Category Archives: How to Study

Three Fun and Helpful YouTube Resources…and a few to avoid

I have fallen far down the YouTube rabbit hole this summer – so far that I will soon be posting test and college application tips on there myself!  In the meantime, here are some (totally unsponsored) channels and videos that I’m loving – and a few that I don’t love (and why).

    1. Studyign (not a typo)
      Whoever this girl is, she has great, practical tips for organizing your notes, making the most of your office supplies, and using your time as a student well.  You don’t have to do everything she did in high school (she is starting college in 2017), but she might help you get a little more efficient or have a little more fun.  There’s a lot of “studyspo” on YouTube, but these tips are useful (and not overly girl – boys study, too!).
    2. This video about common college application errors
      Panelists including the Deans of Admissions from Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, Williams College, Wesleyan University, Bryn Mawr College, Grinnell College, Marquette University and the University of Vermont discuss what it takes to get admitted to selective colleges, how the admissions process works from the inside, and what families need to know to improve their chances of getting in.  Straight from the decision makers – these are great tips and mistakes I’ve caught personally on even my best students’ applications.  (The whole playlist from that event covers other great tips, too, like how many people will read your application and how long they will spend with it.)
    3. This guy talking about math…
      …knows what he is talking about, is clear and to the point, and covers a lot of basics, so if you’re struggling because you never really “got” percentages or parabolas, you might find this a quick – and reliable – source for a late night explanation (after all, there are lots of math resources online).

And what to avoid…

(I’m deliberately not linking to any of these channels, but if you’re looking at study content on YouTube you will likely run across them yourself.)

  1. SupertutorTV
    I’m not jealous – there’s enough room for lots of super tutors out there – but this channel has published a multitude of videos about college admissions and test prep that include factual errors about the tests and admissions processes.  Please don’t waste your time!  The best source of info about college admissions is always the admissions office of the school to which you’re applying.
  2. The CollegeBoard and ACT official channels
    Yawn!  These channels don’t have any useful tips for students – they’re (currently) just marketing for the tests…but why, because you have to take at least one of them anyway!
  3. Anyone’s “How I Got Into [school]” video…to an extent
    There are lots of these, especially for competitive schools.  If you must watch them, take them with a grain of salt.  Just because they play the bassoon and rescue three-legged kittens while maintaining a 4.0 GPA doesn’t mean that it’s a certain formula for admissions.

Are there any academic resources you love on YouTube? Leave a comment and share your faves!

Tame Your Test Anxiety – Ten Tips

Timed tests are stressful! Add in the pressure of college acceptance that is (sort of) riding on your test score, plus your natural desire to do your best, and it’s easy to understand why so many students feel anxious before – and during – tests like the SAT and ACT. Helping you handle this anxiety and stress is one of my main tasks as a tutor – and I’m finally sharing ten tips on the blog that REALLY work.

First, eliminate any surprises from your test.

1. Be prepared for the test content.

Here’s what you need to do to get prepared to face the content of the test:

  • Take at least one full practice test so that you’re familiar with the test content and format.
  • Learn the sections that will be on your test and the time you will have for each section.
  • Use your practice test score to tell you what, if anything, you should practice, and then find a tutor or another reliable source to help you improve in those areas.

2. Be prepared for test day.

Use this test day checklist to make sure you’re ready.  Don’t wait until the night before!

3. Visualize.

Set aside a few quiet minutes and mentally walk through the morning of the test, step by step from the time your alarm goes off until you arrive home from your test.  Be detailed – eat breakfast, get dressed, gather your items, drive there, go through the test section by section, etc.  If you run into anything that is uncertain – maybe you don’t know how to get to the test center, or maybe you forgot which test section come second – write that down and come back to it when you’re done.

Do this visualization several times before the test.  You should see yourself doing well and finishing the test with a smile!

Next, let’s handle the tough stuff.

4. Accept that you will be stressed.

It’s unreasonable to think that you’ll walk into this test as cool as a cucumber, but know that literally everyone feels like you do.  Stress doesn’t have to be bad! Stress doesn’t have to mean that you’re anxious about your test.

Instead, know that the “stress” you’re feeling can help your test score by giving you an extra boost of focus and energy to tackle your long exam.  So, when you wake up feeling jittery, be glad and thank that boost of adrenaline for helping you make it through your 2, 3, or 4 hour test.

5. Don’t panic if you don’t know something.

If you did step 1, there shouldn’t be too many surprises on the day of the test, but no matter what you will encounter questions that look unfamiliar.  That is just part of the test, and the test maker does it on purpose!

Since you know that a surprise or two is just part of the test, there is no reason to panic.  You might have to skip the question or passage for now and come back to it later on, or you might just have to reread the question.  The question might sound strange to you, but know that the concepts behind it are things that you have already seen on your practice test.

If you’re running low on time, that’s an even better reason not to panic – panicking takes too long. Just take each question one at a time and do your best.  (And if you’re taking the ACT or SAT, use your last 20 seconds to bubble in any questions that you didn’t get to, since there’s no wrong answer penalty.)

6. Stay Positive.

Don’t be mean to yourself when you practice, and don’t be mean to yourself during the test.  Telling yourself how slow you’re going / how wrong your answers are / how much more you should have studied won’t do any good, and it will take up time that you don’t have to spare.  (Tip #8 has more strategies for how to refocus if you start to stress.)

Anxiety-Proof Your Test Day

7. Plan to take the test more than once if you can afford to.

Boom, lots of stress gone!  Most schools superscore (take the highest score from each of your test sections, even if you get those scores on different test dates), so if you do great the first time you sit for the test, you can take some or all of that success with you – and take a lot of the pressure off.  Register early and give yourself 2 or 3 chances to take the test.  (Most students see a small – 1-2 ACT points or 20-40 SAT points – increase in their scores just from taking the test more than once and being familiar with the test day environment.)

8. Practice managing your anxiety.

Literally: get nervous while you’re at home doing some test-related homework or thinking about the test, then turn your feelings back around.  Yes, you will have time to use these strategies during the test, too, if you still need them!  Some ideas to practice:

  • breathing (nothing crazy, just make sure you’re breathing regularly)
  • relaxing your neck and shoulders with a few small stretches
  • bringing your attention back to the present moment and out of your head by briefly doodling, coloring in part of the test page border, counting how many times the word “the” appears on part of your test page, using your finger to trace around a diagram or image on the page, and/or gently moving each one of your 10 toes and fingers one at a time.  (These are all things you can do on the day of the test without calling any extra attention to yourself.)
  • reminding yourself that you’ve practiced and put in a lot of effort, and that you know what you’re doing.

9. Build positive associations.

Why not make your test prep fun?  Use stickers or colored pens when you do your work.  Keep something citrusy around (real oranges work, or citrus essential oils do the trick if you’re into that thing), since citrus scents make us happy. Start your practice ahead of time so that you can just do a few questions a day and not have to try to cram (also good because cramming does not work for these tests).  Get together with friends to study, if that’s your thing.  Celebrate your successes along the way – every question you can get right is another point in your favor!  Maybe even reward yourself every time you do your test prep homework – a cup of your favorite tea or a 10 minute break when you’re done, or a bigger reward if you do all your homework for the week.

10. Don’t talk about it…

…with your friends or anyone else who might stress you out during the week before the test.  That story about how your friend’s cousin’s brother failed the SAT because an elephant escaped from the zoo and stepped on his pencils probably never happened.  Your friends who all got perfect scores might not be telling the truth either.  And that guy who shows up late and is freaking out about the new calculus-Russian-art history section on the ACT definitely doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  You’re already well-prepared and you know your stuff, and if your friends want to know why you keep changing the subject you can just send them this post.

Do you have any crazy tips that help you stay calm under pressure?  Leave a comment and let us know!

Get Ready for the SAT and ACT – Private Tutoring in Houston, Texas

Who cares about your test scores, anyway? Well…

  • Colleges do, and not just for admissions – they also use your scores to place you out of basic freshman classes (which can save you lots of money down the road)
  • Scholarships do – there’s free money for college, but it may depend on your test scores
  • Your future boss does – many companies request your test scores on your job application now, even if you’ve been out of college for more than 10 years

Are you prepared to get your best score?

If you haven’t taken the SAT or ACT before, or if you want to increase your overall score more than 250 points (SAT) or 4 points (ACT), you should start preparing three months before your test date!  If you’re close to your goal score, you should begin your re-preparation no later than 6 weeks before your test.  Test strategies are pretty easy to grasp, but your brain needs some time to absorb your practice (a.k.a. homework) and allow you to use your new strategies with confidence on test day.

Score Boosting Test Preparation in Houston

If you’re in the Houston area and ready to start studying for the SAT or ACT, contact me today!  Get a group of your friends together for group test preparation, or take advantage of custom one-on-one tutoring.  I can also help you start the school year with a new edge in math, English, and nearly any other high school subject.

College Essays – Don’t Put Them Off Too Long!

I also help with college essays! The fall of your senior year is full of activities – some fun ones like homecoming, and others like your college applications, tests and quizzes, and the boatload of homework you will complete before winter break.  Give yourself a break and get started on your college application essays now.  I can meet with you for as little as one hour a week and help you write an attention-grabbing, star-quality essay that will leave you plenty of free time.

My dog, practicing for his SIT exam.

My dog, practicing for his SIT exam.

 

Come back each day (or subscribe) for explanations of the daily practice questions provided by the makers of the SAT and ACT, along with tips to succeed on your test and in school.

Need more help than what I’ve posted? Send me an email to ask a question or request tutoring.  I provide private and small group tutoring in Houston for the ACT, SAT, and more.

Be sure to check out the helpful links on the right side, too, for more free test prep resources!

-Elizabeth

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SAT and ACT Vocabulary – Why It’s Important & How to Learn It

Straight to the point: improving your vocabulary helps you in these three ways on the SAT and ACT:

  1. You can recognize these new words and make the reading and writing/grammar sections much easier for yourself
  2. You can use the new “big” words in your essay and improve your score
  3. You can breeze through the sentence completions (SAT only), saving time and mental energy for the reading passages

Bonus: you can use these new words in your school assignments and college essays!

There are many ways to improve your vocab level, but here are my two favorite (“laziest”) ways to incorporate some new words into your life ASAP:

Most of my students find it easy to learn about 10 new words per week at the depth needed for these tests – so what are you waiting for?  Go elevate your linguistic knowledge – and your scores.

Top Five Last-Minute Study Tips for the SAT

Boosting your SAT score significantly takes practice and focus.  Most of my students need at least two months of review before seeing a 150-200 point score increase.  But what if your test is next week?  Here are my top five last-minute SAT tips, in order of priority:

  1. Take care of the basics.  Having these easy details under control will make you feel more prepared and free up your brain to focus on the test content rather than finding an eraser that doesn’t smudge.
  2. Know your strengths. If you’ve taken the SAT or PSAT before, you probably have a pretty good idea of which sections are your strongest.  If not, your grades are a reasonably good predictor of how you will do – in other words, if you’re a straight-A math student who has taken at least Algebra and Geometry, there’s a good chance that you will do well on the math section.  Spend 20 minutes reviewing problems from your strong section(s) to make sure you know what to expect – check out the “Find a Test Topic” link at the top of this page to jump to a specific topic for review – and then leave your strong sections alone.
  3. Know your weaknesses.  Plan to spend about an hour reviewing problems from each of your weaker sections, and pay close attention to the strategies I offer in the explanations.  You won’t see these actual problems again on test day, but the strategies will still apply.  (Use that “Find a Test Topic” menu again to focus in on problems from your not-so-strong sections.)
  4. Try a timed section. Time yourself on one of the free sets of SAT practice questions that the College Board provides on their website.  Since this is a timed test, you’ll want to know that you can finish each section within the allotted time.
  5. Plan for the essay. Your first test section will be the 25-minute essay, and although you don’t know the topic, you can rest assured that you will take a position on an issue that is somewhat abstract (success, happiness, community, convenience…).  Arm yourself with examples that you can use for this essay: what books or movies do you know well?  What activities have you participated in?  Are there any historical eras or figures that resonate with you?  These examples will form the meat of your essay, so save yourself some early-morning heartache on test day by having some ideas for things that you might use to support your argument and remembering your 5-paragraph essay format.

Good luck!  If you need more help or want a last-minute refresher for your test, please feel free to contact me.