But You HAVE to Take it! (dealing with the SAT/ACT)

It’s no secret that the standardized tests for college admission are a burden to bear. With so much riding on the scores- especially if you’re planning on applying to public schools- there are two ways to look at it, regardless of your level of preparation: first, the test is so difficult and there’s so much riding on the results that if the scores are not reflective of YOU, in your opinion, ALL dreams will be lost; or perhaps a more grounded perspective, everybody out there for the last century, who had hopes of gain admission to colleges and universities across the U.S. have taken this test and it has not altered the state of the universe- in any apocalyptic fashion. In other words, it’s just a test. The weight of the world does not depend on the score that you receive.
To be quite honest, it’s not appropriate to have the colleges that one hopes to apply to selected BEFORE ever taking either the ACT or the SAT or both. If this is the case, a student is putting him/herself in a perfect position to feel like a failure. However, it will be no one else’s fault but your own if you do not prepare properly. For all of the hype surrounding college admissions and the SAT and ACT exams, it surprises me how many students skirt the preparation.

Let me digress for the sake of an example. My sport of choice was water polo. I grew up in a pool, training as much as one could. In water polo there is a penalty shot called the 5-meter. Similar to a penalty kick in soccer, a field goal in football or a free-throw in basketball, a 5-meter penalty shot is precisely as it sounds: one player, unguarded, 5-meters out who, with the blow of the whistle, has to pick the ball up and shoot into a cage which is guarded by a goalkeeper. Not the hardest thing in the world, is it? Surely not. Is it the easiest? Not by a stretch. Especially when it’s a close game, perhaps in the conference tournament or, better yet, the NCAA Championship. However, a good player will always make time in their days to practice this shot. They practice at the close of a workout, when their legs are exhausted, their arm and shoulder can hardly hold the ball up let alone throw another shot, yet they know, come game time, when it really counts, they have practiced this shot so often that the ability to score is a habit. Missing the shot is not even a fleeting thought . . . this is, arguably, the greatest anxiety a player can experience. How do the top performers cope with the pressure on a day-to-day basis? Through repeated practice.

An old adage that I remember hearing from one of my childhood coaches, “practice doesn’t make perfect, PERFECT practice makes perfect!” resonates with me to this day. When I work with my students to help make them smarter and better prepared to enter any type of learning situation- be it a test, debate or, perhaps, an admissions interview, we don’t focus on the AMOUNT of work as much as we do on the QUALITY of the work. The point is not to maximize the capacity for memorizing test-like problems as it is being the most prepared mind in the room. When stumped on a vocabulary problem, the difference in scores of a “successful” test-taker and a disappointed test-taker are those who are able to make NO educated guess and those who can narrow the options down to three, sometimes even two choices. Through recognizing the connotation or root of the words or the context of the sentence where it is placed, the tests do tend to be biased in favor of those students who are more critical thinkers and better prepared. In other words, students who can analyze a sentence for a positive or negative missing word or whether the two missing words are going to have similar definitions or, perhaps, be opposites, because they have trained themselves through practice, will find greater success than students who think that the SAT/ACT require no extra preparation outside of an English III Honors course.

I have had one student who suffered such great anxiety attacks and, literally, responded to the idea of the SAT like he was Chicken Little and sure enough the sky WAS falling. By all fair reasoning, he was mildly prepared and should have been in the range of 1000 combined for the math and reading sections, maybe even a bit higher. However, his panic was so intense, beginning about two days before the test, that he lost all focus and would, apparently, stare at his answer sheet like he was asleep with his eyes open. Luckily, we made sure that he had many other things going for himself when it came to the strength of his application and he will be enrolling in one of my favorite schools for the Fall of 2008, University of Colorado at Boulder. I would highly recommend that if you have this similar test-day lapse, get yourself an appointment with a psychologist who does testing evaluations and is knowledgeable regarding the process of how to recommend certain accommodations for when you actually sit for the SAT, ACT, SAT II’s and AP exams, etc . . .

With testing season upon us, my greatest advice for all students who are feeling the nerves and pressure of their future looming in one, four-hour, standardized exam: it is never too late to get yourself prepared. Set aside the same thirty minutes to one hour every day to go over vocabulary, review math problems that you have not done in a year or two and maybe, if you have reviewed and crammed all your vocabulary and math and you still have a few minutes before practice starts or your music teacher or your study group arrives, go to http://www.nytimes.com/ and read an article or two!

Good luck.

Campus Food and the Discerning Palates of College Students

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/dining/09campus.html

Check out the link, above

This is the link to the future . . . of colleges and universities all across America. If not all colleges and universities, at least those that want to continue to attract aware, curious, skeptical, honest and, in my opinion, high-achieving students. Ten years ago universities started to get the idea that selling out the rights to various corporate entities, be it Barnes and Noble or Pizza Hut, Starbucks or Dreyer's Ice Cream, in order to gain name brand recognition in their new, state-of-the-art student centers-- would be the major selling point to prospective students. Oh yeah, and to earn a quick buck, of course! This has been the fad at most universities as they constantly begin and end capital campaigns to enhance their endowments. But many of these universities will begin to suffer the consequences of their actions as they realize that they have 10-year contracts, for example, with these corporate entities, but students are no longer attracted by the heat lamp pizza-by-the-slice and overall lack of healthy options. This generation of college students, with everything from the Iraq War to the Presidential election, are some of the most active young people that we've seen in this country since the Vietnam era. Though they certainly are also the generation of fast-food, text messaging and cell phone dependence, they are also the generation born to the parents from that Vietnam era- parents who want their kids to experience more, live richer, fuller lives and have more options than ever. Bottom line: colleges now are playing one big game of catch-up. They all want to set a trend in some area or another. When, in 1983 Princeton built a climbing wall, other universities immediately followed suit. Some universities look for anything to set themselves apart: extra-long beds; pool tables in every residence hall; on-campus banks; 24-hour libraries, etc . . . But the strange thing is, no matter how much we know about eating habits and long-term health being linked to nutrition, universities just aren't acting quickly enough to make their options healthier and more diverse. Is not college, for most students, the time when they first begin to learn responsibility in their daily eating habits? So, it is those universities that do not share nutritional values with this young generation which will continue to feel the impact of their own decision to not incorporate healthy options on their enrollment and application numbers. Applications will continue to go down. Enrollment will cease to grow. I find that teenagers today are more aware of themselves than ever. We are graduating high school seniors who have put more thought into their potential career (post-college) than any young men and women before them. Parents are telling their students in their freshman and sophomore years of high school that they need to start thinking about a career-path. I'm not saying that this is right, nor am I saying it's wrong, but I am saying that it's the truth. These students are responsible, healthy-minded and aware. You might not think I'm talking about YOUR student, but remember, teenagers are never AS responsible, healthy-minded and aware as WE want them to be. If they were, they'd be very unique (or our standards would be too low). So, remember, when you're looking into colleges and universities, be aware of the fact that if they can't cater to your needs in the dining hall(s), what makes you think they will challenge you to grow in other arenas of the college experience? Just a thought. Honestly, the article I linked above is just too juicy to read on an empty-stomach. Bon Apetit!

Not Every College is the Same

Not every college is the same. Granted, there are the campus-environment issues, student life activities available, etc . . . However, when we get down to the nitty-gritty, the meat of the institutions, the range is as broad as Shaq’s wingspan. I had a realization of this when my girlfriend, a Columbia University alumna, and I, hosted her brother (a University of Chicago alumni) for a few days in our Florida abode.

The conversational structure was much more formulated, well-thought, articulate and really, more intense than that which I am used to engaging with when conversing with John Doe. To imply that there is this great misconception about colleges and universities being homogenous is not what I want to do. Don’t misconstrue what I write. Or that “A” college’s business school might be a bit more prestigious than “B” college’s, but really you learn the same things- is not true. There are Tier-II and Tier-III schools that have programs and schools which rank in the top-10 of that particular focus. This is not because of the highly competitive admissions process or the “kill-or-be-killed” academic mentality, but the focus on open dialogue, creative, analytical thinking, Socratic method and, the very nature of college: getting to pursue that which YOU ACTUALLY HAVE AN INTEREST IN. Ahh, the refreshing freedom of selecting courses and electing to enroll in those units that do interest you.

At Chicago, you can expect to read more than anywhere else. At Columbia encounter tremendous juxtaposition of university versus city life. My alma mater . . . ethics and freshman experience- every frosh must take an ethics seminar. But, I’ll tell you what, if you don’t like to read, Chicago isn’t for you. If you don’t enjoy beautiful campuses in the middle of big cities, Columbia is not an option. And, if you think that ethics is defined as that which is moral in every individual society- or you really like to commit sins on the weekend and talk about them in class on Monday morning, as so often seemed to be the routine for certain people, there’s a small, Top 100 University in California’s rich and diverse Central Valley, University of the Pacific, that’s just for you!

A CIRCUITOUS PROMOTION OF STUDY ABROAD PROGRAMS (should I or shouldn't I?)

It is, in my personal experiences, quite clear that there are three significant events or series’ of events which are responsible for creating and providing a true sense of place for people. Being that humans are community-oriented and thrive out of social opportunities where we are, more often than not, looking to pursue mutually-beneficial relationships, these three areas are, perhaps, the only three which can- almost without fail- provide us with a sense of our place, our lot, our community our connection. The three to which I am referring are: family, college and travel.

Family is, without a doubt, the marker of our experiences. Whether the family is nuclear (a household with mom, dad, brothers and sisters), extended (uncles, aunts, grandparents and cousins, all living under one roof) or more “21^st century” (divorced parents with half sisters/brothers), we gain our understanding of “place” in home-life. Regardless of whether the home is, in retrospect, a positive or a negative environment, our sense of place is still present. If the experience is more negative, a son or daughter may come to understand that his/her role in the family is dissimilar from his/her peers. However, the role- and the family- are still very much the community that is responsible for supporting and nurturing the growth of the children, albeit they may be more neglected than anything else, but neglect, although a negative, is still a form of nurture.

The second area where we develop our sense of place is in college and university communities. It is here, not in primary education, where the majority of pupils experience their first ah-ha moments. It is here, where we live in communities of our peers, sorting out personal issues, promoting positive decision-making, stimulating the intellect and stoking the desires of our psyches. College is, in America, the first opportunity for most students to choose their own activities and pursue their own paths of enlightenment. Because it tends to be a process of trial and error (i.e. the selection of classes, selection of majors, selection of meats in the cafeteria, selection of friends you want to cohabitate with, recreational activities that you wish to try, etc . . .) university life tends to be the period of the most significant personal development in the lives of young adults. The evidence is even apparent in university statistics. Just look at the fact that alumni donate money to their alma mater, most often after they’ve already paid the university to provide them with an education. This is the whole catch, universities are no longer just classrooms responsible for shaping the minds of future generations, right? Now, they are responsible for much more. The services that any given university provides are endless. Campuses are becoming more and more insular as they create entire self-sufficient communities to allow students the opportunity to never leave if they choose not to. So, regardless of whether one may argue that this is good or bad, it would be difficult to argue that this does not foster a true sense of place.

Travel is no longer just for the wealthy. If you don’t believe me, I’ll send some of my photos from a recent trip! In fact, I would argue that typical “wealthy travel” is defeatist in its methodology. To want to experience a different culture it is imperative that we remove ourselves from the most comfortable situations. In other words, traveling from one continent to another, bunking in a 5-star hotel and eating at all the fashionable restaurants is, I would argue, an interesting way to flatter oneself. In traveling we gain the opportunity to examine our instincts, our home, our traditions, our history, our education and our unique cultural characteristics. It is difficult, if not impossible, to share thoughts and ideas about certain destinations without degrading the meaning of the experience. It’s like taking a snapshot of a sky: no panoramic lens could convey the enormity.

Family is not our choice (though we often have friends who we consider family and family who we don’t consider family at all). College is a choice. Not only whether you will go but where you will go and what you will do while you are there. I, personally, have only one regret with my college experience and that is that I did not pursue the opportunity to study abroad. At the time, my commitments were specific and my priorities were dissimilar to now. As well, I never had anyone motivating me and lending insight as to the benefits of studying in a different country. How did I know that the cost would be identical to a regular semester (or year, depending on how long I chose) or that I would still be on track to graduate in four years? No one explained to me the benefits or showed to me the opportunities for expanding my personal community. Now, several years later, counseling high school kids on the college selection process, I am trying to make up for that.