Junior year is a critical year for students to do well, especially regarding college acceptance.
Jed Appelrouth of Appelrouth Tutoring spoke to parents and students about the college process Oct. 16 in the little theater.
Appelrouth began by highlighting the differences between the SAT and ACT.
The SAT tests students on how they respond when confronted with new information.
“There is material on the SAT that lives nowhere else in the world,” Appelrouth said. “It lives only on the SAT by design.”
The ACT is much more straightforward and focuses on whether students have retained what they were exposed to in high school. There is also a greater emphasis on speed. Appelrouth calculated that each student has only 52.5 seconds per question.
“I took five of [the ACT] last year and I couldn’t finish any of the science sections myself and I was very humbled by it,” Appelrouth said.
Appelrouth also discredited the misconception that the ACT is a “soft option.”
“Every school in the country that your kids want to go to will take either the SAT or the ACT without prejudice,” Appelrouth said.
More and more colleges are “super scoring.” In other words, they only take the best scores from each section of the SAT or ACT into consideration.
Appelrouth then moved on to other factors of college acceptance. Other than the SAT or ACT scores, colleges put much focus on grades.
Colleges want to see a strong GPA and grades trending upwards, most importantly in core classes. Appelrouth advised students to drop out of excess clubs and extracurricular activities.
Colleges are not interested in students who sample a little bit of everything. Instead, they want students who have a hook, who do extracurricular activites that are valued in the school.
Applying early decision, early action, or regular is also an important choice for students to make.
“You get an advantage applying early and they’re a little softer on you,” Appelrouth said. “Kids who would not get inregular, get in early.”
The chance of acceptance increases by 300 percent just by applying early.
“Early decision can heal the sick, but it can’t wake the dead,” Appelrouth said. Basically, colleges will not accept students with terrible grades and test scores because they applied early.
Another important point for students to know is that not everyone is on even footing when applying to college.
“There’s something very real, recently at Yale, called the Asian Penalty,” Appelrouth said. “There’s so many strong, high performing Asians students, you have to do better to be on the same playing field. It was a hundred points on average on the SAT.”
Female students are also at a slight disadvantage. “It’s the same thing even gender wise,” Appelrouth said. “There are more high performing, high GPA, high test score females. So guess what? It’s a little harder for the females than the males.”
College visits are a good way to score points. Every time a student contacts or visits a college, they keep track of it.
“If they’re local and you didn’t actually go and do a college visit and didn’t drive those 30 miles, that’s going to really hurt you,” Appelrouth said. “The main thing is show up, show interest, and get involved with them.”
