College applications may seem like a senior year activity, but junior year is actually a great time to start exploring your college options and researching scholarships. These tasks can feel overwhelming. And on top of standardized tests, advanced coursework, extracurriculars, and a job, you may feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day. But at least you have something that many of us who grew up before the internet age did not: apps!

From exploring colleges to securing scholarships, there’s an app for just about every aspect of the college application process. While user experience and functionality can be better on a desktop, and you shouldn’t be applying to schools on your phone, apps can help you be productive in what I call those “in-between times.” For example, when you’re riding in the car, have ten free minutes at the end of study hall, or have time to kill between last period and your club meeting. Below are some apps that can help you stay organized, keep focused, and step confidently into your college adventure. 

• Niche: College Search matches you to colleges based on your specific preferences that you provide in your profile. You can then add colleges to your list, helping you keep track of schools to investigate further. Niche also has a to-do list that helps highschoolers navigate all the steps needed to put together a strong college application.
• EE tip: Use the app to browse your matched colleges and Niche’s “Best colleges for…” lists, then use the desktop version to stay on top of your to-do list and deadlines.

• Undecided: College Advisor uses guided journaling to help you set goals and create a vision for your college experience. You can search colleges, and similar to Niche there is a guided admissions plan that lists your college application to-do’s. There is also a feature that allows you to ask questions to a college advising chat-bot. For a fee, you can have your questions answered by a real college admissions advisor.
• EE tip: Everyone stays organized in different ways. If you have your own method of keeping track of your college to-do’s, consider cross-referencing it against Undecided’s list to make sure you aren’t forgetting anything.
• Vocabulary Builder by Magoosh provides vocabulary flashcards for the ACT and SAT.
• EE Tip: Open up this app when you know you’re only going to have a few minutes. One of the best ways to learn vocabulary is through short, regularly repeated study, which this app is perfect for.
• Scholly is a college scholarship app that is free for students as of August 2023. After completing your profile, the app matches you with scholarships based on your interests, background, and accomplishments. You’re then able to sort your matches by due dates, the level of effort needed, and the scholarship amount.
• EE tip: Use the app to search and save scholarships, then use the desktop version to review your saved scholarships and apply.
• Going Merry Scholarships also matches you to scholarships based on your profile. Going Merry differs from other apps in that it allows students to apply for scholarships directly on the platform, saving you time by auto-filling information that’s already in your profile.
• EE tip: Autofill can be a huge timesaver, but make sure to review the before submission to make sure it’s 1) accurate and 2) specific to the scholarship and not generic.
• RaiseMe – College scholarships takes a different approach from Scholly and Going Merry. RaiseMe partners directly with over 300 colleges to offer students scholarships for their achievements during high school. For example, high school students can earn micro-scholarships to specific colleges for getting good grades, volunteering in the community, or joining an extracurricular.
• EE tip: The average annual scholarship on RaiseMe is $5,000, and only a small percentage of colleges are on the platform. If you are looking for scholarships, add this app to your list, but don’t use RaiseMe exclusively.

Educational Endeavors can help you with all your test preparation needs, from the new Digital SAT to the ACT. Sign up for a workshop or request a 1-1 tutor at our website.

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Starting in the spring of 2024, students will take the SAT on a computer or tablet using a special app that will be downloaded in advance of test day. (The PSAT will start digitally this fall.) No more bubble sheets to fill in or #2 pencils to sharpen. Besides this format change, many elements of the exam are significantly different on the new digital SAT. 

At EE, we are adapting our test prep methods to respond to these changes. New information and practice material is just coming out, but we know that many of you want to start with test prep soon. We thought it would be helpful to share some of the big changes with you:

• The digital SAT will be a shorter test! It will clock in at 2 hours and 14 minutes and include only 98 questions (down from 154 on the print SAT). 
• It will only include two sections (Reading & Writing is one section, Math is the other).
• You can bring your own calculator or use the graphing calculator built in to the app. And calculators are allowed for ALL math problems (no more calculator and no calculator sections).
• You can mark questions for review, skip them, and come back later.
• You can highlight/annotate with an on-screen tool.
• You can use process of elimination to mark wrong answer choices on screen.
• A timer will be shown on the screen.
• Long reading passages are gone. Students will see many shorter texts, each tied to just one question.
• There are fewer questions and more time is given per question.
• Scores will be available in just a few days.

Those are some of the simple-to-digest changes, but there are some other bigger ones that you’ll need to wrap your head around.

The digital SAT is a “section adaptive” test. Unlike some computerized tests, it won’t change the level of difficulty based on your performance on a question-by-question basis. However, it will adapt the difficulty level after each section. The first section or “module” will determine a baseline that will then lead you to a second section that is either easier or harder depending on how you fared on the previous section. The top score available to you will depend on which path you are taken to on the second module. If you are sent to the harder module, then a top score is still possible, but if you are funneled into the easier one, your highest score has a ceiling below others. 

The biggest switch from a strategy perspective is that the questions are no longer weighted equally. Questions don’t all count for the same number of points. The assumption is that you will be penalized more for getting easy questions wrong, and you will gain more points for getting tough questions correct. You’ll still be shooting for a perfect score of 1600 points (dare to dream!) but how you get there has changed significantly. 

One thing to be clear about is that the content you are responsible for knowing is mostly unchanged. According to the test makers, only the timing, format, and scoring have changed. If you’ve taken practice SATs in the past and done well with the paper and pencil version, you should be able to score well on the digital version as well. It’s just a matter of getting used to the changes and gearing up for test day. 

Practice, practice, practice! If you are eager to get started with digital SAT prep, the publishers of the test — the College Board — do not recommend using existing paper-and-pencil practice tests. They have added four full-length digital practice tests to their suite of assessments; these can be taken online once you’ve downloaded the Bluebook App and registered for an account at the CollegeBoard website. More official digital SAT practice tests will be added during the summer of 2023. These practice tests will be adaptive so students can get the full digital SAT experience. We also recommend signing up for official SAT practice on Khan Academy. You can target specific skills and take quizzes and tests whenever you want. And it’s totally free.

Change can be stressful, so it’s a good idea to learn as much as possible about the new exam and get comfortable with the format. More information can be found on the College Board’s Digital SAT FAQ.

Educational Endeavors has experienced and caring tutors ready to prepare your child for the new digital SAT. Submit a tutor request to get started with one-to-one tutoring or submit a workshop interest form to be notified when registration opens for SAT classes this fall.

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Lots of folks are declaring that ChatGPT is signaling the “end” of things — high school English, college essays, jobs for copywriters — but I would rather think about it in terms of beginnings than endings.

The big question is what kind of beginning it might be. 

One possible beginning is a movement towards keeping students separate from any access to the technology by making them write entirely in class or subjecting them to digital monitoring of their work. I’m sure any number of education technology companies are looking at it as a potential gold rush as they develop their chatbot detection technology.

Quite honestly, the smart money would be on that kind of future, one where students provided with digital blinders are tasked with cranking out the same types of writing they’re asked to do today.

But I’ve never been one to take the smart money route. I want this to be the beginning of an era when we give all students access to genuine, engaging writing experiences, guided by teachers  or mentors who are there to encourage and support that work.

I believe this is a desirable future because it’s a future in which students are learning.

Unfortunately, sometimes student learning is lost in the context of schooling.

When I recently spoke on the WGN Chicago morning news about the implications of ChatGPT, news anchor Larry Potash wondered why we couldn’t just start expelling students who use the technology in order to send a message that students should steer clear. 

I was so dumbfounded by the question that I gave the first answer that came into my head,  pointing out that an expelled student can’t learn anything. I don’t know if that satisfied him or not.

Maybe if we’re really concerned about the issue, we could just throw anyone in jail who attempts to breach the barriers between students and the new technology. Zero tolerance seems to be effective in plenty of other parts of our society, why not schools?

I can’t help every student in the land, but I’m determined to do what I can do to get students writing in ways that makes ChatGPT a tool or toy, something to be used when useful, something to be ignored when not. Thankfully, I’m not alone in this desire, and my friends at Educational Endeavors are pitching in to help.

The first initiative is a digital self-paced course for teachers: Teaching Writing in a World of Artificial Intelligence.It should be useful for anyone who asks students from sixth grade through college to write.

It is an integration of the concepts from my book Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities with the procedures from The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing – an accompanying book based on the lesson plans I developed over 20 years of teaching college writing. We’ve turned these texts into a course that will help instructors develop their own approaches to giving students meaningful writing experiences.

Participants gain access to hours of content, dozens of readings, and, perhaps most importantly, a growing community of educators sharing insights into how students learn. Visit that landing page for Teaching Writing in a World of Artificial Intelligence to learn more about what specific content is available in the course.

There are offerings for students, too .For years, Educational Endeavors has been conducting writing workshops for students at schools and nonprofits around Chicago utilizing material from The Writer’s Practice.

I have convinced Educational Endeavors to expand access to these workshops to any individual who would like them, not just those at EE’s partner organizations. They have increased their capacity to offer writing tutoring focused not just on helping students finish writing assignments, but on developing their capacities as writers and thinkers. The independent study now on offer centers on weekly one-on-one tutoring sessions, the gold-standard for how to impact student performance in any academic area. 

It is an approach that takes the long view of student development, and I’m proud to be able to endorse it.

Will this be enough to stop the worst possible responses to a world where AI like ChatGPT exists? 

Hardly. But it’s a start.

And the more people who join our community at Teaching Writing in an Artificial Intelligence World and who request an Educational Endeavors tutor to support their students’ writing, the easier it will be to create a movement where the humans are in charge of our response to the technology, as we should be.

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The following suggestions are in no way an exhaustive list of worthy causes, but these are some of the ways we like to give, and the organizations we support here at Educational Endeavors.

Emergency Student Funds

Research has shown that one of the most common causes of college students dropping out is a sudden financial disruption. For that reason, every college or university has a fund that is dedicated to providing short-term funding in relatively small amounts to students who experience trouble with secure housing, reliable transportation, or other things that, when absent, make it impossible to go to school. If you give regularly to your alma mater, or want to support a local institution, consider designating that donation specifically to the emergency student fund, and every dollar will go directly to someone who needs it, and needs it quickly.

Donors Choose

In a decent world, classroom teachers don’t have to go to a website to post lists of needed materials and supplies like books, art supplies, computers, chairs, and desks. But in this world teachers often need help providing those things for their students, and Donors Choose allows you to match your giving to the school or specific need of your choice.

The Daniel Murphy Scholarship Fund

Educational Endeavors has been partnering with DMSF for 18 years, helping prepare students for success in high school and beyond. These scholarships translate to a 100% high school graduation rate with nearly 90% of scholars graduated or on track to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. 

JennTheTutor’s GoFundMe for Students

Regular readers may recall our Q&A with Jennifer Jessie, aka, JennTheTutor, who uses GoFundMe to give students who otherwise couldn’t afford it high level tutoring and counseling services that help level the playing field on college admissions.

The National Writing Project

The National Writing Project establishes community-based projects that allow students to engage with authentic writing experiences that turn them into engaged and empowered writers.

The Human Restoration Project

Full disclosure, EE staff writer John Warner is a member of the board, but the reason he spends his time helping is because he believes that the work HRP is doing to provide resources and professional development to educators that want to honor students as human beings first is so important.

Room to Read

The mission of Room to Read is straightforward: to combat illiteracy worldwide by providing materials where they’re needed to help children gain access to the materials necessary to open them to the world of reading. More than 32 million children have been helped.

We hope you have a warm, safe and relaxing holiday. We’re grateful for your readership and look forward to serving you in the new year.

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