Greg's SAT Math Tutoring Results

I wasn't as diligent as planned keeping you posted on Greg's SAT math tutoring experience. As you'll recall from this post in July we had decided to hire a tutor to help Greg raise his SAT math score into the 700's. His writing and critical reading scores were already in the 700's and 'good enough' so we wanted to focus all available time and attention on math.

The results from the October SAT test are in and I'm happy to report the tutoring helped accomplish our goal, with a 70 point improvement, and a score solidly in the 700's!

Here's a quick summary of how we chose the tutor, and my thoughts on how the tutoring process worked.

From the begining we ruled out the standard, canned SAT prep classes. These have the advantage of being easier to find and set up (and potentially less expensive), but since Greg wanted to focus on Math their broad coverage of the whole test didn't meet our needs, leading us down the tutoring path. The first decision was between a local, 'in person' tutor or one that was on-line. I checked out both options. We happened to have a Huntington Learning Center 'store' (a national tutoring chain) nearby and they had a college math teacher on staff that was willing and able to tailor a tutoring curriculum to meet our needs. I believe the cost was $65 or $75/hour. This seemed like a good option and was within our budget. There were a few other local tutoring companies that I called but didn't work out. I bet that most communities have one or more local academic tutoring services and that most of them provide some form of college test prep tutoring.

For 'online' there were many more choices, as you would imagine. Just google 'SAT Test Preparation' and you'll be overwhelmed with options. I quickly gravitated to a service called Global Scholar that I had read about as one of the new, hot online tutoring web services. Global Scholar offers tutoring on a broad array of subjects, including test prep, and provides several key benefits. First it aggregates tutors and tutoring companies from all over the world. So while I only found a couple of SAT Math tutoring options in Marietta Georgia, there are literally dozens listed on Global Scholar. Like other web-based directories the tutors on Global Scholar have detailed information describing their qualifications and user-generated ratings (thought since the service is new, there weren't many for the tutors I checked out).

A second potential benefit is that Global Scholar provides an online place to meet. You can use the system to talk live, send instant messages, share documents or write things on an electronic whiteboard. It's not quite like being in the same room with the tutor, but it's pretty close. The other benefit is that once you set up an account with Global Scholar, and enter a credit card, it takes care of all the payment and scheduling details.

Since Greg and I are both tech-saavy we were drawn to the on-line option. I liked it because of the wide selection of tutors that were available and ease with which I could research their qualifications. Greg liked it because of the convenience. It saved him the ride back and forth to the tutor and it gave us great flexibility setting up tutoring sessions.

To find out who we picked and learn about the actual tutoring experience, check back in the coming days for the second part of the story.

ACT vs.SAT: Which should I take?

Greg is interested in taking the ACT test. So far I've taken the uninformed position of "why in the heck would you want to go through the pain and agony of preparing for and sitting through yet another standardized test?" Plus, don't most colleges prefer the SAT anyway?

This logic hasn't disuaded him so I figured I should become a bit more informed before the last ACT deadlines come and go.

What have I learned? First, selective' colleges (at least the 10 we've visited) don't seem to have a preference between the two tests. Most tell you to take whichever you prefer and submit the best score -- regardless of the test. In fact Georgia Tech will even take your best sub score from each to come up with a 'super score' combined from both tests. Historically the SAT has been more popular with East and West coast and more selective (read: the ivies) schools. The ACT has been more popular in the middle of the country. I still think there may be an SAT-bias among the elite schools on the coasts but I haven't found any data to support that. In fact the ACT has been growing rapidly in recent years, so it probably does come down to which test you do better on.

On that dimension the common wisdom is that 'test takers' will do better on the reasoning-oriented SAT, while kids that do well in the classroom will do better on the curriculum-oriented ACT. Accoding to this Inside Higher Ed article (8/13/08), "Many college counselors say that students who do well in high school courses but who don’t “test well” tend to do better on the ACT than on the SAT." This NY Times article takes on this question from a few other dimensions, like boy vs. girl, format, and length of the test. This Kaplan article takes a question and answer approach to helping students and parents decide between the two different tests. Finally, here's another Kaplan article that presents a factual comparison between the two tests, including links to both test services where you can register for them.

So, now that I'm more informed, what do I think? Greg does well in school and is strong in science (included in the ACT but not the SAT). So there's a chance he could do better on the ACT, even without additional preparation. So if he's willing to give up a Saturday morning, it may be a good idea to try out the ACT.

SAT Question of the Day

A good way to practice for the SAT test is to sign up for the College Board's SAT Question of the Day. For an investment of a few minutes every day you can become familiar with the different types of SAT questions, and of course practice getting them right.

As you can see from the image on the left I've been answering SAT questions daily for more than a year now (it really is me even though is says 'Greg', I swear!). After all this practice I bet I'd do pretty well on the SAT, even without additional test prep. I signed up to have the questions emailed to me every day, and it has become a part of my morning routine to answer them. Another way to subscribe is with an RSS feed.

If you sign up for an account with the College Board (which every student & parent should do anyway to keep up with SAT & AP test adminsitrivia, along with other helpful college admissions services available on the College Board site) it will keep a running tally of how you do answering these questions. I found this scorecard a useful motivator. I worked for many weeks to get my score up to 90% at one point. It also helps you see where extra preparation would be helpful. If I were going to take the SAT it's clear that I should spend some extra time working math problems, but could probably coast on Critical Reading. If you do sign up for an account it must be in the student's name, and the student can have only one 'official' account. As part of this official account a parent can be added on and can separately subscribe to the Question of the Day. Unfortunately (as far as I've been able to figure out) only one person can track their Question of the Day results per account. Greg didn't embrace this like I did which is why I hijacked his account to track my results.

PSAT Redux

Here's the final segment in this trilogy of posts on the PSAT.

Greg took the test Tuesday in school with the rest of the Juniors. He didn't feel like he did very well. (We'll see how good he is at self-evaluation when the scores are posted in December). I asked him why and the answer boiled down to two factors:

1. he didn't feel comfortable/confident with many of his answers
2. at lunch, after the test, he and classmates debriefed and some of his answers were different. When pressed he admitted that there was some debate among his classmates on these answers -- so Greg's weren't necessarily wrong.

My opinion is the 'uncomfortable' feeling came from not preparing enough. Several SAT prep experts I've read have emphasized the benefit of preparation over an extended period of time (months or a year (!) at the extreme). As you'll recall from the last post Greg spent a couple of days over two weekends. I think we'll learn from this when we turn our attention to preparing for his first SAT test in January.