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Tried & True SAT/ACT Presentation Recording

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welcome welcome thank you guys for joining us welcome good evening we're going to give everyone just a few more minutes to join and then we'll get started good evening everybody as everybody's just filing in coming into a virtual rooms going to just a minute got a lot of folks coming in right now alright alright so we'll go ahead and get started and then ask people to join us. I just tagged along I'm out start by introducing myself my name is Khalil Davis I am one of the directors here at tried and true. I hope management programs that we run for students like yours I'm excited to be parents information that we have here about the college entrance exams and about the college entrance process of little bit as well so we are really excited to be able to share this information with you all tonight before we get into that I do want to just take a quick set the kind of share a little bit about tried-and-true we do SAT and ACT prep programming you also do practice exams as well as what we call food stamps and comprehensive classes and one-on-one tutoring if you're interested in doing some prep for the SAT or the ACT please feel free to reach out to us and we also provide free consultations on practice test scores that your student has taken practice tests before we can help them interpret which the SAT or the ACT might be better for them and we'll talk a little bit more about that and it's being patient but if you'd like to have a Conversation Piece for free give us a call without without further Ado let's go ahead and jump right into our presentation tonight and Jonathan. Everybody my name is Jonathan Mullally founder of tried-and-true tutoring and I I've been teaching the SAT now for about 15 years of education about 20 years started out of the math teacher but been teaching you about 15 years so it's change quite a bit and let you know in really in just the past year or two but hopefully we should be able to really answer all the questions that you might have on that note though there is down at the bottom of the page a Q&A feature you'll see that down to the bottom of Zoom a little Q&A button if you know I'm sure coming here tonight or leaving you might have some some questions so I want to encourage you if you got some great Quest maybe some things that we don't answer during the presentation please feel free to put those into the Q&A and we're going to do our best to try to answer all of those this evening sometimes we're not able to get to 100% of them we're going to try to do our best to get as many of those as we and it will try to maybe save save a little bit of time at the end for that as well will be recording tonight's presentation and I will be staying that way do you like to receive a copy I'm in in the chat or CD in the chat of this webinar I've just sent a link please feel free to complete the registration there so you can get a copy of that webinar tomorrow once we've reviewed the presentation so if your getting copy there's a link in the chat that you can use to give us your information so we can send that to you write awesome and so with that with without any further do all kind of get into things so the first thing I want to talk about I just want to kind of maybe set the tone for this evening so you know how do you work with a lot of families over over many many years in SAT and ACT prep what what are the things I've found it's just a really wide spectrum of kind of the way the attitudes folks have towards the test and the approach that people take towards them you know on on one end I've worked with some families you just make a real big deal out of him I'm really really going to get stressed out and freak out about it and I don't necessarily think that's healthy I think that that can be counterproductive and then on the other hand I've worked with some families and when I kind of just pretend like they don't exist whatsoever and just kind of ignore them completely I don't think that's healthy either and so I guess real might My ultimate goal is going to make sure everyone's questions are answered and that you sound sort of that healthy middle-ground serve in the middle kind of figuring out you know being able to kind of strategically plan what is really going to be the rest best route your son or your daughter and I'll have to say that given our current climate and just a lot of things that have happened over the past year year and a half or so I think nowadays it can be even more confusing that was before so ultimately that the goal is that you can leave here with some healthy perspectives you can plan appropriately and so I think the first thing I want to talk about is is kind of give descendants of the the role of the SAT and the act in AA what I'll call a covid / post covid-19. Don't know if we're host covid yet but whatever in this new landscape in which we find ourselves I'm going to talk little bit about through what the what the test role is because as with every other aspect in our lives this is changed quite a bit over the past year or so so just to kind of give everybody should have a general set free pandemic you know prior to lockdowns and everything last year this is kind of what what testing look like and I I should throw a little caveats before getting into all this data this is not look at every single college and university in the United States this is looking at about 400 schools but they're probably they're probably there the top 400 schools are so that the schools that that are that students and families ask about most I'm so many of the popular colleges and universities that you might potentially be considering are likely in this group of 400 school so proud of the pandemic about 64.7% about two-thirds required either the SAT or the ACT about about a little bit more than the third about 34% wear test optional meaning it's optional you're not required to submit the SAT or the ACT but you have the option of submitting it and then if you got questions about the test optional don't worry I am going to get to that in just a few minutes and then lastly you'll see about 1% of these schools are what's called test flexible and test flexible sort of means that they will take the SAT or the act or you can you know you can submit an alternate test as well the end and some of these schools would give guidelines of what those alternate tasks might be that was pre pandemic as you can see things have changed quite a bit as of right now schools that absolutely require the SAT or about 3 percent out of this list of 400 about 3% of schools absolutely require the test about about a third or little bit more than the third 34% are test optional in there on a let's say a word your trials are there many many schools that during the pandemic you know just decided because because it was very very difficult to take a test to go to a testing center because of lockdowns and and restrictions in what not many many many many schools went at least temporarily test-optional now some of those schools have kind of intimated that they might be coming back to requiring the test in the future but many of these schools are still on a one-year trial closes 10% of schools are on a multi-year trial so there's a number of schools that have kind of committed to say they're going to be test optional for a few years there are about 37% of schools that are permanently test-optional and as you can see before the pandemic was about 34% so a slight increase in the number of schools who have committed to being permanently test-optional and the new one and say this is not to be confused with text test flexible this is actually a different different one this is a test free schools that do not look at the SAT or the ACT meaning it is not it's not that it's optional it's just you can send it to him they're not going to look at it and I should say that doesn't really mean don't look at it it it means they won't look at it for admissions decisions they might still be looking at it for scholarships other special programs different things but for at but as far as admissions deciding whether whether or not you are going to be accepted into that college or university they're not using the SAT or act at all to make those decisions as of now there's about 8.4% of that so you can see this is a drastically just drastically different landscape then then what things used to be and so you know this kind of begs the question and I'm sure most of you are all asking okay so given that well well you know should I be tested you should I be taking an SAT or should I be taking an act and you know in general I'm going to say the test could be under a lot of individual the specifics to this but it would be a benefit in all of those categories so for the schools that require it which like we saw was about 3% of schools that this one for those yes it will definitely benefit you you definitely should test if you're applying to the school for the schools that are optional testing can benefit you a lot in in many circumstances and all kind of get test optional as it is a big category so I'm going to come to that in a few minutes but we'll say just in general a pan bed that you are tests that are that are I'm sorry schools colleges and universities that are test free or test blind these schools as I said might still require or recommend testing for Starships a good example of that actually would be the UF the UC system which I know where in California are so I'm sure you Caesar on many of our minds the UC system is test line now they're not looking at tasks as a right now for admissions decisions however the UC system does still look at them for scholarships UC system also has something called its state guaranteed Admissions and state guaranteed admissions basically means that if you're in the top 9% of the of the of the graduating class of the whole state of California so if you are in the top 9% of graduating seniors in the out of the whole state of California based on your grades and your scores on you are guaranteed admissions to a UC campus now that that doesn't mean don't misinterpret that that does not necessarily mean you're guaranteed admissions to the campus that you're that you got your heart set on so maybe you maybe you're really wanting to go to Berkeley and that doesn't mean you're guaranteed to get into Berkeley but it does mean that if you don't get into the UC of your you know your Top Choice you see they are required a date they have to offer you other Spot somewhere else so so anyways even even in that example of a school that is test read or or test line there could still be benefits to testing so as we said here if you're looking at schools like this obviously you definitely want to TASC test optional I keep saying it and I'm going to get to this in just a moment but yes yes you likely do want to do one test you know or you or you might want to seriously consider but I should say for these test optional categories and the test free or the test blind schools you may want to consider it you know what you're looking at scholarships guaranteed admissions other other other features than. things that are out there so in general should you test my thought and we're also going to come back to this in a minute but I'll kind of let the cat out of the bag my main recommendation this is what I'll say to my own son as well he's going to be at this point here in in a in about a year or so is yes I do think you owe it to yourself to test released take the test once and to give it a go honest effort because it definitely could benefit you at a wide range of these schools so let's dig in a little bit to test optional and what does that mean so what does what does test optional really and this might be a fairly unsatisfying answer but I'm going to say test-optional actually means different things at different colleges and so and so you know with this in mind when I went to look at test-optional I think the first thing to understand is a little bit of background perspective on test optional this is a movement that's been going on for about the last 10-15 years you know where you know a number of colleges and universities are elected to not make the SAT or act requirement that's been sort of something that's been going on in the background and so when we looked at that chart earlier we saw text 34 I think it's now 37% of schools that are permanently test-optional you know that's that real pool of schools that have been sort of in that test optional movement you know for a while and then of course this past year because of lockdown and just the inability of students to go take test many many more schools have become unit test optional at least at least temporarily test optional and so that's that's kind of the background in the setting for all this and so eating at many of the school's out there and trying to come to understand you know what are they really mean when test-optional what I Serta CR2 different buckets of test-optional and the first bucket is is those schools who I say really really believe in the ethos of test-optional they really think it's a great thing they really really don't want to require students to do it and and just maybe really look at it as as that they look at the test scores as additive so you might have a fantastic college application you got great grades extracurriculars all sorts of great things that to that really represent you well colleges and universities and if you got that fantastic and if you happen to have a sat or ACT score that's out of it that's just going to be a bonus but if it's not there if it's not present it's it's not subtracting anything from your from your application it's just a phone if it is there is extra extra extra points essentially category of test-optional schools where they it's really just viewed as kind of an additive thing this second category of test-optional schools I would say are the are the colleges that are real looking at test optional as an opportunity to remove barriers to access to their school so maybe students who you know don't have as many opportunities as you know, maybe come from a more disadvantaged school or whatever the case might might be they don't they don't want the SAT or the ACT to be a barrier to those students from applying to their colleges or universities but you know with a lot of these schools you know if it's if it's not a good taking it isn't isn't a huge barrier for you they they might still like you to take a test and I'll just kind of give give one example of a college that I think really fits fits this category this is from Cornell and Cornell is a fairly competitive school it's it's one of the Ivy Leagues in fact it was the first ivy league that decided to go temporarily test-optional win the lockdowns in the pandemic and all that I started and so this is this is their statement on test optional they say that in Cornell's review during the 2020-2021 application cycle results from the SAT or the ACT might still be a meaningful differentiator in particular for students who live near or at end of school that will be open we're testing will be offered so it might be a differentiator for you it might be a good thing for you to submit if you if you actually have the opportunity to take the test right if you're near a school where where they actually have tasks you know meaning hey if you if there's no test available near you like don't don't kill yourself but if there are if you and if you actually been opportunities desk might be a good thing for you and I know this past year and we had some students who may be needed needed test scores because they have an athletic scholarship for this or that different very specific reasons and leaving work with a few students who were driving to Arizona and things like that sit to take a test I don't think that's I don't think you should do that and I I don't think you should need to be driving to another state Warrior bar to take a test and I and I think that's kind of what Cornell saying you're like hey if it's reasonable for you to take a test in might be a meaningful differentiator if it's just not reasonable and you know we all know well do it a lot down there been many many limitations on what we've been able to do so I think Cornell gets it and and they're saying hey you know this is not the most important thing in the world so if you can't take the test don't don't sweat it but if you can you know it might be a meaningful differentiator for you the next piece in here students it might be a meaningful differentiator for students who have not experienced lost income for one more their household providers were other significant new hardships and losses during 2020 so as we all know there have been and individuals who have dealt with many you know challenges both Financial maybe lost job you know struggling businesses all sorts of very you know Sirius and real challenges families dealing with Health crisis and problems people getting sick and and worse I mean you know people dealt with some legitimate challenges and I think Cornell here is saying like hey if you're dealing so you know with you or your household you know your parents are dealing with some very very serious challenges the SAT and the ACT is not the most important thing in the world don't worry about it but if that's not you then it might be a meaningful differentiator and so you know I think that this kind of statement that's why I say this kind of puts them into that that second bucket I was talking about earlier where you know they're they're really think they don't test to be a barrier they don't want it to be something that's going to prevent you from applying but you know if you ever may be a reasonable opportunity to take the test then they might like to see it and so that's that kind of second bucket how do you know let's see your looking at you you know you or your your son or daughter are looking at a range of colleges and universities how do you know which of these two buckets a college falls into I would recommend going to their web page going to the year oceans pages on their website and in reading reading their policy and getting a sense you know usually they'll have a statement that somewhat like what Cornell has right here where you can really you can really kind of get a sense of what's the five are they telling you it's just additive and if you don't have it no big deal or if they're telling you it might be a meaningful differentiator if you can get one you know what what which message overall are they giving you and that might kind of that my kind of help you to Stan which of these two buckets did the school falls into and it and it might give you a little perspective on on do they you know how you know how much do they really want to see at astronaut and so I I would really recommend go to the look at those statements while we're on statements I think I already covered this already but you know that outside of those two buckets that the sort of the additive the school's who viewed in and out of the van den enden II bucket the school's who who want to view it with you test optional is removing barriers taxes does the to test optional buckets but there is also this third Bucket over here which is the test blind to the test free bucket that I mentioned earlier the school aren't looking at the test at all and as I mentioned earlier you know really hear the big deal would be the University of California system as I said right now they're test find at least through 2024 they are still using test for scholarships they are still using it for State guaranteed admissions as I mentioned you might still consider if you are targeting AUC it might still be a valuable thing for you but it's definitely not going to be required for your admission so that's definitely something you should be aware of if you're really just focusing on uc's it's a good thing to know that I would recommend you know probably focusing on a broader range of schools but understand that if you're just focusing on the UCSB sat the ACT will not impact their decision about your admissions whatsoever class of 2025 and Beyond which I doubt there's any of those students tonight but if there are the UC assist system is saying that they might have a new exam available by then I don't know a lot can change between now and 2025 so I will see what happens by 2025 but anyways I do think it's useful to understand especially here in California where the UC stand on all this stuff so okay so we looked at test-optional I guess this bags question with a lot of schools now test-optional the vast majority either temporarily test optional or permanently test-optional should I take a test and in general as I said before I would say yes and that's the advice I would give to my unsun you know and I would say I think really every student probably should at least take the test once give it a very honest attempt give it your absolute best attack because there are a number of circumstances in which in which it could really benefit you and then of course that leads to the second question of should I submit at and once again to give a slightly unsatisfying or nuanced answer I'll say should you submit the desolate say let's say you're a junior right now you go take a test in you're going to be able applying to colleges this fall okay so you got some score back from the SAT or from the AC how do you know if you should submit it and when to say it depends on some on a two different factors I'll say there's two to kind of perspectives that that sort of folks in my world sorcererdave looking at I think the two perspectives really depend on the first perspective is kind of looking at the schools themselves so what what college or university are you applying to and the second is is kind of looking at yourself and your own performance what is your score so I'll talk about each of these so should you submit a test looking at it from this from the school you're applying to perspective it it really could depend a lot on the specific universities that you're find you so if you are applying to the top 1% schools in the nation so these would be the the very highly competitive schools The Ivy League's Stanford MIT Caltech you noticed some of these very elite institutions I'm going to say that it is likely important for you to submit a test they might be test blind but you need to stand that at colleges of that caliber the it's it's like an arms race the this the other students that are applying to these extremely competitive schools having have extremely impressive high school resume is a zelle you might as well but the the you know students are trying to stack every every as many sword accolades in points as they can on these resumes and so one of the things we've actually seen since the pandemic since lockdowns interesting Lee is that a the application rate to some of these highly competitive schools has shot through the roof like gone way up on talking I think Harvard receive close to forty percent add more applications discuss your message huge increase and I think a lot of that is because you know many students were looking at while they're not they're not requiring a test so why not go for it but that doesn't mean you know what these a straight-shooting way up at these most competitive schools that will mean that they are essentially more competitive so you want to be covering your bases every possible way you can switch that to you and I realize that's a small percentage of students that is you if you're looking at these highly competitive I'm going to say it is important that you take an SAT or act and and I honestly it's really important that you try to do your absolute best on those tests if you're looking at Lexie the next estrellon of schools below. So this would be the top 20% of college and universities in the country I think it is going to be a plus at many of these schools now you probably want to look at the schools individually you want to understand which of these two buckets but you know the to test optional buckets that I was talking about you know this is not a one-size-fits-all call sort of thing you do want to come to understand where they're at but I want to say that for the majority schools taking a test is likely going to be a plus now if you're looking at the schools that are below that you know the sort of percent of schools below that I'm going to say it's a lower priority it's probably not as important that you submit an SAT or an act is it's definitely not as important as it used to be prior to all of this there are some caveats though there are some exceptions to that many of these schools though they might not be as competitive overall many of these schools will have a scholarship programs or they might have special on programs or things like that you know special programs within their University a lot of many of these schools have programs like that to try to really attract more talent to their University to try to improve their overall academic stature they competitive students academically you know students were looking for academic Challenge and so a lot of these schools do have programs targeted those students maybe you are a fairly you know maybe you do some good grades and and you but you are looking at some of those schools that maybe aren't in the top 20% will a lot of those schools will have special scholarship programs special Grand programs and in some of those cases the scholarship programs can be very humongous amount of of humongous portion of your of your overall tuition being reduced if you get Acceptance in this varies from school to school so you know you really how to look at individual schools if you are looking at those types of programs many of those programs are still looking to see SAT and ACT scores results so you know if you're looking at the schools in in this bottom 80% thing is definitely a lower priority for you unless you are targeting those honors programs with special academic scholarships things like that if that's you then I would probably still your premium on testing and see if still important that's the kind of first perspective the second perspective I would say really depends upon you know your score so it's a you go out you take the test and how do you perform on the test now one school of thought says and it heard this a number of a number of folks in the admission space it is the sort of the idea that if you are above the 50th percentile at the college you're applying to so let's say you go out you take the ACT and then you apply to XYZ College Inn in you look at the statistics the data from XYZ college and you say oh my score is above the 50th percentile of of there at univ their average admitted student if that's what you're looking at you know you would say oh why should death in submit my score it reflects well I'm above the average submitted score is definitely going to be a plus for me at that school in general I think that that school of thought makes sense I think that's a rational approach once again put some more caveats into that I would say that just because you're above the 50th percentile for the University as a whole doesn't necessarily some colleges and I might have a specific School within their University so quite often the School of Engineering might have a higher average SAT score and so if you're applying maybe you're applying to the university but you're looking to get into Pacific School of Engineering you might want to look specifically at we know what are the averages within that School of Engineering because you might be above the University's 50th percentile but you might be well below the School of Engineering 50th percentile might still not be as attracted to the university as you're thinking it's going to be so I think that's one thing to consider a second piece to consider however though is the 50th percentile that is the average student debt does the average score half of the students half of the scores that were accepted were actually below that score and so in general I want to say just because you're below that 50th percentile doesn't necessarily mean that your score is unattractive to the college or university most colleges and universities are pretty much all of them will publish what's call the 25th to 75th percentile range desert of the middle 50% or the average students within the universe and I would say that if both your grades and your test scores are healthily within that range you know you're not on the borderline of a train for you both grades and test scores healthily within that range that's probably a great ending you're a good fit for that college or university and I would say in that case you might want to seriously consider submitting scores now this can be a very nuanced and individual conversation one of the things I should mention it tried-and-true is we we do we are always available for consultation will get on the phone with you and take a look at the scores take a look at grades all this kind of thing and end can give you some advice on on pieces like that but hopefully this guy is a little bit of perspective on this idea of test-optional should I take a test my advice is yes you should I take should I submit the test once you got those test results you can look at some of these more Nuance Packers take a look at the colleges and since you're interested in and I think about you know how those scores will stack up at those schools in in specific and kind of look at your score your individual score and your grades and look at how those two things and candy ocean will stack up against at school but I still going to go back to my same advice which I would say this could though really really benefit you significantly in admissions so you do but I do think it's still very Sound Advice Hewitt if you if it's available you know if testing becomes available on and test sites are open and things like that I would say it is it is will be beneficial to at least give the test your best effort is that being said I am going to pass things off to my colleague Mr Khalil Davis who is going to take us in to a little bit of a conversation about the basics of the SAT and the ACT yes so Jonathan shared quite a bit about how the universities are looking at each of these exams and someone takes them sometimes they can explain the exams themselves the differences are between the two exams and why student might choose one over the other. So let me share and then I have a few questions so while we are getting started to think about these things and I'll give you guys a few seconds to answer the first question is which test is more widely accepted the SAT or the ACT I want to watch a whole here to get the audience's thoughts what do you think is the most widely accepted tests submit your votes I see some coming in looks like right now the sap is in the lead by a huge margin everybody go ahead and take the opportunity to cast your vote and wait a few more seconds all right and alright it was so it's like this audience felt like the SAT was unanimously the most popular test and I'm fortunately 100% of you all were incorrect music names are actually equally accepted by all universities any test any school that requires or encourages students to submit a test score will accept either test equally their similar to select two brands of the same well if that's the case which test do you think you should take him if you were paying attention and it was revealed just a second ago but you should take the test of your performing best on we always encourage students to take a full-length practice exam both the SAT and the act before that against you prep I just so that they can be informed on which test they may be performing better on sometimes students will score a little higher on one exam than the other and we'll talk about some of the reasons why and but a lot of times students will score about the same on both and so just having that knowledge can help you determine which test you should prepare for if you plan on doing so then our next question is how many times can you take the SAT or act so I'm going to pop up another pole and please feel free to vote if you think you know the answer to this one we've got options one through seven so we have lots of people voting right now all right and we got our results here so looks like 100% of people saying that three times is how many times you can take the SAT or act and while that is a good recommendation you actually can take the test as many times as you want the College Board and act will not stop you from registering to take the test again however we do recommend that students take the test about 2 to 3 times during normal obviously it may be a little bit more difficult to take the test 2 to 3 times during the current circumstances because testing locations are closing and testing centers are not as available but they can't have smartcast these but if you can take the test and you do plan on submitting take me to the green courage to stick it at least twice because most units will perform better the second time they just a little bit less nervous they're little bit more familiar with what's expected of them and so most of the time students do you perform better when they take the SAT a second time about three times to descend to see this course Plateau they don't continue to see increases it so we generally and Kirsten is to prepare for the exam and take it two to three times and then once they've done a generally will see their they reach their score score potential our last question of our Basics is when do you need to be done with the SAT or act and asked to that is typically by December of your senior year so that's around the same time that those college applications are going to be do they want to be able to have those score to submit with your application we always encourage students to try to finish taking a test prior to December are we actually recommended students Target October as their final exam just in case they're not happy with their score and they would like to sit for another op they have two more days in November and December to do that but it also relieve some of the pressure that they're going to be under while they're submitting application post are they already taking that exam and they've gotten out of the way you don't have to worry about worrying about that and applications at the same time cell here are the upcoming dates for 2021 for both the SAT and the act the dates through June obviously are confirmed and some of those deadlines are coming up for the SAT and ACT in a few weeks so if you have not had an opportunity to register for a juning to do that within the next few weeks date starting in August are they projected date College Board act tends to offer their exams on the same weekends every year and so these are the days that they will likely be this coming year but they also have not released the dead registration deadlines that won't be released until June all right let's get into a little bit more about the two exams themselves and why is student might want to take one over the other exams start out very similarly and they cover a lot of the same content but there is small places where there is difference in exam so in the reading section which is the first test of both exams the content is very similar is a reading comprehension students are asked to read a passage and interpret what they've read the writing content is very similar they're asked to analyze some sentences or passages and identify grammar errors the largest or one of the largest differences starts in the math section on the ACT is generally tend to be more geometry Focus math questions on the exam is on the SAT they're out there generally tends to be a more Algebra II focused math questions on PSAT there's also a section of questions on the SAT if you are a student is not allowed to use a calculator funny questions for student can not use a calculator on the ACT student can use their calculator for all 60 math questions on the exam those are two things that might be different about each of those tests when it comes another difference is in the science section or the fine constant although the SAT does not have an official science test in the way that the ACT does the SAT does also Test YouTube on science knowledge actually sprinkle science questions throughout all of the other sections of exam do in the mass action and writing and reading section there will be science questions and those signs questions are actually aggregated in the student is given a science or as well on that final score report act degrees All Those Questions into a single test and it's just a science test on that exam the essay on the SAT has been disbanded is no longer being offered I'm as of June and act is currently still offering their I say but it is off and that will that is off of 1st and then our next difference here so this is kind of talking about the differences in amounts of time that students have section and how many questions are in each section what I want to drive or one's attention to his right here at the bottom do this gold colored bar if we average all of the questions on each exam and / Vin person add up all the questions on the exam and divided by the minutes that they have to complete each question the average on the SAT is about 78 seconds per question where is on the ACP the average is only 49 seconds or so if you're just looking at that doing a little quick man that's almost 30-second difference on the SAT 30 additional seconds that students have to answer each question however the sap tends to ask students to complete more steps and there tend to be more traps Frisch's in the questions and answers on the sat on the ACT the questions generally tend to be pretty straightforward the students are there generally not a lot of tricks or traps as soon as I asked to complete operation pretty Point Blank however they see that very quick exam the students are expected to be prettiest short of their answers and move through the question official move through the questions efficiently and so those might be reasons we're your students test taking strategy might lean are in one direction or the other like I said in the beginning a lot of students perform about the same on both exams but these small things might make a difference in your students score and said maybe something to consider here we have in sap act concordance it's just basically a way for you to interpret how your score my compared to one another the ACT is it rated out of a 36 being the highest score and a 9 being the lowest score where is f80 has different spring range out of a c 800 with a 590 being kind of hello hello comparison there if you do have if you have taken to practice exams we encourage you to use a concordance like this to compare your scores to determine which test is higher and if you are if you are registered to receive a copy of this presentation this list will be included all right and now the last thing that we just wanted to share with that we will be also offering or we may be offering some SAT and ACT programming during the summer if your student is not are not currently a junior and you're currently going into your junior year you may be considering what your options are or if your student is going into their senior year and they aren't able to a test in June but one at Target those August or September date we will be offering some programming in the summer if you're interested please feel free to reach out to us to find out a little bit more information about that and then Jonathan you want to come and wrap you were an thanks a lot Khalil yes and lastly you know I also say up apart from the the courses that we may be offering summer that glow was mentioning we do also offer one-on-one tutoring for both the SAT and the act at and also for any other academic subject that you may be that you may be looking for support on currently all of our one-on-one tutoring is is online is virtual however at some point later in this year we might be returning to some in-home tutoring as well so it. you might have the option of selecting either online or in-home tutoring if that's something that you're interested in if you are you know I feel I would just encourage everybody to feel free to reach out I'll give us a call send email as I mentioned earlier we were always happy to consult with you regarding your scores and you know looking at your grades scores in the colleges and universities that might you might be interested in trying to give you the best advice on what Pastor go forward you don't have to do tutoring with us or anything like that but we're always happy to get on the phone and and just give you the best advice that we could that we can give with all that being said got a little bit of time left and so we've answered a couple questions I want to I want to maybe just highlight a few of the questions that some folks have had asked that I thought were weird may be useful for everyone to hear so I think one one attendee was asking about the PSATs where the PSATs fall in the admissions process and other simple answer to that is the PSAT itself isn't really part of the admissions process meaning colleges don't look at at that score to make admissions decisions if you perform extremely well on the PSAT during your junior year so you know depending on your high school some some high schools give students to take the PSAT you know in their junior year some some might also offer it in their sophomore year so might also offered in freshman year some eighth-graders even get the opportunity to take the PSAT not every school offers all of those opportunities most schools typically offer the junior year opportunity at the lease and if you do perform extremely well on it during your Junior you may potentially have the opportunity to become what's called a National Merit scholar which is something that might look really good on a college application and it's also something that could potentially it could potentially come with scholarship lastly the PSAT is it just heard about a slightly shorter slightly easier version of the SAT so taking it is also good preparation for the real sat as well but it's about just answer the question it's not strictly part of the admissions process you don't ever have to take a PSAT at all to get into college they're not they're not really looking at that specifically another question that was asked was I thought we was a pretty useful question was if you score higher on a previous sat can you submit the older one so let's say for instance of many students do this and Khalil talked about this and I would honestly highly and for any student who if you if you really are you know pretty certain based on your colleges and just your academic profile and all that the test ASAP of the ACT is going to be an important part of your admissions early college applications you know safe for those students many of them will take more than once twice maybe three times at the most so what if you scored higher on lesson you took it 3 times he scored higher the second time you took it can you just submit the older one and what I say is that at this point now that most schools are test optional most of the test optional schools will allow you to Simply submit the scores that you want to submit you don't necessarily have to submit all the all the scores on the other thing that some colleges will allow you to do as well is this is what's called superscoring where they were you can actually submit multiple score so maybe you did take the SAT twice or three times you could potentially submit all of those scores and they will pick out the best parts of each score so for example Maybe rs80 you had an outstanding reading score one time and then the next time you had an outstanding mask or you could submit both of those scores will take that awesome reading score it'll take that awesome asgore and will put them together to create what's called a superscore so that is actually so difficult to answer the question yeah you don't necessarily with test-optional schools have to submit all the test but if they superscore you might want to submit more than one test because it could benefit you on that note I don't want to go to go down to how much of a rabbit hole. Just on that note of superscoring I should say that the ACT is actually recently released something that's called super score reporting and so this is where they Dave if if you elect to when when you're having your score sent from the ACT you can actually choose what's called a super score report where the ACT will actually let's say you were you wanting to send multiple multiple scores to a college hoping that they'll that they accept superscore they will actually send a report that puts those multiple tasks on the one report and kind of has the the superscore itself prominently displayed at the top now this sounds awesome unfortunately see College doesn't accept superscoring they're not going to use it they're still going to be able to see the individual test scores but if they do accept superscoring little step of effort but anyways just something I guess it's kind of a rabbit hole let's take a look I think they're there been a couple other questions do you recommend taking the sat with or without the essay at this point I'm going to say don't take it with the essay in fact I think this coming June will be the last time the essay is even offered on the SAT they are there certain disbanding at and not going to be using it anymore so I don't think it's very important to you all kind of add this note you don't even prior to the pandemic there were a lot of questions about the SAT essay the main reason that the essay existed was that they use system I want to say about all about 15 years or so ago demanded that the SAT add an essay the UC system said if you don't add and accept the SAT essay last year the UC system stop using the SAT for admissions decisions to the SAT said okay well obviously we don't need the essay here then but what else a is General over the years of the past 15 years or so many many schools were were were relying less and less and less and less on that essay and so we were just finding that in general the SAT essay was not making a big impact on admission decisions and if you let's say you were going to spend you know 20 hours or 50 hours or however much time you wanted to spend preparing for the SAT or the ACT but they were doing tutoring with us you're in one of her classes as time went on we were just finding that the time spent if we spent that on let's say the math section or the reading section one of the other sections we just found it that was going to be a much much more valuable investment of preparation time I've been spending that time preparing for the s because so many schools just weren't really taking the essay that seriously so honestly I am it doesn't upset me at all the PSAT finally got rid of the essay I think that's probably a logical thing and yes if you got a test coming up in June you could potentially still take it but I would say in all honesty at this point why bother I I wouldn't worry about taking the SAT essay but it's a great great question going forward probably wouldn't hurt a VSA I see that somebody asked if you take the SAT during your junior year you're not satisfied with your score can you take it during the fall of your senior year and I think a little talked a little bit about this with the scheduling as well but yes December the senior year that's going to be your last opportunity to test so I would say yes if you taken it this year not 100% happy with your score you could you got some opportunities this summer some opportunities in the fall and and and so yes I would definitely encourage you to great well you know I think I think with all that being said we just want to thank everybody so much for joining us tonight I know Khalil has shared in the chat the form and if you're not if you haven't seen that if you go down to the bottom of your page if you click the chat button over there on the right hand side of your page a little chat window will open up you'll see that there is a link in there from coal please feel free to click that link if you click that link there's a a very short it should take you like 2 seconds very short form you can fill that form out and and and if you sign in you know using that that will just then we'll know to send out the recording of This webinar as well as the slide presentation and everything to you and we'll get all that stuff out to you tomorrow anyways with all this being said I want to thank everyone so much for joining us tonight I want to thank all the counselors from the Simi Unified School District for her putting this together and having us we hope that you found this valuable I know this is a very it's it is a very new landscape and we don't have a the perfect crystal ball on exactly what things are going to look like over the next few years but hopefully some of this this this advice his kind of at least giving you some perspective on we're testing might sit you know for your own son or daughter in kind of in this whole world of admissions anyways we want to wish everybody the absolute best of luck in your college admissions as I said if anyone needs for help tutoring as a tacp academic subjects please feel free to reach out or if you just want some consultation just want to get some more insight or if you just like to take a free practice test just to see how you might perform on the SAT or the ACT please feel free to reach out we love to help you and we hope everybody has a great evening thank you so much bye bye

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