Which College is Right for you? Tutoring and College Planning!

I see our Junior and Senior students struggling to keep up.  They are exhausted after an arduous day of school, sports, extracurricular activities, and tutoring.  However, our students come to Think Tutoring ready and willing to work.

Besides SAT and ACT test prep, we offer our parents and students guidance during the college search process. 

Our first step with any family is to establish SAT and ACT score goals.  In order to do that, we need to know which college is best for your child.

Five key points to figuring out which college is right for you:

1. Educate yourself on your school portfolio

-Make notes of your GPA, PSAT/SAT/ACT scores, extracurricular activities, sports, jobs, etc. (Pre-Planning for College Application)

-Meet with your guidance counselor to get this information if you do not have it

-Start thinking about which teachers should write your letters of recommendation

2. Search colleges online

-Search college preferences based on GPA, SAT scores, size, major, etc to get a list of schools

-Search here: https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-search?clearSessionCriteria=true

3. Visit campuses

-Best time to visit colleges are during spring break and summer

-Plan to visit during your sophomore and junior year

-Make sure to call admissions for a tour. Tour guides can answer any questions that you have about the campus.

-Print out College Board’s checklist

-Make sure that the college offers all of the majors you are interested in

-Check out the career development center.  Make sure that the school offer internships within your major.

4. Apply Early Decision and/or Early Action

-This is a great idea if you are set on a given college!

5. Wait on Financial Aid Packages

-Financial Aid packages usually arrive in March after you have received your acceptance letter.  This may be the final decision maker.  Some schools offer no grants and scholarships.  Other colleges can offer you a full tuition grant.

Call Think Tutoring at 973-593-0050 for more information.  We can offer help and support for not just test preparation, but also college planning and guidance.

Become a Math Major: Your College Degree Pays Off

It is time for juniors to register for the SAT and ACT tests! Juniors taking the SATs only have the March, May and June test dates and ACT students only have the February, April, and June dates left. 

Free SAT/ACT Test

Collegeboard recently released an article that states that higher education pays off.  To get into a good college, we recommend you boost your SAT and ACT scores.  Think Tutoring is offering a free SAT/ACT Assessment on January 15^th from 9am-12:30pm.  We will then be offering a free consultation to review your child’s scores, weakest areas of the test, and customized tutoring program.

Collegeboard also released a list of majors with the greatest earnings potential.  Math and sciences are key.  A Computer science major is listed at $54,000 starting salary. Economics, Finance, Accounting and Mathematics ranged from $42,000-$48,000 as median earnings of early career graduates.  Other majors such as Early Childhood Education ($30,000) do not come close.

At Think Tutoring, we recommend to master any gaps in mathematics.  Math is all about building blocks.  Your child cannot solve a multi-step equation if he is weak on basic math facts.  Think Tutoring offers math assessments to pinpoint exactly which math skills your child is weak on.  Call Think Tutoring at 973-593-0050 to register your child for a math assessment.

Should You Hire a Reading Tutor for SAT Prep?

Early in their junior year, most students start thinking seriously about college for the first time.   For most, the first step is taking the PSAT, a test which is a good predictor on how students will score on the SAT. Unfortunately  for many, PSAT scores are a wake up call -  an unpleasant signal of the long road ahead to score well on the SAT.   Parents and students should both heed these warnings.

Shockingly, many students navigate their school years receiving  good or very good grades, only to have the SAT or ACT test reveal a dirty little secret:  they don’t read  as well as they should.   Too often, many parents students dismiss low scores with the simple  explanation of “She just doesn’t test well.”   To be sure, many test takers suffer from test anxiety, and while this certainly can contribute to low scores, it doesn’t tell the whole story.   Detailed SAT score reports can show, empirically, reading skill deficiencies.

In our experience, any student who scores below 500 on the reading section of the SAT is probably not reading at grade level.   Regrettably, anxiety-ridden parent and students think only in the short term:  “I’ve got to get these scores up so that I can get into xxxxx College.”  And while raising score is important, parents and students should also understand that getting into college is just the next step; succeeding in college, where the difficulty and volume of required reading increases exponentially, will be the big challenge over the next four years.

What’s a Parent To Do?

If your child scores below 500 on the reading section of the SAT, you should be mindful of  the thousands of dollars you are about to invest in your child’s education -- and start thinking about protecting that investment now.   Hiring a reading tutor, or enrolling in a reading program may just be the smartest investment you can make, one that can not only get those SAT scores up, put also pave the way for success in college. 

Think Tutoring Has a High School Reading Program that considers both short and long-term goals, combining strategies for improved comprehension, vocabulary as well as excercises for increasing a student's reading rate.  For more information, call us at 973-593-0050.