Bonus Trick: Drop Everything and Study?
"You should definitely abandon everything else in your life to try to get at least a 34 on the ACT. Anything approaching a perfect 36 is your “get into college free” ticket!"
Everything else matters more. Especially now.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Okay – I guess I will tease that thought out a little more.
Why are standardized tests even a thing in the first place? The short answer is that these tests supposedly provide a universal benchmark to assess college readiness. The messy answer involves cultural bias and class inequities, which deserve an entire post on their own.
“College readiness” is a nebulous concept at best, only dubiously measured using a #2 pencil and a Scantron sheet. Standardized tests have yet to devise a way to measure work ethic and common sense. Or the value a student places on the mere opportunity to gain access to networks and knowledge not previously available to his family or many other people in his or her socioeconomic situation.
Besides that, a standardized test fails to take into account all of those other amazing things high school students do with their time outside of class. If we’re talking about college readiness, few things show it more than when a teenager becomes involved in multiple activities and contributes significantly to multiple communities beyond their own bedrooms. Community-minded students make really good college alumni – the type who give a significant portion of their hard-earned money back to the schools that cultivated their development during those formative years.
As you’re going through this process, remember two things: one, that standardized tests only accidentally measure your intelligence and readiness for college. And two, many of the top schools have begun to distance themselves from standardized tests. Here is a helpful list from FairTest.org of the colleges that have chosen to go “test-optional” for this year’s application process, if not beyond. Nearly 90 percent of the US News and World Report Top 100 liberal arts colleges have chosen to go that route, as well as several prominent Ivies and “public Ivies.”
This is not to say that these tests are going anywhere for a while. Nearly half of the states, and the District of Columbia, require a minimum score on at least one of the major standardized tests for graduation. So even if your college of choice does not require you to submit a test score, your school district may. How the pandemic and the cancellation of several test dates over the past few months affect those requirements remains to be seen.
My advice would be to spend some time preparing for the test, which is a necessary evil in the college process for the foreseeable future, but not nearly as much as you think. Fill the rest of the time becoming a contributing member of diverse communities and learning the kind of soft skills that will make your four years of college significantly less stressful.
Believe it or not, a motivated student can improve his or her test-taking acumen in a few short hours of guided practice and as little as twenty minutes a day, four days a week! That leaves plenty of time for them to go into the world and be awesome.
I’m currently adding students to my October cohort, so please do send me a message if you’re interested in knowing more about how I help students to practice efficiently and get over their anxiety about this test as the be-all, end-all of their application process.