Throughout my dozen years of helping high schoolers and their parents survive (and even enjoy!) standardized tests and college applications, I’ve gained a lot of insight into how different families handle these gauntlets. In the present day, all of my coaching takes place online. But in my first years as a test prep tutor, when most of my lessons took place in the inner sanctums of my clients’ homes, I discovered something that still shapes the way I approach my work: every family has its own reality. As I walked into living room after living room, and into family dynamic after family dynamic, I learned that my real job wasn't just getting my student the highest score possible for them—it was also improving the reality of what these stressful years would look like for this family, in this home.
At this point, I've seen and heard it all. I've seen many different ways that the years of test prep and the college process can go wrong—and I've learned how to help families navigate those missteps with serenity and even humor. That experience has given me an insight that most students and parents don’t have access to: the knowledge of how (relatively) sane the college process can be…and how to make that happy dream your reality.
So let’s look at two visions for how these years can go. As you’ll see, things can get pretty ugly, or the process can be a rewarding challenge. It’s a fork in the river with major consequences—but you’re the one steering the canoe.
Possible Reality #1: Hellish Junior Year
The summer before junior year, Mom signs Maddie up for an intensive SAT course. Unfortunately, the course doesn’t actually have much concrete content to offer. And although the instructor has Maddie burn through the first 4 of the real College Board practice SATs (of which there are a limited number) in order to “measure her progress,” her score only increases from a 1260 to a 1280. This is because she hasn’t actually reviewed math or reading comprehension or grammar in any detail, and has instead only learned vague study advice.
Mom quickly hires a tutor—a “super-smart” boy who just graduated from Harvard and got a perfect score on the SAT in his own day. Super-Smart Tutor doesn't have much of a plan for Maddie’s studying, or much concrete knowledge of test-taking as a skill, but he reviews Maddie’s missed practice test problems with her and maybe directs the family towards generic test prep books to work through together once those are done. Since Maddie doesn’t seem to be making much “progress,” Mom increases Super-Smart Tutor’s sessions to thrice a week. Since all of these sessions involve a practice section or two, soon Maddie has run out of real College Board practice tests to take.
Mom signs Maddie up to take the October SAT. Maddie scores a 1250, and Mom is beside herself. Mom calls all her parent friends, looking for the next emergency gameplan. After all, anything less than a 1500 is a “catastrophe”! HOW will her daughter get into Harvard?
Mom gets the idea from another mom to change track and signs up Maddie for the December ACT. Maybe Mom continues to hire Super-Smart Tutor, telling him exactly what she wants him to accomplish with Maddie at each session (“What about the Evidence-Based Reading section? That was her lowest score!”; “Have her do tons of polynomial problems so she’s prepared for every possible way they could ask—other students learn concepts, but she needs repetition”). Maybe Mom hires a second tutor, also "super-smart," because the ACT is a different test, and don’t you need a different tutor for a different test? (Maddie hasn't made up her mind about which test she’s going to take, so she's still stressing about, and studying for, both.)
So in addition to taking 3 AP classes, being the captain of the lacrosse team, and writing songs on the piano, Maddie has a tutor for ACT Reading and English, a different tutor for ACT Math and Science, the original Super-Smart Tutor for the SATs..all in all, she has tutoring 4 times a week. She is signed up for ACTs in December, February, April and June (because of score choice, it can’t hurt to do every available sitting!), and is signed up for SATs in December and March.
Despite (or because of?) all the stress and work she's putting into managing this process, Mom might feel satisfied (look at all the work Maddie is doing!)...or she might feel totally frazzled.
Maddie, meanwhile, is definitely ready to scream. She will be a huge disappointment to everyone if she doesn’t get that Harvard acceptance, but she spends so much time tutoring for the ACT and the SAT that her AP grades are dropping. Also, she doesn’t have time to write songs or even play piano anymore—even though those were the things that centered her and gave her overfull days a sense of meaning. But that’s the thing her mom says she has to cut, because it’s not an extracurricular with a title: you can’t be president of song writing! And piano won’t get her into college anyway, since she’s not “competitive.” Instead, Mom has signed Maddie up to participate in a couple “service trips” to developing nations during Spring Break and summer break—when they’re not visiting every single highly selective college on the East Coast, that is.
She can always come back to piano when all this “college madness” is over and she can get to “be herself” again.
And we haven’t even TALKED about senior year!
Maddie’s last year of high school turns out to be just as exhausting as previous years. Mom continues with her barrage of separate tutors, and her poor daughter continues taking the SAT in August and October and the ACT in September and October. Mom also hires a separate person to help Maddie write her college application essays and “make her look good.” Mom and Dad (who enters the picture here) insist that Maddie apply to 27 different schools, most of them “reach” schools. But what does Dad care if those odds don’t make sense? After all, his colleague at the hospital just got his son into Yale Early Decision!
After all the applications are in, Maddie feels used by her parents and utterly exhausted. During senior spring, Maddie does the bare minimum to “keep her grades up” in her classes, and practically gives herself a heart attack waiting for college admission decisions to come in. She eventually gets into a smattering of the schools on her list, and chooses the most prestigious out of those, which some of her friends consider a “safety.”
Dad, while disappointed that Maddie didn’t make his Harvard-kid dream a reality, is still glad he gets to brag to some of his colleagues about where she was admitted. Emotionally destroyed by the whole process, Mom is just relieved Maddie “got in somewhere.” Maddie feels “done.” Wait—you mean I don’t get to retire now? I have to actually go to the school and really begin studying? But nope—even though Maddie now feels totally burned out, and probably down about herself and her future, this is only the beginning. Great beginning, right?
Phew! I almost passed out from panic typing that out.
This version flat-out stinks. But unfortunately, I've been doing this for over a decade, and I can affirm from experience: this is what a lot of families actually do to themselves during junior and senior years. (And imagine how much fun it is for everyone to anticipate doing it all over again when Maddie’s younger brother Luca hits junior year!)
It doesn't have to be that way.
Possible Reality #2: Enjoyable Junior Year
Picture this:
Erika is about her begin her junior year of high school. Erika and her mom and dad all hear other parents and students at school freaking out about SAT and ACT prep and picking colleges. Hoping to avoid panic, they make an appointment with an expert who can give them some big-picture advice for the journey that lies ahead.
With the help of the school’s college counselor (or perhaps an individual college counselor, if the one at school isn’t very engaged) and the Fiske Guide to Colleges, Erika and her parents come up with a short, tentative list of five colleges that look like good fits for Erika’s personality, goals, and academic needs.
Erika has a natural curiosity about math, but, like Maddie, she also really loves the piano and writes songs. She’s looking for a school that can nurture these existing passions but allows her the flexibility to explore other areas of academic interest as well. Though she’s captain of the lacrosse team, she will likely not get recruited for that and doesn’t really see sports as a future career. She does want to end up somewhere in the Eastern United States (within driving distance of home), but doesn’t necessarily want to be in a huge city like NYC, where she lives now.
After some research (done by college counselor and/or on their own), Erika and her parents have about five schools that appear like they might be solid matches.
Erika and her parents then go consult a pro test prep expert/mentor who can fill in the blanks on this seemingly mysterious process. For that initial appointment, all that Erika and her family have to do is to bring their short list of colleges and and a completed diagnostic ACT and SAT.
With just these three pieces of information, Test Prep Mentor works her magic.
First, the Mentor gets to know Erika by asking a series of questions, figuring out how Erika is motivated, what her family dynamics are, and what their goals and expectations are. Using that information as well as the diagnostic practice tests and college list, Test Prep Mentor determines which test—ACT or SAT?—is right for Erika. Turns out that with her timing issues, the SAT is much better for Erika than the ACT.
After Test Prep Mentor does more extensive research on the college list, she determines several more things:
What target scores are required to get Erika into her college list. (A 1350 is fine, turns out! No 1500 required.)
What Erika needs to get in a single sitting of her chosen test, versus what score she needs to super score to.
Which colleges on her list even DO superscoring and/or score choice.
What Erika’s testing strengths and weaknesses are.
Which tests and test dates Erika will sign up for and take.
What Erika needs to do each month until those test dates.
Erika and her mom and dad sign her up for a tutoring package that includes weekly private sessions and a certain number of Parent Calls, all of which they can schedule/reschedule/cancel online. Whenever Mom and Dad want to check in about Erika’s progress, they can just schedule a Parent Call with Test Prep Mentor to have a private conversation. If Mom and Dad want Test Prep Mentor to chat with Erika’s college counselor or neuropath, they can use one of their package’s Parent Calls for that purpose, too. They just schedule everything online, and it’s as good as done!
Each week, Erika does a manageable chunk of SAT prep. She is totally clear on what her homework is, and simply works through a given week’s assignments before her sessions. If she is confused about any part of her homework, she hops onto Weekly Office Hours with Test Prep Mentor and gets her questions answered. All she has to do is look at her smartphone calendar to see when Office Hours are that week, and click the internet link at the given day and time. Et voilà! Instant video conferencing with Test Prep Mentor.
Or, if she prefers to puzzle the problems out for herself, she can consult the online courses and ebooks that come to her free as part of her package with Test Prep Tutor. Whether she’s more of a video or a reading learner, Erika can review these thorough explanations for every type of problem on the SAT as often as she wants.
Since Erika knows exactly what she has to do each week, and how she needs to spend and conserve her energy for the marathon that is test prep, she doesn’t feel overwhelmed. She can focus on keeping up her A average on her 4 AP classes, lacrosse, writing songs on the piano (she loves performing them for her family!), and building meaningful friendships in which she better learns who she is and how she wants to be in the world.
During school breaks, Erika and her parents visit the universities on her list. In the process, they discover that one school they hadn’t really known much about is in fact wonderfully compatible with Erika’s personality and vision for her future. Erika could be happy as a clam there! And just as Test Prep Mentor figured out already, Erika only needs a 1350 for that school.
Erika takes the SAT in March and again in May. She gets a 1380 in May and is done. Since that’s all that’s required to open the door to her college of best “fit,” Test Prep Mentor insists that they end their SAT prep and instead spend time on other things that matter: cultivating Erika’s growing passions for songwriting and math.
After getting all 4’s and 5’s on her AP tests—and absolutely slaying her finals, since she had adequate study time—Erika spends the summer on what she loves. She doesn’t have to prep for the SAT any more, after all. She takes a singer-songwriter workshop and even a class on digital music editing. She also finds an internship at an engineering nonprofit. Though she is only filing papers and attending meetings about the firm’s work designing wastewater treatment systems in rural Bolivia, she’s getting the sense of what a career in engineering might be like. She decides that though she loves math and engineering, what really she sets her heart on fire is the prospect of someday using her science skills some day to make an impact with people in need.
In August, Erika uses this newly-acquired self-knowledge to write a Common App essay about her passions and dreams. She spends a whole month brainstorming, and writing, and editing it, because she wants it to be an expression of who she truly is. Since she clicked so well with Test Prep Mentor, Erika asks her to take a look to see if her draft is effectively conveys who Erika is and what she wants to accomplish in the world. Test Prep Mentor has several ideas for how Erika can make those 650 words even more vividly reflect her full self, and Erika has time to incorporate the feedback.
Erika begins senior year with her entire Common App finished, having only a few more supplemental essays left on her college app plate. Because she isn’t overtaxed, she thrives in her upper-level math and engineering courses and keeps taking piano and music editing workshops over the weekend. Bit by bit, she completes all her applications, submitting her first choice as Early Decision and the remaining ones soon after. No waiting until January 1st for Erika!
And come December 21st, Erika gets an early Christmas gift: she’s been accepted Early Decision to her top choice school! She can enjoy her winter break worry-free!
Erika’s parents are beside themselves with joy. Not only have they made it through the entire test prep and college process pretty painlessly, but their daughter has also matured into a reflective, considerate young adult who knows how she wants to make the world a better place. And they can spend the entire spring semester celebrating both of these successes—together.
For Erika and her parents, the college process wasn't an albatross, an endless series of stresses and anxieties made even worse by a mood of failure and doom hanging over everything. Those two years were challenging, sure, but they were also full of chances to learn and grow as people and a family, and they rose to those challenges together.
So what determines whether you end up in Maddie’s reality or Erika’s?
You do! There are a lot of choices to make as you approach the intimidating years of test prep and college applications—I get it. I wrote this post to remind you that it's the big-picture choices that count the most. Those are the ones that determine what the reality of this experience will feel like for you and your family. With the right attitude and strategy (and help!), the reality you want is just a choice away.
And one of those key, early big-picture choices is to find yourself a Test Prep Mentor who will break up the enormous project that is college admissions into manageable, week-by-week tasks...and provide you with a tailored approach to the tests and applications so that you don’t waste your time fretting over irrelevant stuff. My Ace the Test: Game Plan + Tutoring package combo is a great option if Reality #2 is where you want to be.
