November 13, 2009 – 12:33 AM
Somewhere between a coercive language immersion program, like Orwellian Newspeak (except it’s not known at all for its concision), and some odd naturalistic, linguistic emergence, like Nicaraguan deaf children signing their own language (except it’s much more obtrusive), lies academese, that esoteric idiom known only to that precious few meisters and apprentices that occupy the ivory tower of academia.
Now, as someone who is prefers the abstruse to the mundane, I hesitate to cast aspersions on my adoptive mother tongue, academese, yet, even the most foppish don has his limits.
October 28, 2009 – 10:08 PM
At Academic Approach, we collaborate with our friends in college counseling, support the hard and excellent work they do, and, well, constantly learn from them.
If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then tonight’s blog is an homage to one of our favorite college counselors in Chicago, Elisabeth Pleshette, who tells it like it is about Early Decision.
October 5, 2009 – 1:54 PM
As part of our ongoing effort to educate and elevate, we encourage our students to expand their active vocabularies by cultivating their own speech and, rather than unimaginatively following the herd, forsaking their teen argot with nuanced diction that will, no doubt, impress their friends and enemies alike.
August 24, 2009 – 8:28 PM
This fall college-bound high school seniors will most likely find themselves distraught over that most daunting of all the various components that constitute the application package—the college admissions personal essay. The essay presents students an opportunity to speak in the present. At Academic Approach, we believe the personal essay is an opportunity to be seized. The essay can be the most powerful component of a student’s application file precisely because here, for the first and last time in the file, the very person who stands knocking at the door asking to be let in speaks directly to those who will answer the door.
December 16, 2008 – 4:16 PM
The College Board has adopted a Score Choice™ policy for the SAT that, according to the College Board website, will give students the option to choose, by test date, which SAT scores that they will send to colleges and thereby “allow students to put their best foot forward on test day by giving them more flexibility and control over their scores.”
December 16, 2008 – 1:53 PM
The College Board has recently announced a new test to be rolled out in fall 2009. Called ReadiStep, the new test is designed, as the College Board press release states, “to identify the skills that 8th grade students have and those that they need to develop in order to be more prepared for rigorous high school courses and for college.” The pencil-and-paper format test is two hours long and divided into multiple-choice sections of math, writing skills, and critical reading skills. Individual schools and school districts will decide if they want to employ ReadiStep and when they would administer the exam; they would also cover the fee of $10 dollars per exam.
September 30, 2008 – 12:05 PM
The people who open and close the gates to undergraduate programs at American colleges and universities, that is, the high school college counselors who help students with the application process and the college admissions officers who make the admissions decisions, recently held their annual professional conference. By far the most heavily attended session at the conference was a panel that discussed the professional organization’s recently published report on the place of standardized testing in college admissions. The National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) released its report on the “Use of Standardized Tests in Undergraduate Admission” in late-September. Though the NACAC report has received some press coverage, mostly focused on the perennial question of whether or not schools are going to drop the test as an admissions requirement, it would be helpful for parents to consider the less sensational andmore measured language of the report itself in order to gain a clearer understanding of the current thinking of college admissions offices on the question of the place of the SAT/ACT in the admissions process.
This fall college-bound high school seniors will most likely find themselves somewhat distraught over that most daunting of all the various components that constitute the application package—the personal essay. However, students need to recognize that the personal essay presents an opportunity to speak in the present about themselves, each applicant in his or her own voice. This is an opportunity to be seized.
Taking the SAT multiple times has widely been regarded as risky business. Since every score is recorded on the student’s College Board transcript, then surely it is best practice for students to be conservative, keep blemishes off their records, and avoid testing too much. Therefore, it’s no surprise that only 15% of students who take the SAT will presently sit for it three or more times.
February 21, 2008 – 12:23 PM
Over the past decade or so, a journalistic genre has emerged that seasonally represents the nation-wide anxiety that bleeds into upper-middle-class concerns about the college admissions process. Every fall and spring, articles represent the anxious hand-wringing of families that have marshaled considerable resources ($25,000+ private school tuition,$250+ per hour for private tutors, test-prep sessions, and independent college counselors, home-office equipment to organize application materials, and who knows how much for oboe lessons, squash lessons, summer work adventures in remote, developing-world villages…) to gain advantage for their children as applicants to prestige colleges. These gloomy narratives of ivy dreams rarely have happy endings even for the seemingly perfect kids with the stellar admissions portfolios.