission, as colleges say, these are the things we look at in an application, and this is sort of how we think of them. In order of importance, test scores have never been the top factor. Sometimes they're number three or four, depending on the school. And of course, since things have gone more test optional, they're just dropping and dropping in importance, but they're always considered in context. And most colleges in the United States use something called holistic admissions, where they're looking at, you know, the grades, the recommendation, the leadership, the essays, all sorts of things to form a picture of a student, and the test score is just like one little point, right? And so without scores, colleges can still make good decisions. They look for confirmation of academic skill and preparation. In other areas, they may pay a little more attention to the recommendations or an academic extracurricular or summer program that the student did, sometimes they'll request a graded paper with a teacher's comments on it so they can really understand the student's abilities in you know, a particular area. So be prepared to see that if, if your student is looking at schools that are test optional or decides not to submit a score, because these are areas you can use to really demonstrate that academic readiness. So giving you lots and lots of context and background information, I'm sure the thing you actually really want to know is like, Well, what do I do? I have all this knowledge now. How do I make the choice? And so as I said, I think it's really important that everybody has some sort of backup plan. Have a plan for testing. So every student, I believe, should take diagnostic practice tests to assess their baseline performance. And I usually recommend this at the end of 10th grade. It's not really useful to do it before. I'll talk about why in a moment, practice tests are freely available on the ACT and the SAT website. I'm going to give you a link at the end of this talk that will point you to those sites so that you can just download the tests, have your student do it in a realistic setting, and then you can talk with the testing expert. That's my second step here, who can help you compare those results. Now there is an official concordance between the two tests so we understand, you know what an SAT score of 1300 would be on an ACT, and that can really help us decide which test is actually better for them, right? If they got a 1300 on the ACT, we know that correlates. I'm making this up. I don't know the number off the top of my head. Let's say it correlates to like a 29 on the A, C, T, but when they did a Practice ACT, they actually got 31 that means there's a relative strength on the ACT, and that's probably the test I would recommend. But beyond comparing those numbers, which is a little more quantitative, we really also want to understand, well, if they are going to do that test, what do they need to work on, both in terms of the content that they need to review, the type of strategies that they need to learn and practice, and that can help us understand when should they test, what do they need to do in the testing test prep process. But there really is an entire ecosystem quantitative and qualitative factors to really build a strategic plan. And you want to remember that this is not just test prep for the sake of test prep, if you're going to do one of these tests, it better play a really important role in your college strategy. We're not taking the SAT just to see how high we can score and like that's our only goal. It's hopefully going to make us stronger college applicants for the colleges that we're looking at. And so you really do need to keep your college list in mind, as you're also doing this. And so here's my kind of map of those factors. The college list is important not just because of the policies of those colleges, but because of the average scores that their admitted students tend to have. So then you can understand already is my. Score kind of where it needs to be in order to be competitive at that school, student engagement. I put that first after the college list, because it really is a make or break factor. If your kid is just not into it, they've decided, No way am I doing the ACT or SAT and there's no change in their mind. Doesn't matter what the strategy or plan is when a kid really digs in their heels, you know, usually it's pretty hard to get around that, though, I will say the right tutor, the right college counselor, the right mentor, can really help them move through that block and see how it might open some doors for them only if, in fact, it will open doors. Right? We don't want to waste our goodwill getting them to get on board with testing only to find out, well, they're not going to use the test score. So you know, that's why I said. It's an ecosystem. It depends on a lot of variables. I also encourage parents to really keep in mind the mental health and stress levels of their kids, most students will be practicing and prepping during their junior year, which is a really hard year. It's the first time students are in a lot of high level classes. They might have more responsibility in their extracurriculars. Maybe they just got their driver's license, right? There's a lot going on in that year, and so adding in testing might not be good if it's going to be a distraction from their grades, which we know are more important on the whole in a college application than a test score, if it's going to stress them out so much that we're going to lose sleep over it. It's like gonna cause real problems. It's not always worth it. We also want to assess their test taking ability. And this could be as simple as like, do they remember their geometry formulas, or do they know how to use a semi colon? It could also be, are they, you know, confident in managing their time? Do they understand how to pace themselves? Are they adept at avoiding careless errors? Or is that their biggest problem, right? Because some of those problems, like, they don't know how to use a semi colon, we could fix that in 30 seconds, if they have, you know, real time management problems, that's going to take a couple of weeks to work on, right? And that needs to be integrated into your plan. And then, of course, the timeline and availability, when would four to five minutes of prep. And that doesn't necessarily mean they're doing a course for five week or five months or working with a tutor for five months, but they are going to have to study and practice and keep practice, testing and all of this stuff, even as maybe they're learning active learning has stopped. They need to practice this. And most students do take the test two or three times. So even if they're only prepping for three months before the first test, they might need to take it again, right? And so they're going to have to do something in between. So we want to assess when would that fit into their lives best? And I do recommend that it's like all at once. If you try to do a little bit of prep, maybe over the summer, and then you stop and you start again next spring. Now they would have lost a lot of the skill that they've developed, or the, you know, memory of some of those formulas or whatever they might need in that time in between. So you really do want to find a consistent length of time where they can be engaged in learning what to do, studying on their own and practicing on their own. And then it's also important to think about like, when do they need a score? So we'll talk a little bit about the timeline for each grade. But I do like to see juniors finished with testing by the summer after junior year. Hopefully it doesn't even go into the summer. Hopefully by like, June at the end of their junior year, they're done, they have the score they want, or they have committed to going test optional, and they're not even thinking about it anymore. We've moved on to working on college essays and the rest of that stuff, because you don't want the college application to take over the fall of senior year, because when school starts, it gets crazy again. Got a lot of things to manage. Starting a little bit earlier will help you. So if you are a junior or parent of a junior, it is time to get a move on on this testing plan. If you haven't already built your college list, and maybe you're still formulating some of it, and there's some chance that you might need a score, or you just want to know, like, hey, like, where am I on the testing kind of spectrum here, and would a score be helpful for me, even if none of my schools require it, I recommend you get the diagnostics done as soon as possible and then talk to someone like me or one of my colleagues to figure out what you should do, because you really want to make sure you leave time for prep time for a second test and then try to be done before the end of the school year, which means right now is the time to start and again. You want to lock in that score before 12th grade starts. There are opportunities to retake the test in 12th grade if you absolutely need to. But just know that that adds another thing on top of actually applying to the colleges and. And maintaining your grades and extracurriculars in 12th grade, it's a lot to deal with. Now, if you are the parent of a 10th grader, you have a little more time. I recommend taking the practice tests right after school is out. Or if your student is really curious about this stuff, some of them want to do it over spring break. That's fine, too, but wait towards the end of 10th grade, and then go through that process of, you know, analyzing the results, looking at your college list, and build a really intentional plan. I do work with a lot of 10th graders who want to prep over the summer between 10th and 11th grade. I highly recommend that if it fits in with your students schedule, because it can be really nice to either just take the test at the end of the summer and be done with it, or be ready to tackle the test in the fall of junior year, before things get really, really intense at school, or before you're bumping up against these other kinds of deadlines in the spring. And then, if you have a ninth grader or lower, you have a lot of time, and as I mentioned earlier, the space is always changing, so it's really not worth locking in a plan just yet. Colleges also prefer to see scores from later in high school, in junior or senior year. So even if they could take the test in freshman year and get a really good score, I usually recommend against it, because you might want to submit a more recent score with your applications. I also recognize there are a lot of families who are like, Oh, I think my kid might be one of those who doesn't like tests or doesn't perform their best on tests, and we want to get an early start on the prep to make sure that by the time they need a score, they are really comfortable. And I totally understand that. But the thing we want to balance that concern with is not burning out the kid. If you're gonna embark on like a two year test prep plan, your students gonna get over it really fast. You might run out of good practice materials. And again, that question of goodwill you might be focusing their attention on something that they may not need, they may not reap the benefit from, they may have to do again later. And then, of course, the all this uncertainty. So there are ways to help your students become better students and test takers in their school classes that is totally separate from the SAT or the ACT, right? Actually, I like to share that when I'm working with student on test prep, I tell them, I say, Look me in the eye. I want to make sure you're hearing me. What I'm teaching you to do on the ACT I never want you to do in school, right? There are, you know, shortcuts. There are ways to speed through reading content and things like that that will actually hurt them in their English classes or wherever else they they might want to try to apply it. And so school academic performance is very separate from performance on an SAT or an ACT, right? So if you're concerned about your students general test taking ability, or if they get anxious about tests in school, I wouldn't say SAT ACT prep is the place to start them. I would say an executive function coach, sort of confidence coach, maybe even a subject tutor for whatever classes they're feeling this way in is the way to go, right? Somebody who can help them with study skills and test taking skills, not necessarily SAT ACT skills. Alright? I harped on that point a lot because I get that question a lot from families. So my company only does one on one prep, but we know a lot of people in this space that do courses or group sessions. You know, one of the things that sometimes we'll do with like really precocious students, is set up a study plan for them and just check in with them once every three weeks, instead of our normal weekly meeting. So there are a lot of different ways to approach this, and it all depends on how your student does on one of these practice tests. It's really, it's really key to building a good study plan.

Guest 1:

I have a question so kind of sounds like maybe, unless your kid is really shooting for a top tier, very competitive school, the fact that all these schools are test optional, it doesn't hurt your kid to just forego this altogether. Is that kind of a reasonable interpretation?

Sheila Akbar:

That is absolutely a reasonable interpretation with a couple of caveats. The first I'll say is the policies are changing and could still change this year for people who are applying in the fall. So you don't want to be caught flat footed on that, right? If they have built a college list, and they will feel really good about it, all of a sudden, two of the schools on their list decide they're going to require testing. Are you comfortable dropping those schools, or should we just try a test? Right? So that's why I say everybody should do the diagnostic and create a plan. You may end up not needing it, but. But at least you have the information if you do need to go forward with testing. The second caveat I will share with you is that you can see on a college's common data set, you just Google like the name of the college, and then the words common data set, you can see how many students enrolled, so it's not how many applied or how many were admitted, but how many students ended up enrolling had an SAT or an ACT score. And you can actually see how many of them had SAT and how many of them had ACT I don't want you to think that differences in those numbers mean that, oh, this school really likes the SAT more because 40% had SAT scores and only 20% had ACT scores, but you will be shocked at how many students apply test optional and get in. Some schools, it's like 15% submit test scores. Other schools, you're going to see it's more like 60 or 70% so it really behooves you, as you're building your colleges, to take a look at that information and make sure you're understanding. Do most of the students who go there? Do they submit scores, or do they not before you decide sort of a blanket we're not going to do it.

Guest 1:

Yeah, that second part is definitely really helpful to know. So thank you.

Sheila Akbar:

Good. Yeah, great question. Okay, we had a couple of other questions - Would it be better to take the ACT in June versus April? I think it really depends on your student, how close are they to their target score, the score that they eventually want to get, because if they're further from it, then June would probably be better. There's no difference in, like, the difficulty of the test on the different months. That's like, kind of an urban legend that has persisted for a long time, but it's not the case. And so that is really not going to factor in. But the other thing to think about is like, what is your student got going on? Are they going to be studying for AP exams right before the June ACT? And that might be a distraction from studying for the June ACT, and then in that case, maybe the April one is better. There are a lot of kind of factors to think about there. There are some good questions coming in. Do we have a recommended resource to understand what is happening with testing changes over time? Having a freshman, it sounds like we may need to watch for changes. Absolutely Watch this space, the best resource. So I was talking to a gentleman named Bob who popped in at the beginning. He had to leave, but he runs a group called fair test, and they are a testing watchdog that maintains a list of test optional schools. They're the people that I am paying attention to to find out when some school has, like announced a change to their policy. They do a lot of research and advocacy in this space. So that's definitely the one of the easiest places to go to. If you're not already following me on LinkedIn, you know, you'll always hear about it from me as well. You know, whether it's on my mailing list or just on LinkedIn. So there are a couple of places that that you can look for that. Okay, we got another question. This is a good one. A lot of people ask this question, if my child's GPA is weak, would taking the test help improve her chances taking the test, I don't know, having a really strong test score, yes. So if they have a, you know, some weakness in their GPA, a strong test score is not going to make up for that, by any means, but it could indicate, you know, some of these academic skills, that, for whatever reason, they're just better at showing on a standardized test than they are in school. Now, I will say, if you have a choice of you know, where should we invest our energy? Is it finding a way to bring up her GPA, or putting all these resources into prep and hoping that she gets a test score that really outperforms with the GPA, would suggest, I would say, invest in strengthening her academic skills so you can bring up the GPA colleges do love to see a grade trend, right? It's okay if ninth grade or maybe 10th grade, there are a couple of weak spots, but by the time that they're hitting, you know, end of 10th grade, beginning of 11th grade, we really hope that they've hit their stride there. They figured out high school, they've figured out their you know, their study skills and how to keep themselves organized, and then their grades are really improving. You can tell that story in a college application. Just slapping a high test score on top of mediocre GPA might actually raise more questions than you know, make them feel confident. Oh, the student can handle it, right? And so you have to remember all these things are interacting with each other, but certainly a strong test score typically helps a student. All right. What other questions do we have?

Guest 2:

Sheila, Hi, it's Amy. Can you say one more time what the common data set is telling us? It's telling us how many kids enrolled and which tests they took. Is that right?

Sheila Akbar:

Yes, yes. So the common data set actually has just a wealth of information. So as you build your college list, that is a. Resource. I encourage you to go to often if you're working with someone like me or anyone on my team like that's where we're going for our truth, right? How many men applied? How many women applied? Were they out of state? Were they in state? Who had ACT scores? What is the score distribution like? What's at the 90th percentile? What's at the 80th percentile? Right? It's how we advise on whether you should submit the score you have or retake the test or whatever, right? So you will see lots of information on the common data set, but you are correct. They tell you the percentage of enrolled students that submitted an ACT score or an SAT score.

Guest 2:

But it tells you a lot. It sounds like it tells you a lot of a lot of other stuff. Pick a school, go learn how to read it, understand the data. Okay, awesome.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, it's a really great resource. Well, I'm going to tell you about what we are doing next month. We are doing a session. The ideas for my sessions always come from conversations I have with parents, and the conversation I seem to be having this year is, oh, my God, how do I get through high school with this teenage boy? So if that's you, that is the session we are doing next month. We've got a panel of experts who are going to talk about what parents can do. How can parents structure their conversations so that their student is a little more willing to listen to them? Why are boys so unwilling to accept help. We're gonna have two of my academic skills coaches join us, who typically work with most of our boys that come to us, and we'll hear some success stories from them too. So you know, it is possible to get through it. Things can really change. All right, so you heard me mention the session that we're about to do on surviving high school with a teenage boy at the end of that replay, turns out that session is today, March 27 so maybe not soon enough for any of you to get it, but you can access that recording on our website, at Signet education.com/events, You can access recordings of any of these sessions there, and we'll have a replay of that session on the podcast in the coming weeks as well. So stay tuned. If that sounds like something that would be really useful for you. We're also continuing with our live coaching and Q and A sessions, and I'm excited next episode to have signets account manager Emmeline cook join me for a conversation, so you won't just hear me drone on and on. I'll have a co host to banter with, and we'll be tackling some of the questions that she hears day in and day out from the clients who call us all right, I hope you all taking care of yourselves and each other, and we'll see you next time. Thanks.