| Featured Student: Will Kuzma
of Council Rock North HS |
A+ Test Prep and Tutoring is very proud to report that one of our students, Will Kuzma, received a nearly perfect score of 2330 (out of a possible 2400 points) on the June 2009 SAT. This represents a 300 point increase from his October 2008 PSAT score! Will, who is a senior at Council Rock North High School, got a 760 in Critical Reading, a perfect score of 800 in Math, and a 770 in Writing.
Will was tutored by Bob Roach in Math and by Brian Kirchner in Verbal who both commented on how diligent their student was--he was very engaged during their tutoring sessions and was eager to learn. Will worked through the A+ curriculum so quickly, in fact, that Bob had to draw on additional math test prep material normally reserved for students who take refresher classes! Will credits the sheer repetition of working through all types of SAT questions, both in homework and on practice tests, to his being so prepared on test day. He said "there were no surprises."
Will applied early decision and was accepted to Dartmouth College where he plans to study foreign languages and political science. In the meantime, he is enjoying his senior year at Council Rock North where he is an officer of both the Spanish Honor Society and the French Club, a member of the National Honor Society and the Science National Honor Society, and participates in the model United Nations program.
Congratulations to Will on his outstanding SAT scores (and kudos to his tutors as well), and continued success at Dartmouth and beyond!
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Websites that
Follow
Trends in College Admissions |
 The landscape of college admissions has been changing
rapidly over the last few years, and it can seem daunting for high school
students (and their parents) who are about to begin their college quest to
familiarize themselves with the admissions process. Where to begin?
Two revered
publications, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal devote a
portion of their websites to covering current practices and emerging trends in
the college admissions process.
Here are the links to their college admissions related websites:
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com
www.wsj.unigo.com
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Rethinking the Goals
of Elementary School |
Due to the "No Child Left Behind" legislation enacted in 2002,
so much emphasis is placed on preparing today's students for testing that,
unfortunately, social and analytical skills sometimes get lost in the
shuffle. State testing is now mandatory
in the public school system to ensure that all students have successfully
acquired certain basic skills. Consequently, teachers are often forced to
"teach to the test," taking time away from the regular
curriculum. Public schools are rated and receive federal funding on the basis
of student test scores.
Although state testing occurs at various grade levels, it
has had a strangling effect on elementary school education in particular. This
test-driven frenzy is frustrating to both teacher and student alike and runs
counter to the way in which current research indicates young children actually develop
and learn concepts. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece, Susan Engel,
a senior lecturer in psychology and director of the teaching program at
Williams College, addresses the flaws of this test-centered curriculum and
suggests ways in which the curriculum can be better adapted to meet the developmental
needs of our children in these formative years.
Engel underscores the importance of reading in all its
forms--hearing stories read aloud, reading aloud to others, telling stories to
each other, and reading independently. Writing is also key--children should
spend time writing about things that are meaningful to them such as letters, stories,
and magazine articles. Practice of computation, enjoying sustained
conversations, having extended play time, and strengthening collaborative
skills such as listening to one another and cooperating are also essential
skills, according to Engel.
Specifically, she maintains that students should have
mastered the following once they finish elementary school: "They should be able
to read a chapter book, write a story and a compelling essay; know how to add,
subtract, divide and multiply numbers; detect patterns in complex phenomena;
use evidence to support an opinion; be part of a group of people who are not
their family; and engage in an exchange of ideas in conversation. If all
elementary school students mastered these abilities, they would be prepared to
learn almost anything in high school and college." Engel is decidedly not a fan of rote memorization of facts and
formulas because research shows that children "construct knowledge; they don't
swallow it."
In sum, Engel believes that our educational system needs to
shift its focus away from preparing our elementary school children to do well
in the short-term on tests. Rather, she asserts, we should cultivate social and analytical skills
that will prepare our children to do well in the long-term, both in higher
education and in life. Click here to read the
entire New York Times Op-Ed piece by Susan Engel.
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Is Your School Interested in Offering a Test Prep Course?
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Since 1992 A+ Test Prep has offered PSAT, SAT, ACT, SSAT, and ISEE test preparation courses at schools throughout the Delaware Valley.
We also offer free proctored ACT and SAT exams at local schools upon request.
For more information please contact Daniel Ascher, M.Ed. at 215.886.9188. |
Free Proctored SAT
Practice Exam
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Mark your calendars! The inclement weather on February 6, 2010 caused us to cancel our free, no-obligation, proctored SAT practice exams. The new date is March 6, 2010. The exam is open to current students and to members of the community.
Location:
Penn Wynne Library
130 Overbrook Parkway
Wynnewood, PA 19096
SAT Proctored Practice Exam
Saturday, March 6, 2010, 10:00 AM-2:15 PM
This is a great opportunity for students to take the SAT under actual test-like conditions prior to sitting for the "real" thing. Students will receive a detailed score report which includes an analysis of their strengths and weaknesses on the exam.
These tests are offered by A+ for free, on a no-obligation basis--no strings attached!
Space is limited, though, so call our office today at 215.886.9188 or 610.520.0537 to register.
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The Myth of Multitasking
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We
are a society of multitaskers who take pride in our ability to accomplish several
things at once. Indeed, we even feel exhilarated by our ability to do so. Teenagers
research a project on-line while instant messaging their friends and listening
to music. Business people constantly check their smartphones for email and send or answer text messages in the middle of business meetings. Parents talk on their cell phones and sip coffee while chauffeuring their children from activity to activity.
But
this shifting of attention from one task to another often gives us a false
sense of competence, argues Clifford I. Nass, Professor of Psychology at
Stanford University. "Heavy multitaskers are often extremely confident in their
abilities." This confidence is not merited, though, according to the results of
a study Nass and two colleagues performed on some self-described multitaskers.
Much to Nass's surprise, the multitaskers performed far worse on cognitive and
memory tasks that involved distraction than their counterparts who preferred
focusing on one task at a time. Nass thought that the busy bees would perform
better at least in some aspects of the test, but the results of the study indicated
otherwise.
Psychologists
have known for some time that under optimal conditions the human mind's ability
to juggle facts and perform mental operations is limited to approximately 7
units (hence, the reasoning behind the 7-digit phone number). Generally
speaking, we struggle to repeat new information that exceeds 7 units and so we
must guess or estimate. Other factors such as fatigue or anxiety only further
degrade our memory.
The ability to manage our attention and filter out distractions plays an
important role in encoding information into long-term memory. Karin Foerde of
Columbia University conducted an interesting experiment in 2006 that suggests
that distraction during learning can be harmful, even if the distraction
doesn't seem to impede students' immediate performance on their tasks. Her
experiment involved having students predict weather based on cues that they
learned over many computer trials. During one of the computer trainings, she
introduced an additional task--the students had to also count musical tones
while forecasting. Adding this musical chore did not at first seem to harm the
students' performance--their forecasts were almost as accurate as those made
when there were no distractions. However, when the students were asked later to
summarize the general probabilistic rules for that trial (for example, a
triangle was associated with sunshine 80% of the time), they fared far worse
than they did on the undistracted trials.
Foerde asserts that the distracted students learned the weather rules by
"habit memory," but when undistracted they learned the rules through what is
known as a declarative memory system. These findings are important for
educators--information stored in declarative memory is more flexible, says
Foerde, and people are more likely to be able to draw analogies and extrapolate
from it. "If you just look at performance on the main task, you might not
see these differences," Foerde says. "But when you're teaching, you
would like to see more than simple retention of the information that you're
providing people. You'd like to see some evidence that they can use their
information in new ways."
The findings of these psychologists suggest that we should reconsider our
multitasking ways. Upon closer examination, the habit that makes us feel so competent
and efficient comes at a cost. For more information about the downside of
multitasking, see David Glenn's "Divided Attention" from The Chronicle of Higher Education from which this article was drawn.
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