Testive Blog

Kaplan launches Testive's rapid test technology to speed up testing

Miro Kazakoff — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:20:00 GMT

Kaplan Test Prep announced this morning that they will be using Testive's technology to deliver a rapid version of the SAT that can be completed in 90 minutes. We're excited to combine our ability to speed up traditional tests with Kaplan's world class content.

Here's the release that went out:

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Until now, the only way students could gauge how they’d perform on the SAT was to take a 4-hour practice test mirroring the actual exam. To create a more efficient assessment tool, Kaplan Test Prep has teamed with Testive, an adaptive test development company, to create the first-ever adaptive 90-minute practice SAT that can reliably predict a test-taker’s score level. Using computer adaptive algorithms developed at MIT and built upon decades of academic research on adaptive testing, the “Kaplan SAT TurboTest,” powered by Testive, can help students understand their current score without having to sit through a full-length 4-hour practice exam.

The first and only computer-adaptive SAT practice test, the Kaplan SAT TurboTest creates an individualized test experience for each student by adjusting the difficulty of questions as the test progresses. If a student answers a question correctly, the test difficulty level increases. If a student gets a question wrong, the test gets easier. By adapting to the test-taker’s ability, the SAT TurboTest is able to create an accurate picture of his or her predictedperformance more efficiently, using fewer questions.

“Combining Kaplan’s world-class content with Testive’s ability to speed up traditional tests gives students the baseline knowledge they need to start the SAT preparation process,” said Miro Kazakoff, co-founder of Testive. “It’s the only SAT practice test currently available that uses computer adaptive algorithms to zoom in on student ability level without making them churn through 167 questions .”

“Today’s students have jam-packed schedules, so we aim to help them meet their goals as effectively and efficiently as possible,” said Justin Serrano, president of college prep programs for Kaplan Test Prep. “Getting students a reliable score assessment in less than half the time of traditional tests helps them identify and focus on areas of study opportunity more quickly.”

The Kaplan SAT TurboTest is available to download online at kaplan.testive.com and can be used on the iPad® using a web browser.

How We Grade Our TechStar Mentors

Miro Kazakoff — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:00:00 GMT

We’ve had a chance recently to think about what makes good teacher/student match in the special case where students can choose from a surfeit of great teachers, and we wanted to share the dimensions we think make for a good match.

Here at Testive we just began a program called TechStars. TechStars provides young companies with a three month period of focused mentorship from a variety of experienced professionals in Boston. The first two weeks have been a flurry of rapid-fire meeting with a dozen plus people to identify the few who are the right match for us as people and our company at this place in its life.

While mentors are teachers, we like the term ‘mentor’ because it reinforces the idea that the learning relationship is two-sided. The student should give just as much to the mentor as he or she takes from them.

I-Trap is the grading rubric we developed to evaluate a good mentor/mentee match from our point of view. It forces us to breakdown our level of fit with a mentor across five dimensions. Remember that this isn't a tool for evaluating people. This is a tool we use to help us think about whom we can learn the most from and who can learn the most from us.

How one rates a person on these categories is deeply personal. We fully expect that someone who isn't a match for us on one category will be stellar for someone else on the same dimension. We know that because everyone we've met here is basically stellar in general.

Here’s how it breaks down:

Insight

How much insight does the mentor seem to have into our problems as a business or us as people? For some this comes from experience. For others it's just because they think about problems in a way that really resonates to us.

Trust

How much do we trust that this person is telling us what she or he really thinks? How much do we trust that when they have something difficult to say, they will say it sooner rather than later?

Relevant Experience

Socrates may have been the greatest teacher in history. He probably wouldn’t have much to say about the dynamics of the 21^st century educational technology market. Still, if you can land Socrates as an adviser, we suggest taking advantage of the opportunity.

Availability

We’ve all committed to things that we just couldn’t follow through on. The best intentioned people may just not have the time. No shame in that. Talented people are busy.

Personal Connection

Do we have a personal connection?

A few things we’ve noticed

It’s not personal. Grading matches across different dimensions helps us find people who can teach us great stuff, but whom we might have dismissed because there wasn’t an immediate personal connection.

It’s personal. If you can never get to a personal connection, it’s really hard to build a good mentor relationship.

Your assessment of others says everything about you and virtually nothing about them. One person may have fabulous insight that we (for whatever reason) just aren’t able to hear because it isn't expressed in a certain way. On the other hand, people who we think are brilliant may not feel insightful to another team. How you score someone reflects what you value as a person, not any empirical measure of quality.

It’s important for multiple people to write down their impressions before saying a single word to each other about the potential mentor. If multiple people meet the potential mentor, they must write their impressions before saying anything to each other. If we even say a single word about the meeting, our assessments are much more likely to be identical. Then we miss the chance to talk about what created the difference

Scoring isn’t a good tool to rank people, but it’s a great tool to create productive conversation. The most insight we get into ourselves and our own values comes from the conversations we have about why we gave people different scores.

It’s not about the best people, it’s about the best team. We grade everyone on all these measures across a 1-5 scale. We'd rather have relationships with advisers who each are a great fit in one of these categories (and suck at the rest) than one who is pretty good match across most dimensions.

How you can use this with your teachers?

Have a teacher you don’t like? Think about which one of these criteria they fall flat on. Maybe you just don’t like them on a personal level, but you can use this to remind yourself that they have other qualities that make them a valuable resource in your life.

If you have the luxury of picking a teacher or adviser or mentor or coach, remember all the dimensions and try to find someone (or better yet multiple people) who can fill all of these needs.

Photo courtesy: Nathan Russell

Top tip to improve your SAT prep: Read Slower

Miro Kazakoff — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:00:00 GMT

Critical Reading Passages are typically one of the most hardest subjects in SAT prep. Students often find themselves reading passage after passage without seeing an improvement in their overall score.

This is often one of those cases where students' score won't change if they keep doing what their doing, but change is hard. We often find that students are reading the passages much too quickly. It's a sensible response to the time pressure of the SAT, but often a counter productive instinct. We find that students who slow down dramatically on the passages often find that they complete the section in the same amount of time, because they are able to process the questions much more quickly.

This is especially true of students who are able to narrow down the answers to two choices, but consistently pick the wrong one. The wrong choice is designed to attract readers going too fast. It usually answers the questions reasonably well, with the exception of one minor, but important detail within the passage.

We would recommend that students try slowing way down on their first reading of the passage. It's going to feel awkward at first. Really awkward. But we're confident that they'll move though the questions more quickly.

Don't be surprised if the students gets fewer right the first few times they try it, but with some practice it can be the difference many students need.

For people who have the opposite problem:

How to Read Faster and Smarter on the SAT

Photo Courtesy: Skippy Jon

Is online SAT Tutoring right for you?

Miro Kazakoff — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:00:00 GMT

While in-person SAT tutoring is the most effective (and still potentially the most cost effective) way to improve rapidly your SAT score, online tutoring is a growing, viable alternative.

For those who don't live in big cities or near large universities, online tutoring can be an efficent way to get access to great teachers and personalized learning. One thing that online tutoring isn't good for is saving money. It should be somewhat cheaper than in-person tutoring becuase the tutor doesn't have to put time into travel or money into renting space. Even so there is a still a premium on great teaching.

Like in-person tutoring, online tutoring is most effective for students who have big differences between their strongest and weakest areas, becuase a personal tutor can just focus on the weak ones. It's also good for students who find themselves more easily motivated by an individual than a class or book.

With technologies like skype and an increasing number of computers that have microphones and camera's built in, most families that can afford the cost of tutoring, usually already have the techology on hand.

Of course, despite the benefits, something is certainly lost. As teachers, we lose alot of information by not being able to see students' paper as they work through the problems. Even when students explain their process it's not the same. As such, online tutoring tends to work for students who are highly verbal and comfortable expressing themselves.

At this point, almost all the major tutoring companies offer an online tutoring option. Tutorvista has made a name for itself by outsourcing tutoring to India as a way to lower the cost, and large tutor referral sites like Tutorspree or Wyzant are still options becuase you can always ask a tutor in another city if he or she would be willing to tutoring online.

As with any tutoring relationship, the best source of candidates is referrals, and on't commit to any multi-week plans until you've one or two lessons to see what the student teacher relationship is like.

One of the most important things a tutor should have you or yoursstudent to is complete a practice test to get a baseline. If you havn't taken a practice test yet, check out the rapid SAT practice tests at Testive.

5 Lessons Learned from Proctoring an SAT practice exam

Joss Poulton — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:00:00 GMT

It's only been four month since I graduated college, so you can imagine how bizzare it was to find myself proctoring an SAT practice exam. On one hand it was like experiencing other side of the the scenario that haunts every high school upperclassman's dreams. On the other hand, I learned some valuable lessons on how the people giving standardized tests think about the experince. Here's my advice for future proctors (and test takers):

1. Set Expectations Appropriately

Read your proctoring instructions the night before the test, and then read them again the morning of. You need to know exactly how the morning is going to go without a doubt in your mind. Your confidence translates into a smooth process for everybody involved. If you decide that you'll just "wing-it" the morning of, remember that this is about way more than just yourself.

The same goes for test takers. Know what you are getting into by taking advantage of practice exams. You can take a rapid SAT practice test at Testive.

2. Be Upbeat

This is a scary time for those taking the test. Some students have put hundreds of hours into preparing for these four hours. Although it can be tempting, make sure that you bring your A game and get plenty of sleep and coffee the morning of. Once it's test time, greet every student with a smile and encourage them to get up and walk around at break times. From what I saw, students that brought snacks seemed more engaged upon resuming the test.

If you're a student, try your best to be as upbeat as you can. It's tough, but the students who came at the test from a positive mind-set got less fatigued. Also, you can never pack too much food.

3. Watch Closely for Cheating

This isn't just a high school test. The outcome of the SAT is one number that is a major determinant of students' futures. Cheating on the SAT has enormous implications both for the student that cheats and others. If a student achieves a score that they didn't deserve, that could well mean that another student gets cheated out of admission based on a score that they earned legitimately. You have multiple people's academic lives in your hands - more than just the twenty-odd students in the room. Look out for odd patterns - students staring intently at something, looking under the table, vibrations from cell phones, reading from drink labels, etc. You're not the police, you're just trying to make sure everybody is on a level playing field.

And to the students out there, yes, we do notice.

4. Don't Get Caught Up in Your Own World

I will admit that on one section I was really into reading a particular news article. I think I might have been 20 or 30 seconds late on calling the section complete. In this case it wasn't a huge deal since it was a practice test, but you can't let that happen in the real deal. After that incident, I set a backup timer on my cell phone that vibrated a minute before the section was complete. It's perfectly fine to keep yourself entertained, but administering the test effectively involves being aware of both timing and watching for cheating. Oh, and make sure your cell phone, laptop, and watch aren't making any noise that could potentially distract students.

5. Write Legibly, Speak Slowly

Give yourself ample time to go over the instructions. Speak slowly, loudly, and confidently. Make eye contact with every student when you ask if there are any questions. Write in laughably large font on the board (usually you have plenty of space). Don't leave a doubt in your mind that the student with bad eyesight in the back of the room can't see the board. I even asked if everybody could read everything. There's definitely a line between annunciating and yelling. Don't be the mean proctor who unnecessarily startles students every time they give an update. That guy's a total jerk (I know, I had him when I took the SAT).

It's most important to just empathize with the students. This is a challenging morning for them that has the potential to define the next four years of their lives. Treat it as such.

And if you're the one taking the test, remember that your proctors are people too.

How to know if private tutoring is the right SAT Practice for you

Miro Kazakoff — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:00:00 GMT

There are many different options for those looking for SAT practice resources. While some good ones are free, your options expand dramatically if you (or your parents) are willing to invest a bit.

In our experience, sorry to say, the best resources are usually the most expensive. That's not to say that the more you spend, the higher quality you get. The're no better resource that private, in-person tutoring, but it's easy to overspend on low-quality.

If you are in an urban area, you should be able to find a high-quality private tutor who can fit around your student's busy schedule. In competitive markets with lots of college there are often current students who make great tutors. That's especially true if you are willing to do some traveling to them. (Remember that tutors only make money when they are teaching, so driving out to you is lost money to them and many college students in cities don't have cars).

With private tutors you get almost everything you could want. They combine content expertise with motivation. They can adapt to the needs of the student easily and, in the case of younger tutors or college students, provide a good role model for what life after high school can look like.

Like all great teaching, however, much of the value comes from the passion of the teacher and his or her commitment to the student. Tutoring is a personal relationship. As a result, it can be very hard to identify the right fit. Make sure you (and we mean the student here) meets the tutor before committing. There are great students and great teachers alike who just shouldn't work with each other.

On the flip side, if the student and the tutor really hit it off, almost nothing else matters. The community college dropout who knows 10th grade math and really inspires a student will help your student get a much bigger score increase than an MIT Physics PhD whom you child doesn't really care for.

The one downside is that the one-to-one approach may be intimidating for some students. Being the focus of attention for 1-2 hours can be exhausting and scary. SAT prep is hard enough without added stress. If you can assemble a few friends, you can create your own small classroom setting. Beware however that the difference between tutoring and teaching a small class is pretty vast. Having great content knowledge and student rapport is usually enough to make a good tutor. Once a teacher has more than one student, classroom management skills start to become important. Those skills are not easily mastered.

Meeting and selecting tutors is hard work. Sites like Wyzant and Tutorspree have great research tools and most tutors will be listed on there (unless they have a well-established client based). Still, the best source of good tutors is referrals from other parents.

One of the first things any good tutor will ask you is for the student's most recent scores. If you havn't taken a practice test yet, check out the rapid SAT practice tests at Testive.

The Best SAT Free Practice Tests

Miro Kazakoff — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:09:00 GMT

Students prepping for the SAT are blessed and cursed with an abundance of free practice tests scattered across the Internet. Unfortunately, most of them are pretty crappy. You'll want to stick with the major brand names and the few smaller players that have invested in building solid tests.

We assembled a quick set of resources to the free practice tests are are our favorites

1. The College Board Full Length Practice Test

There is simply no resource, no test, no company, no person who can claim to provide a more accurate practice test than the people who actually write the SAT. You can take one free test at the College Board website. If you want to take additional tests online, you'll need to sign-up for their online class.

The class features most of the same content that is available for less in the Blue Book, but it does let you grade your tests online.

A quick secret: the free online test is the same as the first test in the Blue Book.

Another quick secret: Testive has an online Blue Book Grader. Just enter your answers and we'll provide you an automatic score report so you don't have to grade it yourself (but you will have to buy the book for this tool).

2. The Princeton Review Online Practice Test

It's easy to say bad things about big test prep, but in most cases only the big companies have had the resources to create accurate full length SAT tests, and validate them with real students. No practice test will be as good as one from the College Board, but Princeton Review's is more solid than most of what's out there and it's free and it's online.

Like all practice tests at test prep companies, they will ask you to register for the test and they will market to you via email. Don't let a little email scare you. It's well worth it.

3. Testive's Rapid SAT Test

For the busy high school student (and what high school student isn't busy), Testive has developed a rapid SAT test. In 30 minutes, we can predict your Math, Reading or Writing score instead of the 3-4 hours you'll spend on a full length test.

We stay accurate with much less testing time by adapting the difficulty of the questions to your ability level as you take the test. If you're doing well the questions get harder. If you're sucking hard core, the questions get easier.

Because our approach is so unique, we've had to go through a similar validation process to the big test prep players. We had to make sure our test is actually predictive so we gave it to students and then give them a full length practice test right afterward. It was a long day of testing.

You can register for our test at www.testive.com.

The five keys to making sure your SAT practice improves your score

Miro Kazakoff — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:00:00 GMT

It doesn't take much SAT practice for most students to see some solid score gains in at least one section, but that practice has to be the right kind of practice otherwise you're just spinning your wheels and wasting time.

Here's five quick tips to make sure that your time hitting the books boosts your scores:

1. Take good notes on your SAT prep activities and keep them all in one notebook

We often find pieces of paper scrunched into old jackets with lists of A-E on them. It's a common phenomenon among SAT prep teachers, and a terrible habit. Life's too short to do work that youjust shove in a jacket pocket. Learning from something means paying attention to it, and that means keeping notes. Invest in a single notebook for all your SAT practice activities.

Take all your tests in this book. Grade all your tests in this book, and keep a running tally of how you're doing. Is your score improving? Great, keep it up. If not, it's time for something different. If you don't know, you might as well have been playing video games during that time like you wanted to be doing.

2. Spend more time reviewing the answers you got wrong

To many student spend hours doing practice problems and then casually glance over their answers. The real learning takes place in the time where you are reviewing your answers. Student should spend at least as much time reviewing answers as they spend doing practice problems.

Really push yourself to understand why you got the question wrong and what you can do to avoid missing similar questions in the future. Almost every prep question written in any book has an explanation for it in that book or somewhere online. Just Google a few key words from the problem.

3. Don't keep doing the same thing if it's not working

Successful students are prone to this strategy. If doing 20 practice problems isn't working, they'll try doing 40 or just giving up. Einstein is credited with saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing while expecting a different result.

We see this most often with strategies that were effective in raising your score that first 10, 20 or 30 points, but fail after that. When it stops working, it's time to move on. Buy a new book. Ask a friend for help. Consider a class.

4. Stay focused on the real goal: expanding your college options.

No one takes the SAT test for fun (well, no one except us). People take the SAT to get into college. People do SAT practice to get a better score, and people get a better score to expand their college options.

Remember that the pain of the moment is in service of a higher goal. Take some college tours to remind yourself of where you're going, not where you are. Check out the score ranges of accepted students from some schools that you'd like to apply to and set yourself a clear target.

5. Take advantage of the tools available to know where you're starting from.

Your ability to improve your score has a lot to do with where you're starting from. Testive provide a set of rapid SAT practice tests that can give you a score report and areas of focus much more quickly than taking a full length practice test.

Photo Courtesy: Woodley Wonder Works

Calculate your potential SAT Score improvement

Miro Kazakoff — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:00:00 GMT

In the course of tutoring, almost every student asks me to calculate their potential SAT score improvement. In fact, if you're reading this, you probably want me to calculate your SAT score improvement.

The truth is that there is no set formula for knowing how much studying can improve your SAT score ... but I use one anyway. It's highly inaccurate, becuase there are so many factors that determine your SAT improvement:

The top 5 questions to know "How high can I score on the SAT?"

Nevertheless, one of our star question authors, Elliott Rosenberg, provided me a good rule of thumb:

In 8-12 weeks of disciplined study motived students can reliably close one third of the gap in each section between their current SAT score and a perfect score.

Let's look at some numbers. If your current score is 620 on math, then the current gap between your score and a perfect score is 180.

Perfect Score	800
Current Score	620
Gap to Perfect	180

Closing one third of that gap would mean improving by 60 points. You can decide if that feels like a big improvement or a small one and if you want to devote the study time to that.

Of course mileage may vary. The SAT isn't a terribly accurate test. So, if you're scoring at a 770 right now, that means you could easily score anywhere from a 750 to an 800 tomorrow with no additional practice. If you're scoring a 200 right now, you should probably be tackeling more fundamental issues than SAT prep.

In general, I've found this rule of thumb is pretty good for those in the 500-700 score range.

Of course, this approach requires you to have a baseline score. For that, there's no substitute for taking a full-length Blue Book test. They are the most accurate predictor, but for a faster (and still pretty accurate) prediction we've created a series of rapid SAT practice tests at Testive.com.

Photo Courtesy j9sk9s

The top 5 questions to know "How high can I score on the SAT?"

Miro Kazakoff — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:00:00 GMT

One question that all test prep companies, teachers and tutors get from students is "How high can I score on the SAT?"

Acutally, this question usually comes from parents and can pretty much always be interpreted as "How high can my child score on the SAT if I pay your exhorbitant prices?"

No wait, that's not even really what they are asking. If you boil it down further the real question here is "How much do I have to pay to get my kid into Harvard?"

Now you know why every teacher starts hemming and hawwing at this question. You can't buy your way into Harvard. Or at least you can't buy your way in Harvard via SAT prep courses. To pull that one off you're talking new library money.

What most teachers respond with is an equally opaque series of qualifiers before they say something that translates as "Solid improvement is possible if the student works hard, but I can't be held responsible for failure."

Let us provide a bit of insight into the factors that dertermine your potential score increase.

How many times have you taken the test?

The first secret of test prep is that most students tend to improve between the first and second time they take the test without any prep in between. Students get more familiar with the pacing, the flow of the day and the stress of a long high-stakes exam.

How much have you prepped so far?

The semi-mythical ideal test preparation candidate is that smart, motivated, diligent student who hasn't done anything to prepare until now. You can imagine why prep companies love these students. They listen, they try, and, of course, they get better. That said, these are also the students for whom prep classes can be the most worthwhile. After all, they listen, they try and as a result they get better faster than they would without any guidance.

How much energy are you willing to put into this?

We try our best to ask our students this in a tough and direct way, but there's no dancing around the fact that this question is a reminder that no matter how good the teacher, most learning happens with the student.

The more time and discipline the student puts in, the better the score. It's also a tacit acknowledgment that many students end up in SAT prep programs because they are not disciplined and their parents want to pay someone to bring the discipline.

On the other had, it's not uncommon to also see very self-aware students recognize that they benefit from some external deadlines and pressures. Preparation programs are great for these students because they are aware of the dynamics of why they are there (rather than just doing self-study).

Are you dumb?

Okay, no one has ever actually asks this question, but you can be sure that it's on everyone's mind: often, tragically, the student's. We believe to the core of our being that everyone has the capacity to learn. We also believe that great teachers optimize that capacity within each student.

Still, different people have different capacities to learn different things at different speeds. Add up all those differents and you, as a teacher, become painfully aware that not every student has the time and focus in their life to learn enough to get to the big score jump. High scores on the SAT are possible for nearly every student, but for some it would mean studying nothing else for months on end to the point of failing all your other classes. That defeats the purpose.

Where are you starting from?

Going from a 500 to a 600 is easier than going from a 600 to a 700 and closing that final gap between 700 and 800 is the difference between being merely great at something and being reliably perfect at it under unimaginably high stress conditions.

That is to say it's hard.

A big part of your potential score gain is related to your baseline. That's part of why all SAT prep classes start with an assessment. It's also part of why we create our rapid assessments at Testive. You can register for our 15 question SAT Math diagnostic at Testive.com.

It's not a substitute for taking a full length tests, but our adaptive algorithms will pound you with a bunch of questions at the edge of your ability level. So it's a pretty good indicator of where you're starting from.

But, how much can you increase your score? Well, in the end we have to give you the same answer as every SAT teacher ... it depends.

Photo Courtesy: Puuiki Beach

How to Improve Your SAT Scores Without Really Trying

Tom Rose — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:00:00 GMT

We've all had that teacher in High School. Every year he or she would give out the exact same test, only with different numbers. The more industrious students among us would round up a copy of an old test and get a serious leg up studying for the new version. Knowing what the questions will be is one quick way how to improve your SAT scores without really trying. It's really just a question of drilling before you can increase your confidence that you'll get the answers correct.

In many ways, the SAT is the same as the tests given out by our unoriginal teacher. The tests from year to year don't change that much. The numbers do, but not the concepts. Studying old and retired tests is a time tested method of kicking butt on the new test.

Year over year, the basic content is repeated on approximately 90% of the questions tested. Only about 3-5 of the questions in any one section will be "new" in the sense that they test concepts and formats that haven't been seen before on other tests.

So, how can you take this information to heart? Simple, make sure you have completed the basic canon of SAT questions in the public domain. That is, make sure you have completed all the tests in the College Board's official SAT study guide (the "Blue Book"). Any less and you will be leaving the gate at a disadvantage because the competition isn't slacking off and you can bet that anyone serious about the SAT has worked their way through the entire guide.

The Blue Book looks big, but there's good news. Once you finish it, you can be confident that you have seen 90% of the material that you can expect to experience on the SAT. After all, the real SAT you get will probably be the same test with different numbers.

Why you'll never score above 650 on SAT Improving Sentences

Miro Kazakoff — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:00:00 GMT

Improving Sentences is the most common question type on the SAT Writing section, but students often lose crucial points by relying on what sounds best to pick the right answer. Because these questions ask you to pick an answer choice that produces the "best sentence," it's easy to default to picking the sentence that has the best ring to your ear.

This strategy is alluring because it actually produces pretty good results. Our experience is that native English speaking students can often get to a 600 with this approach. Students that have had strong educations in formal grammar can reach as high as 650. The problem is that their score improvement tops out there and never improves.

The reason it is difficult to push past that 600-650 ceiling, is because using your ear is a great strategy for the easy questions. Those questions are designed so that the right answer sounds right. But the hard questions are designed in exactly the opposite way. The reason hard questions are hard is because the right answer doesn't sound right. There are several rules of grammar we simply don't use that often in common speech, and the SAT knows exactly how to exploit those rules.

For students with some grammar training, we find the following approach (combined with some training in common rules) helps students break the addiction to their ears.

Read the Sentence first

The importance of this one can't be overstated.

Before looking at the answers, try to identify the error or error category

For many students, simply covering up the answers with their hand is enough. It's okay not to be able to find the error, but you should try your darndest.

Eliminate answer choices that don’t fix the initial error

This is a quick way to narrow down your choices.
For example, If the error is a pronoun error, you can just cross off all the choices that don't fix the pronoun

Eliminate answer choices that fix the initial error, but introduce a new error

Here's another place that students tend to trip up. Just because you've found the original error and identified a choice that fixes it, doesn't mean you've gotten to the correct answer.

If and only if you still have multiple answer choices left, chose the choice with the least awkwardness

Here's where your ear can be really helpful. Even if you are missing some other error, if you've been disciplined about eliminating choices, your ear can be a great last resort to get yourself to the right answer.

N.B. Remember that if you cannot find an error in the initial sentence, it might be that there is No Error in that sentence. In that case, carefully try to find an error introduced by each answer choice. It takes a little longer, but that why No Error questions are tricky.

Photo courtesy: Steve Snodgrass

Does being a National Merit Finalist on the PSAT/NMSQT Matter?

Miro Kazakoff — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:00:00 GMT

Last week, NYU announced that it was pulling out of the National Merit Finalist qualifying process saying it doesn't want to award merit scholarship based on the results of a standardized test.

How does one become a National Merit Finalist?

In each state the cut-off is different, but the stop scorers on the PSAT are generally selected as National Merit Semi-Finalists. To move to finalist round, students must take the SAT and score within certain ranges before being invited.

But the prestige of the scholarship, as well as the money involved, is in question. Though the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) distributes over $50M in scholarship money, it doesn't necessarily flow to the places or people you would expect.

Since merit money generally flows through the school, your school has to offer merit based aid for you to ever see a National Merit Scholarship check. Most of the Ivy League and other top schools that attract finalists only offer need-based aid. Unless your parents work for one of the corporations that fund part of the scholarship for children of their employees, don't plan volunteer to buy the next round of pizza for your dorm.

As with all things, it helps to remember the financial dynamics at play here. Despite the social benefits of the National Merit Scholarships , the Collegeboard never incorporated them into the PSAT out of the goodness of their heart. Turning the PSAT in the unpronounceable PSAT/NMSQT was an attempt to get more students to take the test. With some scholarship money attached, the test becomes more than the world's most expensive SAT practice test. It becomes a shot at getting into and paying for a better college.

From the National Merit Corporation's point of view, the money they collect is from colleges (not student testing fees). They want colleges on board.

Colleges, who largely pay for the Merit Scholarship program, want to attract top tier students. The theory was that offering Merit money based on a common, well-publicized criteria would help draw those students. That why you don't see the HYSPM's of the world participating. They know you'll still elbow your best friend in the face to get accepted there.

With applications up everywhere, we're now seeing the next tier of pretty great schools say that they don't need to send a check to the NMSC to get the best applications in those uncomfortable college desks. That process is taking care of itself just fine.

All that leaves is the prestige of being a scholarship finalist, and those at top tier schools say that's pretty overblown too. In Business Week's "NYU ExitNYU Exiting National Merit Scholarship Citing Test Processing National Merit Scholarship Citing Test Process," MIT's Dean of Admissions, Stuart Schmill, admits that the honor has no impact on admission.

Image Courtesy of: Images_of_Money

What happens between when you finish the SAT and scores come out?

Miro Kazakoff — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:05:00 GMT

What happens in the 20 days between when the Collegeboard collects your SAT and scores it before posting the scores online? A lot of that has to do with the great mystery that is the experimental section.

As most SAT takers know, the test consists of 10 sections, but only 9 of them count towad your grade. That one mysterious section which doesn't count is the "experimental" section. It's always part of sections 2-7 and you can tell what type of experimental section you got by counting extra sections. If you got three Math sections instead of two, you know you got an experimental Math section, but you'll never know specifically which number section it was.

It's not exactly true that the experimental section has no impact on your score. More precisely we should say that it has no impact on your individual score. When aggregated with all the other experimental sections in the country it acutally has a pretty big impact because the experimental sections are how they convert the raw scores to SAT's famous 200-800 curve for your invididual test day.

You may notice if you've ever graded your own practice exam (or used our online Blue Book exam grader) that you first generate a raw score based on how many you get correct or incorrect and then translate that to a "scaled score" which ranges from 200-800. The scaled score you get is slightly different for each raw score on different tests.

The experimental section is what they use to create that curve.

Better name for the experimental section would probably be the equating section. Becuase it's used to make sure a 400 on one test equates to a 400 on another test even if that test was more difficult. The writers of the SAT try to make each test exactly the same level of difficuty, but they know that they'll never be perfect.

These experimental sections are called anchors by psychometricians. The provide an anchor to tie together two different tests. Samuel Livingston at ETS has a great guide on how tests are equated (if you are someone like me who thinks that kind of thing can be described as "great). I'll let him explain it best. Remember that the "anchor" and the "equating sections" are just other terms for the experimental section.

The anchor for the SAT Verbal test is actually a short version of the full test with entirely different questions. Here is how the data collection plan works. Each form of the SAT includes an “equating” section that is different for different test-takers. There are several versions of the “equating” section, and these are spiraled among the test-takers, so that the group of test-takers taking each version is a representative sample of the full group of test-takers for that administration.

Some test-takers get a short version of the Verbal test, while others get a short version of the Math test. For some of the test-takers, the equating section is an anchor that links the current form to a previous form. For others, the equating section is an anchor that will link the current form to a future form. Because the anchor is not taken by all the test-takers, the scores on the anchor are not included in computing the individual scores on the test. The anchor scores are used only for equating

If you want to read the whole guide (and I know you do) it's here at Equating Test Scores.

Photo Courtesy: Bruce Clay, Inc.

Why the SAT reports scores in 10 point increments

Miro Kazakoff — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:00:00 GMT

As any high school senior knows, each section on the SAT can recieve a score from 200 to 800 in 10 point increments.

That wasn't always the case. The SAT used to report scores down to the individual point level. You could get a 581 or 693. One additional correct answer could raise your score by eight or more points.

ETS and the college board moved away from this becuase it implied that the test was more accurate than it really was. With 10 point increments, you may receive the same score as someone who got one more or less question right than you did. That may seem unfair if you are the one with an additional correct answer, but it's really a more fair measure of acutal ability.

Frankly, the test just isn't accurate down to that level. In fact, The SAT reports it's own confidence intervals and they are bigger than most people realize.

The most recently available stats are for the 2009 test. That test had a standard error of 30 points per section. That means that the CollegeBoard believes that if you went in and took the same test on a different day they are 95% confident your score would be +/- 60 points on each section. We won't go into why that's the case, but in general to get the 95% confidence interval, multiply the standard error by 2.

Check the stats on the test:Test Characteristics of the SAT
Learn more about confidence intervals: AP Statistics Tutorial: Confidence Intervals

So even with the most reliable measure out there, your total score could be +/- 180 points from your practice test. No test is perfect, but what's unfortunate is that colleges are certainly making admissions descisions based on two students with 180 point differences in scores even though those two students may acutally have the same underlying ability level.

Photo Courtesy: Tolomea

How to Become a National Merit Semi-Finalist

Tom Rose — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:48:00 GMT

Becoming a National Merit semi-finalist is something many of my students have been asking me about lately.

I'm going to explain what a National Merit semi-finalist is and how you can become one.

National Merit scholarships are given out annually by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC). As nice as a scholarship sounds, money isn't really what people are after when it comes to National Merit. What people really want are the credentials that come with being *considered* for a scholarship. Every year the NMSC selects about 16,000 semi-finalists, and advances about 15,000 of those to the finalist round. (Numerical data from wikipedia.)

Here is a list in of National Merit Semifinalist Score Cutoffs

In case you aren't aware, the PSAT is being administered as I write this. The PSAT is a test that is also known as the NMSQT which stands for National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The PSAT as you may know is somewhat of a mini-SAT. It has the same sections as the SAT, the same format as the SAT and the same scoring as the SAT (except for a meaningless 0 removed from the end). There is also no essay and a subtle timing and organization difference.

For most purposes, you can think of the PSAT as an SAT. There is, infact, a strong correlation between PSAT performance and SAT performance.

Performance on the PSAT is used to determine who becomes a National Merit semi-finalist. The hard news, only about 1% of test takers make the cut. If you live in Massachusetts, there is even harder news. The 1% score threshold is set on a state-by-state level. Massachusetts has the highest bar in the country for National Merit semi-finalist qualification. According to wikipedia, in 2007 the bar was set at 224 for students in Massachusetts. The low bar that year was set by Mississippi at 207.

For those at home keeping score, 224 and 207 correspond to SAT scores of 2240 and 2070 respectively. Both are great scores on the SAT, and as I mentioned before require performance in roughly the top 1% of all test takers.

If you don't make it as an National Merit semi-finalist, don't fret. 99% of your classmates are in the same boat. Also, since the Nation Merit process is essentially a replication of information already contained in your SAT score, colleges don't treat it as valuable information. It does help, but it's just a small token in a big cup. In that same cup, the SAT score is a rock.

Data from Wikipedia
Photography by mikebaird

How much should you pay someone to cheat for you on the SAT?

Miro Kazakoff — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:00:00 GMT

A 19-year old and 6 minors were arrested last week for cheating on the SAT. The 19-year old freshman at Emory allegedly impersonated 6 other students scoring them 2100+ marks on the college admission test.

They join an the kind of elite club that you never want to be a member of: the 2,000 students who have their scores rescinded each year by Collegeboard. Virtually none of those students get arrested, because they engage in the much more common form of cheating: collaboration amongst test takers.

The SAT actually has a pretty nifty way of ferreting out collaborators. They analyze the incorrect answer choices of those sitting near each other. While different students' correct answers will obviously match, their incorrect answers should be much more random. If not, some Collegeboard gumshoe is likely to come knocking at your door.

What interests us even more is the economics of the whole thing. The impostor allegedly charged each student an average $2000 to take the test. One girl was given a freebie (confirming every hormonal stereotype about high school boys). He apparently could pass for the young lady because she had a gender neutral name.

The SAT runs about 5 hours end to end, so that means our perpetrator was making about $400 an hour. That seems like a pretty good payoff. But our cheater clearly hasn't made it through freshman year economics yet, because he didn't seem to factor in opportunity cost and expenses.

As a freshman at Emory, he'd have to fly back to Long Island so as not to arouse suspicion. Even though you're flying no frills (and you've got a Saturday night stay-over built-in) that's going to run you at least $200. More than that, it's a two hour flight. So now we're talking 7 hours per test and $1800 after expenses. Our entrepreneur for evil is down to an hourly rate of about $260 an hour.

Our perp ran into the biggest expense of them all: the chance of being caught. The math is a little tricker on this one. If you don't get caught, there's no cost you incur, but if you do get caught the cost is astronomical. Let's look at some numbers

Giving up your college education: $1,000,000
College grads make almost $1M more over a lifetime than high school grads.

Legal fees: $50,000
Lawyer costs for criminal trials can get exorbitant. Let's assume this is a pretty straightforward case and our friend gets a volume discount on his legal fees.

Lost time, money, suffering, wages: $1,000,000
We don't even know where to begin calculating this. We're so lost, that we'll call it an other $1M. Think about if it's worth that much to you.

That's a total of $2.05M ... if you get caught.

But maybe you don't. What do you think the odds are? This is the number that really matters. If the odds are low, maybe the risk is worth it. If the odds are high maybe not. We don't have a clear consensus over here. I tend to think very few people cheat in this really high profile way. If your test gets investigated, discovering that an imposter took it is pretty easy, and the Collegeboard investigates anyone who gets more than a 250 increase in any section. If you're not going to get that kind of increase why bother cheating?

TheRealTomRose disagrees. He points out that 2,000 scores get invalidated every year from cheating out of 2.25 million tests given. The test accepts student IDs (which are easy to fake) and if you go to a different school, it's unikely you'll be recognized. He asked me: "do you really think only one tenth of one percent of people cheat on exam that is so high stakes and has so little security?"

And it turns out this assumption makes a big deal. Let's look at what happens if you assume that 90% people get caught or 10% of people get caught.

	10% chance of getting caught	90% chance of getting caught
Money Made from Cheating (per test)	$2,000
Less expenses	-$200
Expected Cost of getting caught (As a % of $2.05M)	-$205,000	-$1,840,000
Expected Monetary Loss From Cheating	-$203,200	-$1,838,200

So even at the low end of getting caught, we think our cheater should have been asking for at least $200K more from his buddies for his troubles. It's just simple SAT Math.

From U.S. News: SAT Cheating Rare, But Usually High Profile

Can you just buy your way into college admissons?

Miro Kazakoff — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:00:00 GMT

One great source of handwringing upon test preparation professionals is that tests like the SAT and the ACT, which were designed to level the playing field for college applicants, just end up reinforcing it.

You know the argument, wealthy families can afford better education, they can provide more test preparation for their children and their children score better. The newest survey from Inside Higher Ed is only likely to make that hand wriging worse.

Nearly a third of private colleges and universities said they are paying more attention to a student's ability to pay in making admissions descisions. Many public schools are looking to increase the number of out-of-state students (who pay higher tution) and international students (who don't qualify for the same kinds of aid as U.S. students).

While this trend is unlikely to impact the most selective institutions, most of our students are likely to attend exactly the type of schools prone to this concern. We're most concerned about the air a cynicism that already pervades the college preparation process. We tell our students not to worry about the other factors. We tell them that good grades, test scores and signs of high potenital are all the it takes to land in a top school. It's painful to see data that confirms everyone's worst suspicions.

That said, we still can say that test scores are important, though evolving, part of the admissions process. 25% of Public and 20% of private undergrade schools no longer require SAT or ACT test schores (though most students still submit them). While another 15% say they plan to review their test score policy, few are saying that they will do away with scores. Most report that they plan to reweight their criteria to focus on other more non-traditional ways of measuring students.

For a longer recap of the study, check out Inside Higher Ed's synopsis:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/survey/admissions2011

Photo Courtesy: JMrosenfeld

The world's largest practice SAT test administered on the iPad

Miro Kazakoff — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:00:00 GMT

On Saturday we broke a world record at Burlington High School. At least we think we did. One hundred students took at practice SAT test using an iPad as an answer sheet. This allowed them to get instant score results from their test taking experience.

Guiness isn't tracking these kinds of satistics, so we can't know for sure, but we're reasonably certain. Burlington is two weeks into their 1:1 program where every student recieves an iPad. With that kind of technology ubiquity, the school can offer all kinds of interesting opportunities to their students, like Testive's practice SAT.

As part of the expereince we also gave the students a version of Testive's adaptive SAT test. In our test, the questions adjust in difficutly based on how the student is performing. By zooming in on questions that just right for that student (not too easy and not too hard) we can rapidly assess the student's true ability level.

While Burlington students use the results of the practice SAT to prepare for the real tests over the coming months, we'll be using the results of our adaptive test to better hone our predictive power.

On a personal note, we want to thank the students of Burlington High School. Tests are hard enough as they already are. The students showed exceptional grace and adaptibility to taking a test in a new way, using a new technology. We're reminded that it's not the inflexiblity of students that slows down technological processes.

How you should allocate your SAT and ACT study time.

Miro Kazakoff — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 05:00:00 GMT

One great thing about SAT prep is the the sheer volume of preparation content out there. One dangerous thing about SAT prep is the sheer volume of preparation content out there.

We regularly have students come in for private tutoring complaining that they have exhuasted all the quality content out there.

While a big part of SAT prep is working through many different types of problems, we usually find these students are not acutally learning: they are just churning.

Churning is that all-too-common process of spending time working through practice problems and then taking a just few seconds to glance at whether you got them right.

Churning is a great way to chew through content, suck up study time and learn virtually nothing. For true learning, we have found that you should spend about twice as much time reviewing problems as you spend working through them.

For example, if you spend 20 minutes working through problems, you should spend about 40 minutes - that's right 40 minutes - reviewing the problems.

It's in that review time that the real learning happens.

We push our students to go through every single problem where they were wrong or weren't highly confident about their answer. We require them to think about what they would need to know or do differently in order to get the question correct with high confidence if they saw it in the future.

The notes tend to be a combination of facts and deeply personal insight into each student's psyche.

Here's some common notes we see

Trust your first guess
Don't trust your first guess
Write out the entire formula
Always write out the entire formula
Find support in the passage

We don't really care. All we care about is that those learnings are right for that student and that they write them every single time. After a student sees "write out the entire formula" five or six times, he or she tends to start doing it.

Photo Courtesy: Norwich Nuts

How to read Faster and Smarter on the SAT

Miro Kazakoff — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:00:00 GMT

Reading faster is a very difficult skill to train, but it really comes in handy on the Passage Reading section of the SAT. Even the best students will find themselves reading and re-reading major portions of the passages through the test.

For students that struggle to get through the passage reading section, some training on reading faster may help them. In many cases, we have found that it simply eases students nerves to know that they trained in this skill.

There is really only one exercise that we have found in increase reading speed:

Time yourself reading three passages at a normal pace
For the next three passages, read at a faster speed than you would normally feel comfortable
Switch back to your normal pace and time your results.

You can expect to read noticeably faster by doing this exercise.

An even more effective way to improve your reading scores, however, is to take good notes on the passages.

Photo Courtesy Mike Baird

Pregnant woman finishes the bar exam while in active labor

Miro Kazakoff — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 05:00:00 GMT

We thought we were thought we were tough. We have taken repeated SAT tests despite hunger pains and classrooms with poor tempurature controls.

Elana Nightingale Dawson puts us all to shame. As reported by Above the Law and the ABA Journal, she completed the Illinois Bar Exam while in active labor and delivered her baby less than two hours after finishing.

The bar examn is a marathon consisting of 12 hours of testing spread over two days and students must pass the examn in order to practice as lawyers.

Dawson (or as we call her around the office: "The Toughest Test Taker in the History of the Universe") started contractions during the afternoon multiple choice section. She alerted the test proctor that she might have to leave the exam early, but continued to answer questions. By the end of her examn the contractions were 10 minutes apart and so painful that she couldn't talk.

Dawson told the American Bar Association Journal that she's just glad her labor didn't start during the essay portion.

For those wondering what kind of student manages to pull this off, Dawson was one of the top students in her class at Northwestern's Accelerated program, which allows students to cram an entire law degree into two years rather than three. She has also lined up two prestigious internships with federal judges.

Dawson gave birth to a son who weighted in at 6.6 pounds. She recieves her bar exam results this fall.

Check out more coverage:
NU Law Grad Finishes Ill. Bar Exam 2 Hours Before Delivering a Baby Boy
Pregnant Woman Takes Bar Exam While in Labor, Delivers Baby Right After!

Photo Courtesy of GregoryAllen

The SAT is not an endurance test ... it just feels like it

Miro Kazakoff — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 17:00:00 GMT

Test preparation companies and schools are usually excited about our ability to predict an SAT score with 30 minutes of testing, but they often ask us "Isn't the SAT also testing a student's endurance and mental stamina?"

Even though it seems like the SAT is an endurance test, the Collegeboard has researched this very question and come up with a conclusive answer: the SAT is not a test of endurance ... it just feels like it.

See the full study.

Before the Collegeboard added the Writing Section to the SAT in 2005, it studied the impact of increasing the test length from 3 hours to 3 hours and 45 minutes. They were concerned both about the overall impact of the longer test as well as where to put the essay in the order of test. Critics challenged that students would be mentally wiped out after the essay and it would lower their scores on the other sections.

We certainly feel wiped out after the essay and so did the students whom the Collegeboard studied. With the essay as the last section of the test, every single student said they felt tired at the end of the test. With no essay a mere 94% reported feeling wiped out.

But those perceptions had no impact on student scores. Students who took the longer tests actually did better on the Math and Reading sections. The study writers hypothesized that the students in their sample group who didn't have the essay might have been less motivated to perform because they were hoping to see what the test with the essay was like. That students were excited to get a longer test leads us to question what they put in the students' drinking water down in Princeton.

The CollegeBoard conducted a follow-up four years later with a larger sample size (and in Atlanta this time). The results were the same, with one difference. This time the increased scores for those who took the longer version of the test were statistically significant. In order to avoid the motivation issues of the prior student, the authors offered a $25 bonus to participants if their scores on the study exceeded their actual SAT scores.

See the follow-up study.

If you work with students preparing for the SAT, these results still feel a little hard to swallow. How could modern high school students, with the Facebooks and the video games, perform just as well (perhaps even worse) on shorter tests?

We think we have an answer from our work with adaptive tests, where the questions change in difficulty based on the student's responses. In these tests, students tend to bomb the later sections when they fail to maintain the proper pacing. In tests where the questions get more difficult (sometimes dramatically more difficult) later in the test, students can often alter their pacing wildly and somewhat randomly.

We believe that on the SAT, where the questions get gently more difficult (as in Math) or jump around in difficulty (as in most of Reading), what may look like fading endurance is actually just pacing becoming erratic.

The best way to intervene with these students is to make them aware of their own pacing. Use tools that help students see how long they are spending per question, and make sure they are always doing problem sets in SAT appropriate timeframes.

Photo Courtesy Marwho

5 Ways Burlington HS is being smart about launching 1 iPad Per Child this Fall

Miro Kazakoff — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 15:00:00 GMT

Actually, Burlington High School’s rollout of iPads to every student is called 1:1, but while we love a good ratio over here at Testive, it’s not exactly the best Twtitter fodder. What we like even more than the name of Burlington High School’s program is the way they are thinking about it within the school.

Here’s five things we think they are doing right

1. Understand that technology by itself is useless

We’ve seen too many technology implementations where the end goal was just to get the technology in the hands of users. Call it the “If you hand it out, they will learn better” model of technology. Unfortunately, these deployments usually fail because technology by itself doesn’t do much. Simply handing out hammers doesn’t build houses.

When we met Burlington High School Principal Patrick Larkin and his team, they were in a middle a marathon few days of evaluating software and tools. Getting right software in the hands of student and teachers will help focus 1:1 on using technology to enhance learning, not just getting it in the hands of learners.

2. Recognize that the users will discover the best ways to use new tools

On the other hand, we have seen organizations head for the other extreme: handing out technology and telling everyone exactly how they must use it. This is endemic in school systems where leaders are loathe to give up control. Schools, however, are too diverse and the challenges teachers face are too complex for a one size fits all approach to work. Telling everyone exactly how to use technology means that when things don’t work exactly as planned (as they always do), users will abandon the technology all together.

Principal Larkin talked about the importance of letting the students and teachers experiment. They have to discover for themselves the unique ways in which technology can improve the learning experience in each classroom.

3. Risk failure

There are an untold number of ways that the 1:1 deployment could run into roadblocks. All change is scary and introduces risk, but what we often forget is that not changing has just as many risks associated with it in terms of failing behind and failing our students.

As test prep teachers ourselves, we see students fail more often because they are afraid to try unfamiliar strategies that might cause their scores to go down in the short term even when they believe the strategy will help them in the long term. We try to model the right behavior to our students by showing a willingness to do get things wrong as long as we learn from them.

Principal Larkin’s Blog has a great post about embracing failure. Check out the thoughtful comments after the post.

4. Use the challenges as ways to provide learning opportunities

BHS students will receive class credit for staffing the help desk that will support the 1:1 initiative. As a former high school A.V. club geek, I shed a tear that no one has to thread a film projector anymore, but I’m glad to see that proud tradition has hasn’t died. The challenges of supporting so many students will present learning opportunities in critical thinking, systems thinking, technology and interpersonal skills. We know it will provide great learning experiences for all the students involved.

5. Help other benefit from this unique experiment

Admittedly, we’re biased. BHS has partnered with Testive to help us validate the questions for our Half-Hour SAT and provide students a chance to practice for the SAT.

On September 17th, Students will have an opportunity to use the Testive software to take a free full-length SAT practice test at the high school. Since the test will be delivered by iPad, students will get their scores as soon as they finish and can identify where they need to practice. In place of the usual experimental section, students will take Testive’s adaptive SAT. Testive will use those results to calibrate our test so it is fully aligned with the SAT.

If you’re a student of BHS and want to sign-up, here are the details:

Burlington High Practice SAT
When: September 17th
Time: 9am – 2pm
Where: Burlington High School
Register online at BurlingtonSAT.eventbrite.com

SAT Test Prep Secrets from the Pros: Meditate

Miro Kazakoff — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:00:00 GMT

One SAT prep secret that sounds silly, but really works is meditation. I don't mean you need to go assume a lotus position in the corner of the classroom, but after finding myself mentally drained 3 sections in I started using meditation / breathing exercises. I know it sounds nuts, but man did it work.

During the break between sections, I make sure to spend at least 60 seconds with my eyes closed freeing my mind of any connection to the SAT. I, instead focus on breathing. My favorite cadence is 3 seconds in, 3 seconds hold, 6 seconds out. That's 5 breaths per minute. I challenge you to close your eyes, take 5 of those breaths, and not become more relaxed.

(NB, the timing on the breaths seems to matter. I don't know if mine is ideal, but it works and other rhythms don't work.)

Also, I actually used this technique DURING testing time. I usually hit the wall after about three sections . So, I use this technique in the middle of the section. Meaning, I only use 23 of my 25 minutes to answer questions. I have found that the tradeoff is worth it for me.

I probably do this about 4 times during the whole test.

What tricks do you use to combat SAT test stress

Photo Courtesy: Drab Makyo