Summer Planning and is Test Optional Really Optional?

me, and we're super excited that you're here with us today, and there's many of you who will be joining us after the recording. So we're going to jump on in, and today we're going to talk about summertime. It is such a great time to think about taking the end of the year and wrapping it up with a nice bow and call it 2021. But what are we going to do now? The world is opening up. The students are excited to get back outside. And yet here we go with summertime. So what I want to talk about today is how can you use this summer to really set the stage for what you didn't get to do during COVID Because last year, We had wonderful things planned for the summer, and then everything was canceled. Not everything, but we did have to pivot. So this year we're getting very focused and hyper-focused on what will be your standout strategy, because this is the first time that your student gets to show colleges who they are and what matters to them. So I have a special guest today who I will introduce shortly, but before we do, I want to really give you some good value, turn it over to Professor Mark, and he's going to give you some massive value. And hopefully you leave this time feeling like you are ready to conquer the summer. So for those of you on the call, we are hoping that your summer plans are all set, you're ready to go, but just in case They're not. What will your student do? During COVID we turned lemons into lemonade. We took everything we planned to do and we pivot and we took it online. And our students did well over 300 service hours each, safely at home. We did many, many internships and research projects. Research papers were written, books were written. Our students did not stop. As a matter of fact, our students use COVID as a gift of time. So there is going to be, what did you do this summer, when you apply to college. So if your 13 to 18-year-old has not made a plan for summer yet, please encourage them that gaming and shopping and beach time are a nice blend to a planned out strategic summer. As an added bonus, I'm going to be— 50 things your student can do this summer. So I'm going to review them briefly and then I'm going to give them to you at the end. So please stay tuned. So as you think about summer and planning, many, many summer camps have already filled up. So if you have not completed your application yet, It just means you need to get creative. It just means that it may not be as easy as logging in and paying. It may be a little bit more creative, but our students are definitely creating their summer plans. When you do the summer plan, you want to think about what can my student not do during the school year. In other words, they are so busy with their sports, their leadership, their activity, all of the things that they have to do during the year. And yes, I believe that summer should be fun, but it can be fun while doing community service with your best friend if the community service is something you want to do. And I'll get into that in a moment. If you are feeling overwhelmed or behind, this is for you. If you are concerned that your student is doing so many things and they're so busy, they they can't fit one other thing in, then this is for you. What I find when many students sign up with College Ready is they are doing a lot of things that colleges simply do not care about. They think that doing a zillion clubs at their school is going to wow college. It is not. Colleges are looking to learn about who the student is, What matters to the student and what are they going to do when your student gets to college? All right, so let's go ahead and jump in. I promised that I was going to give you 3 very important things you could do over the summer. I'm going to give them to you straight away. Number 1, you either want to join or start a Passion with Purpose summer project. Hopefully you can take it all year long, but at least use this summer to do something you're passionate about, to create change in the world and lead others to do that. So that's number one. Number two, use your time wisely. Do not chase the next shiny thing that you think colleges want. Ask a professional. I'm happy to answer your question. If you are feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, you are not doing college planning properly. Number 3, test strategy, and I'm going to leave that to my partner, Mr. Professor Mark, very soon. So let's go ahead and jump in, and I hope you can take some brief notes, or you can watch the recording later, whatever you choose to do. Number 1, learn a new skill you can add to your resume. Seems so simple, right? Your resume is the key to getting your letters of recommendation to know everything about you. So say you ask your math teacher to write you a letter of recommendation because you're in Calc AB or BC, and you've been with this teacher, they love you, you're getting an A, you have a relationship. But they don't know anything about you outside of the classroom. It is your job to give them a resume that will help that professor or teacher know more about you than just, yes, that student participates in class. That is not going to get you a good letter of recommendation. Make their job easy by giving them a little cheat sheet, which is your resume. Indulge in hobbies or try a new one. Yes, it is okay to try a new hobby. If you have always wanted to X, Y, or Z, it is okay as long as it fits in your overall strategy. Get an internship. This has been one our students have worked really hard on this past spring. And I am happy to say there are a lot of brilliant students doing some pretty amazing internships. If you need help finding one, please let me know. We have a form letter to help you get started. All right, create an internship. Say you don't know of what a perfect internship is, or maybe you want to be an entrepreneur. How do you get an internship doing that? There are brilliant ways to connect with people and create your own internship. There are a lot of businesses who would love your genius. It may not be paid, but that information you receive will be invaluable. Work at a summer job. Yes, I said work. I know that seems so odd to go out into the world, and hopefully you won't have to do it with a mask forever. I know in other states they're not, but here in California they still are wearing a mask. But what does a job teach you? A job teaches you your soft skills, how to communicate, They teach you time, how to be on time, how to care, how to be empathetic. Maybe learn, do you like people or do you not like people? So a job can be very beneficial as long as it's part of your standout strategy. Volunteer for a cause that's important to you. Study abroad. Last year— no, the year before COVID I took 7 of our college-ready students to Argentina. Well, we served in an orphanage. When we left, the students had no idea what they wanted to major in. When we got home 7 days later, every one of them knew exactly what their gifts and talents were, which allowed them to really pick a major. Plan a budget. Wow, what a concept. If you don't, who is going to teach you how to pay your bills or how to budget that money that you are going to receive each month. Planning a budget is super beneficial. Turn a weakness into a strength. If you are terrified at public speaking, go take a public speaking class or do Toastmasters. Do something to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. That can be a brilliant essay. Email your teachers or professors. Tell them how thankful you are that they hung in there with you during online school, or thank them, or ask them to write you a letter of recommendation. Stay connected. Your teacher teaches because they love students and want you to be successful. Catch up on summer reading. We have a list of the top 25 things that would be brilliant for you to read this summer for fun, not to get a grade, but just fall in love with reading again. If you usually like sci-fi, try nonfiction. Give your brain a little bit of break while still building your vocabulary. Explore your city. Pretend that you are visiting your city as if you just got off the airplane and think about what would you do. How would you get there? Where would you go? This could be like your first time getting off the airplane and heading to your new college. Get used to navigating. Get used to prioritizing. These will help you in the future. Opt to be outside. You have spent so much time inside. Go get your vitamin D and read a book outside or try a new hobby outside. Take a summer course. If you need to do an AP history course to graduate, there's history of rock and roll or art history of the different museums. There's some really fun, interesting classes you can take. Take a summer online course at a community college. Join a summer sports league. If you love to play soccer, join in a pickup soccer game on Sundays. Enjoy your sport for the fun of the sport. Try a new form of exercise. If you have never tried yoga, that may be a bigger challenge than you thought possible. It was for me. Attend a professional development conference. If you are not a leader, I encourage you to go to a leadership conference. If you want to be an entrepreneur, there are a lot of conferences that you can attend. They're all over the internet. Be careful about the ones that are charging you money and not asking for you to do an essay. They're usually a little bit of a bait and switch. Explore a career. Yes, it's okay if your parents don't do what you want to do. Then ask— if you want to be a dentist, go to your dentist and ask them, did you like going through dental school? Do you like your career of choice? If not, ask them why. It's okay to ask adults questions about their career. Fix up your resume. If you don't have a resume, you definitely want to start a resume. If you have one and it's pretty light, then you definitely want to really spend some time and make it powerful. Review your notes from the past year. Yeah, notes from classes. If you're in Algebra 1 right now and you're going to be in Geometry or Geometry to Algebra 2, it will help you to focus back before you go forward. So look at past notes. Get a head start on upcoming courses. You know, the AP ones. So CR Tutoring and Test Strategies has several classes this summer, and Professor Mark's going to be talking about what he's offering to help you to get ahead and feel in control and not overwhelmed. Plan extracurriculars and clubs for the fall. If you want to run track, start a group that starts running right now. Encourage your friends to gather and do something that you want to do or start up. Get to know your high school advisor. Did you know that your high school advisor has to send the college information about you? They are not somebody who doesn't matter. If they're hard to find, keep chasing them. They want to get to know you. They need to get to know you. Alright, get some new stamps on your passport. Absolutely. Travel is open. I just recently got back from actually 3 different trips, and I'm heading international in, in another month and a half. You can travel international, of course, with the help of your family. Alright, uh, create a business. This is a fun one. I encourage students, think about, do you have something that somebody else could benefit from? Can you start a business and do it? Yes, you can. When I was 12 years old, I started my first entrepreneur business. I found these really cool barrettes and I figured out how to braid them and make them really custom. And I happen to have a mom who was a hairdresser and sold them. I ended up making a ton of money to be able to buy my clothes that next year. Little things can turn into really cool big things. Harvest your creativity. If you like to draw, draw then paint. If you like to use chalk, do some chalk drawing. Really hone it in. Stained glass is another one. Students talk about it all the time. That is a fun one you can do over the summer. Conduct your own individual product. Be a self-starter. Have any of you watched Shark Tank? It is real. It is legit. And these people came up with just an idea. If you need inspiration, watch Shark Tank. Start a blog. I love this one. When we were in Argentina, one of my students was writing just viciously in a journal and I loved it. And I said, why don't you start a blog? And she goes, what would I write about? I'm like, what you just put in the journal. It was brilliant. She started Lolo on the Go-Go and you can look it up right now. She's kept it up even in college. She used it for a brilliant essay. Simple things you can do this summer doesn't cost a dime. Alright, take in some culture. Go to a museum. Yeah, see something that you haven't seen before. Alright, I'm going to go through the next ones pretty rapidly because I want to make sure you have plenty of time with Professor Mark. So here we go. 30 to 50. Research a topic you would like to explore. Find a mentor. Interview them. Go for a bike ride. Explore. Get creative. Go on a spontaneous adventure. Learn about a different culture. Get in the kitchen and start to learn to cook or bake. Go camping with friends. It can be in your backyard. It can be down the street. Let yourself just go. Organize a picnic. Or bring friends together and, you know, have a book club. Set up systems for success for the new year. Yes. If you're a procrastinator, what are you going to do differently? Polish your LinkedIn. I got to stop here for a moment. This is super important. If you do not have a LinkedIn, you definitely need a LinkedIn. I can help you, but you definitely want one. All right, sell or donate things you aren't using. That one's pretty simple. Clean up your digital presence. Yes, if you would not be proud for your grandmother to see what is on your social media, including Snapchat, it does not go away if somebody screenshots your Snapchat. Be very careful. There have been students who have been, um, denied admittance because of their social media. Enjoy nature, spend time in the water, become a camp counselor, disconnect from social media, get crafty, learn another language, study for the admissions test, and take a break. Yes, it is okay, but just not the whole summer. So at this point, I would like to introduce to you Professor Mark. Professor Mark is an educational entrepreneur and elite test strategist. He loves to work with young, talented minds waiting to achieve new levels of success. He was awarded a full-ride National Science Foundation graduate fellowship leading to his MS in computational biology. Biochemistry. Are you impressed? Because I am. After 15 years in design and management roles for the consulting companies, he launched into the field of education, teaching at private schools and high schools. He then launched Fast Track Test Prep Academy in 2011. He has coached top students, including college-ready students, from coast to coast. He has helped some of our students achieve what they thought was unthinkable. So his record is outstanding, and I am super excited to present to you Professor Mark.

Well, thank you, Shellee. I'm, uh, really excited about, um, I'm really excited about some of the things you shared. And I think I'm just remembering, I would not have met you if I hadn't pushed myself to take a class in an area that was a weak area for me in my business, and that's how we actually met. So I love your ideas. I hope people get excited about the spontaneous adventure of really having a focused summer. So I'd like to talk a little bit about this value-added service that I get to partner with you on for the summer on Fridays, and I'm going to share my screen and talk through how to really take advantage of free resources that are out there and, and harness the value of them with an expert. So that's what I'm going to do right now. So can everyone see my screen? Shelly, can you see my screen?

You got it.

Okay. So in fact, before I jump into this, I do want to say I was thinking about doing a— I've been planning for years to do a JET tour, like at the end of the summer, a JET tour of AP Physics and AP Chemistry so that students hit the ground running. So I like that idea of what you shared earlier. So I want to talk about, you know, what is, from a parent's perspective, what is the right test for my, my child, my teen? You know, is it SAT versus ACT? And of course, this kind of information is available, you know, on just on Google Images, you know, you can compare the two tests. I mean, generally the ACT is definitely faster paced. The SAT gives you more time per question, but the level of complexity and the comp— it requires you to combine non-traditional skills together and it's a deeper level of analysis. You know, the best way to really decide what's the best test for you is to take a diagnostic, a comparative diagnostic. So for instance, I partner with College Planning Partners that do a diagnostic. It's— so for in this example, this is a start of the comparison report. This particular student had a 1220 SAT score but a 21 ACT score, as you can see in the upper right, shows the ACT equivalent to get an equivalent equivalent of a 1220 on SAT, they would've needed to get a 25. Clearly they favor the SAT. They were in the 78th percentile SAT versus 56th percentile ACT. And of course you can dive down into deeper, uh, detail and analysis. They break things down by exactly which questions were missed. Were they easy, medium, or hard, et cetera, et cetera. Um, And that's a really great start. I find that is a really great start. But sometimes it can be a little bit misleading. So there's charts out there, you know, for comparing SAT versus ACT scores and detailed tables. But again, that's a great place to start. And I do use that as a starting point with students. But really, the devil's in the details. The value is in the details. And so what I like to do is, is talk about, well, how do I take things like the SAT College Board results and utilize some of the free resources out there? So Khan Academy, most people know, is a free resource, and they are the exclusive partners of the College Board. And so when you link your College Board account and your Khan Academy account They give you a detailed breakdown of what your skill level is in different subskills, and they even give you recommendations. So for instance, here we, we dive in a little closer. Your recommendations, they give you detailed recommendations on where to start. Now, what are those based on? What are the detailed recommendations based on? Those are based on not only how many questions you missed, but they also analyze how frequently does that specific subskill show up in a particular question. So that's a great idea because you want to leverage your time and you as a parent want to leverage your student's time and potentially your money the best way you can and get the best results. You want high yield for your effort, high return. So another piece of the Khan Academy dashboard is, it's really nice, you can enter in when your next test date is. This is just an example. When your next test date is, and you can actually set up a practice schedule based on what your available time is. So in this particular instance, I work with a student to recommend, you know, basically every other day, 20 questions, 30 minutes of practice to be able to hit their test date, which was March 13th. So there's lots of these free resources available, but to go to the next level, really it's about, well, what are the core skills? Like, because really Khan breaks this down into— if you, if you look at it across the verbal and the math, It really, it really breaks it down into about 75+ subskills. That's a lot of things to work on and prioritize. So I, you know, being in business, it's gonna— July 1st will be my 10th anniversary of Fast Track Test Prep Academy, and so I've broken it down into much smaller, manageable core skills. And so I've mapped what my much smaller subset of core skills are to the detailed skills that Khan Academy lays out. And then from there, like here, I've even listed, for instance, in math, I've broken it down basically into 7 core math skills that are fundamental to all the different sections. Okay, and so I've, I've designed my class that I'm going to be offering through College CR Tutoring and Test Strategies that leverages focusing on the core skills first, making sure those are strong, and then going on from there with individual analysis for different students. So this is a, this is a partial set of data that Ivy Global, which is an excellent test prep company, came up with, and they did a frequency, more detailed frequency analysis, kind of similar to Khan Academy, and they even put in the difficulty level of some of those subskills. So the far right-hand column, the category percentages, so the blue basically represents Algebra 1 and the orange basically represents Algebra 2 skills in math, for instance. So as you can see, basically 50% of the SAT math, for instance, is, is basically, uh, 50% of it is Algebra 1 type of skills, which for a typical junior when they're, uh, if they're test prepping as a junior or even as a senior, those tend to be things that really need a lot of refreshing. It's not like they don't know them, but they need a lot of refreshing. Um, but 25% approximately is Algebra 2. 50%, that's 75% of the SAT math is algebra. But again, the difficulty level and the combination of disparate skills that are not traditionally put together in a typical math class can be very challenging. This is quite a bit different from ACT, where ACT has 25+ percent focused on geometry, SAT Math only about 10%. So there are some major differences, but again, the devil's in the details. So again, not only— so when I had— this is a screenshot from a class I did last summer with mapping the 7 core skills after the students went through the course. I asked them to rank the ones that they thought were of the top 7, what were their top 3. So it really helps to guide— I really like to help guide a student to really zero in on the core things that they need to work on to really perfect, and that absolutely helps them. In fact, so I've designed 7-day challenge classes for SAT with 100-point improvement promise, and last summer, um, about 90% of the students within 7 days achieved 100-plus point improvement promise on SAT Math, for instance. Of course, there's also core skills for English. So basically I've boiled, say, ACT English and SAT Writing and Language are very similar. There's a lot of skills that cross over. Basically I boiled it down to 4 core markup techniques and strategies that would cover 90+ percent of the questions I see students miss, and 5, I would call them virtues or values, to be remem— to remember. So again, boiling it down instead of— there's lots of lists out there of the 49 grammar skills you need for ACT, SAT. I've boiled it down much narrower, and students really appreciate that. So in addition to free resources, there's also books that you can buy. I think Barron's books are excellent supplements to the traditional ACT Prep Guide, which is commonly known as the Red Book and the SAT Blue Book. And, but how do you map Khan Academy's categories to what parts of those books, um, you need to work on and give you high value for working on those exercises? So I've created these kind of maps between, in this particular case, Barron's Math Workbook for the SAT and what the Khan Academy subskills are, and students find those very helpful as well. Now, in addition to knowledge, there's also often— as students refresh their memory on skills that they learned years ago, but what about their process? What's going on with their process? Because we all know speed versus precision is a trade-off when you're doing standardized tests, especially with the ACT, but also with the SAT. So I, when I have students do timed tests, I have them write down a reflection immediately after they finish their work. So what did you do well? What do you think went well? What do you think you struggled with? What specific type of problems do you feel, did you feel the least confident on? Do you wish you would have made any decisions differently in terms of managing your time, etc., etc.? So I have them, it's always good to do a detailed reflection because a lot of times student will take a test, you'll see them a week later, and by then they have no idea. They've had so much going through their mind and their eyes and their head, they don't remember. So, and then even in, for instance, breaking, knowing what the reporting categories are for the different questions is helpful. In this particular case, so you could see this particular student missed The last 15 questions, well, clearly they ran out of time and I was able to have a dialogue with the student about that. Now this, I know this is a little bit of a rough picture, this is just my hand sketch, but I like to divide errors or questions that were missed into knowledge, no versus pro. So the no column is knowledge, right? What knowledge areas did you miss questions in? What categories? In this particular case, it's math. I do this also for English and science. But the pro is process. Something— it's not that you didn't know how to do it, it's something broke down in your process. For instance, I misread the question. I didn't draw a picture on a geometry question, or I didn't write anything down, I just tried to do it in my head. So in this particular case, As you can see, if we take the highest categories in the knowledge column on the left, that adds to 10 questions. On the right, the highest 2 categories add to 12. So really, this student really needs to focus on those 2 subcategories of knowledge, but they really, really need to work on their process of how they interact with the test, how they annotate, and trying not to make what we all a lot of times we call silly mistakes. Well, silly doesn't cut it. That's not— that's— I can't fix silly, right? But I can fix, oh, I didn't write anything down, I did it in my head, or, oh, I didn't draw a picture. That's the kind of depth of knowledge and depth of analysis that I help guide students through that they find helpful. And again, it's all about leveraging your time. So This is another example. This is perhaps this would be SAT, PSAT math, and this is a frequency table. It's just a Google Sheet that I've created, and as students do more practice tests, I force them to fill out that where are you missing questions, what type of questions are you missing, and of course, I try to zero in on the, the ones that are the most frequent and work on those, shoring up those skills. This is a great example of a student that I worked with through Shellee. She had done a small group class over the summer for all 4 subject areas of ACT, and then she had improved about 3 composite points, which is great. And then she did one-on-one private tutoring with a different company and she had plateaued. She did like 9 or 10 more practice tests and she was not improving. So we had about an hour phone call and I asked her to take her 10 worst science passages, not tests, individual 10 worst passages on all those practice tests and do an analysis of what subject area, Was it in physics, chemistry, biology, or earth science? And then what question type was it? Was it just a simple reading of data? Was it more of a complex data insight where you had to look between two tables and graphs? And then maybe the other category would be scientific experimental procedure and design and those type of things. And lo and behold, 75% of her errors were chemistry and biology. And then the data insights, looking between multiple graphs and tables, was her weakest area. So we did that analysis. I had her, her actually detail it even more, looking at what answer she chose and why. That gives us this page. Now what she sent me was an amazing, amazingly detailed sheet. I've never seen it quite this detailed, but she actually wrote what she physically did wrong with her process. I categorized those 42 things or 40 things, and I, I, I saw, look at this, 75% of the things you missed are within your control if you work on your strategy, your precision, and your time management. So the next time she took an official ACT science test, she jumped 5 points and she was already in the high 20s. So again, it's all about leveraging a detailed analysis. In this particular case, for ACT, it's helpful to know where am I in the pack to get the jump that I want to get. How much— how many more questions do I have to get right? How many more questions do I need to get right to get to that next scale score? And it, it's different depending on where you are in the pack. It's It's not an even uniform or normal distribution. So just want to talk briefly about speed versus precision. This is a resource from Dr. Korn, who has written many amazing books, mostly on SAT math and ACT math. But this talk, this is a really great guide for if your target score, say is a 26 for ACT or 600 for SAT, um, and your error rate is 20%, you have to do at least 52 questions and then you can randomly guess on the last ones. But if you can get your error rate down to 5%, you only have to do 40 questions and then you could randomly bubble the rest. So again, it's this trade-off of speed versus precision, and it takes practice. Um, it takes lots of practice and wise decision-making and thinking through and reflecting on how things specifically went during your journey through the 4 sections for ACT and 4 sections for SAT that really helps students improve. Learning the trade-offs. This is just a nice, a nice value-added thing just to compare some things. So for instance, Compass Group, Compass Educational Group is amazing. And they've, they're a very data-driven organization. They created what they call a heat map. So for instance, the science test, there's this, this was from older data because the science test now only has 6 tests instead of 7, but the general idea is still the same. Um, there at the end of each passage, there are generally harder questions, but also there's a trend from the first passage to the last passage. Generally the passages get a little harder. Going from the green grass color over to yellow, orange, and red more difficult. However, in the math, it's quite different. I call this the topography of the test. The first 30 questions are generally green and yellow, right? And then the last 30 are getting in the yellow, orange, and red. So it's just good to know the topography of the test and how the difficulty changes. And then again, being able to make in the moment, being able to make a decision, say, if you're in science, you're on question 6 of passage 1, if it's gonna take you 3 minutes to get it right, you know, it's probably not worth it. Time to guess and go and get onto the green questions in the other passages. So just a little, you may know, may or may not know this, but ACT has released superscores. Now, if you've taken 2, at least 2 official full ACT exams, tests at a national test site, you will get a superscore as well, which takes, of course, the highest individual sections— highest score on each of the individual sections and gives you a superscore. Now, whether or not your particular school will take that into consideration or not, obviously you have to check with Ms. Shellee Howard, who is the expert, and she knows all the strategies and policies at the different schools you'll be looking at. And I think that's all in your portal, isn't it, Shellee?

Correct.

So, um, I think that's good for now. That's about it. Um, I'm going to stop sharing my screen and leave time for Q&A.

Excellent. So thank you so much for that detailed analysis. It makes me really think about I just thought I had to sit down and take my knowledge and put it on the test, but there's so much more that goes into it. And I talk about it as the test strategy. And so I think that my first question— I encourage you, um, if you're on the call right now, to put in the chat any questions you have for either myself or Professor Mark. And we're happy to answer them. But my first question comes down to, can you help families understand the difference between test optional, test blind, and what other one is there? Test optional and test blind.

Test required.

Test required.

Yes. So yeah, obviously, well, there's been the fair test movement has been around for quite a few years, but the pandemic, the pandemic brought that into a much greater popularity, specifically moving toward test optional. So schools that said, you know what, because nobody in the nation took an ACT in April or an SAT in May or an ACT or an SAT in June, and only a very few select students were able to take the July ACT, etc., etc. Plus, all through the fall, there was very, very hard to get into a test center because they had to do social distancing and all those things. And so schools said, you know, for, for this next round of admissions or two, we're gonna, we're gonna keep a place in the application where you can put your test scores if you want, but it's not required, not anymore required. So that's what test optional means. So there was a big wave of test optional, but then what happened was there are a lot of students that went, well, woohoo, my life is complicated enough as it is, especially the very ambitious hyper, hyper busy students or athletes or, you know, theater people or, or whatever they have. They work outside of school and they said, great, one less thing I have to worry about. Um, so, and they were able to apply to schools, and some students got in. However, anecdotally, another college admissions counselor I know, of the— of all the students that went to apply to a test-optional school, 3 times as many got in that put a test score on their, on their application than didn't. So in addition, I think you told me, Shellee Howard, that the state of Georgia reversed their decision on their, their state colleges of saying, you know what, we're not gonna, we're not gonna be test optional anymore. So a lot of students were like, wow, okay. So I, and we could have predicted that this trend would swing back, um, post-pandemic when things are opening up. We could have predicted that, but it's okay, you know, it was, it's good for some students. And of course, if you didn't have a good score It's not a good policy to put a bad score on there. We're not advocating that. Test blind though, there— I don't know, do you have an idea of what percent of schools are test blind?

Or it's still a very small percentage.

Okay, so test blind is there's no place on the application to put a score. We will not look at it. We don't, you know, you just can't do it. So, uh, that's a very small percent. So anyway, uh, really you talked about summer being strategic. Now that this— the pendulum is swinging back, and based on the data I just shared, the summer after 10th grade, absolutely at the latest, is ideal to jump into test prep. And, you know, to finish, to have everything finished by the end of your junior year at least, so that your senior— your summer before your senior year is clear. You can have— get one of those amazing internships that look really good on your college application, and then your senior year can be focused on fine-tuning your application, writing your essays, things like that. So I hope— does that answer your question?

Absolutely. And I would encourage the audience to think about this: if there's a box for a test score and one student puts in a score and the other student does not, how optional is it? It's really hard to cover up your eyes and say, oh, I didn't see that amazing test score. So the reason why I think an overall strategy is critical at this juncture is for some students who are not good test takers, you have two choices. You can either get help with your test anxiety, which is a real thing, or you can test prep strategically to get the score you need to get into the school you want to go to. So that's—

yeah, and if I could just comment on that, I got— I just got a text yesterday from a father saying, you know, um, time is more precious than the dollars at this point, and because my, my student is super busy, and so I want to be able to do something in test prep that really leverages high results with a very focused effort. So that's the whole idea of this detailed analysis. Again, Khan Academy is fantastic, they offer that for free. I love their nonprofit, that's great, and they keep adding more and more fantastic things. Um, the problem is you need— it really is helpful to have an expert guide that can map all those things and help you really focus give you feedback and leverage your time. Um, so yeah, excellent.

Okay, so if anybody has any questions, please go ahead and put them in the chat and we will definitely get to them. If not, Professor Mark, can you talk about the special offer you're going to give the families the college-ready families coming up this summer?

Absolutely, yes. Um, so, uh, I'm basically taking— I'm taking the, uh, the strategy, the layout of my 7-day challenge classes that I've done, that I've designed over 3 years ago, um, and I'm basically bringing that as a value-added service for all the college-ready families. So the plan is to do 9 weeks of 1-hour free test prep, and it's going to involve, um, all— obviously some live instruction. I'm going to really— because a lot of your students tend to be already fairly high performers, at least in the mid-20s, I'm going to target my teaching at skills that tend, or types of questions that students who are already pretty sharp tend to miss, and really zero in on those things. But then in addition, of course, I'm going to assign specific skill assignments. I'm going to differentiate that depending on how the first practice test results in detail come. I'm going to ask students to send me their results of their assignments and their requested top 5 questions that they looked through the answers and they still don't understand why that's the right answer. I need them to submit that to me by Wednesday evening so that on Friday, 11 AM— most of the classes will be 11 AM Pacific on Fridays, every Friday in June and July. There's only a couple dates, uh, where it'll be 2 days that'll be 3 PM, but so that I can So I can give the value-add of looking at the details of what they missed, and then I can leverage breakout rooms. I can put differentiate different score ranges or skills that students are working on in breakout rooms, and you know, I'm giving them official released questions from recent tests, and I'm giving some level analysis. And in addition, like the tables I showed you, giving them Google Sheets of their own that they're going to have to start filling out where they're doing their own frequency analysis and which knowledge areas am I weak and what kind of process mistakes am I making so that they are really growing and they're focusing on what they need and should be able to see— they should be able to, even though I'm not promising the 100 points for SAT or 3 points for ACT, depending on their level of involvement, they should be able to get those type of gains through the 9 weeks. So.

Outstanding. Well, thank you so much, and you've given so many great tips and ideas. I would encourage anybody who would like to participate in this awesome opportunity to reach out to us. You can either connect with, with College Ready or you connect with Fast Track Tutors, and I appreciate your time very much. Thank you for joining us. And let us know if there's anything else that you need.

All right, thank you, Shellee Howard.

You're welcome. Have a wonderful day.