Test Prep Tips: CATES Blog

In high school, a year can feel like an eternity. By the time May and June roll around, you may feel like an entirely different person from that kid who started the school year back in September, and your classes from the fall may seem like a vague memory. Unfortunately, finals don’t make allowances for this kind of nostalgic haze—come May and June, you are going to have to dig back into that vault, and remember it all. Here’s some advice on how to organize a year’s worth of work, and get prepared for your finals.

Assemble Your Materials

Begin by assembling all your notes, homework assignments, handouts, PowerPoint slideshows, papers, quizzes, tests, note cards, etc., and organizing them into an orderly system.

How you do that depends on how you learn best, and what makes the most sense to you—you may want to put them in chronological order, or you may want to group them by type (i.e., go over all the homework assignments, then the quizzes, then the tests).

Set Goals

Read more

It’s springtime, the birds are singing, the sun is shining, you got into college, and your days as a high school senior are rapidly coming to a close. It IS time to celebrate, yes—you made it!—but it’s important to remember that high school isn’t over yet, and there are colleges that are keeping up with what you’re doing, and some that might want to see your end-of-year grades. While it’s true that the finish line is in sight, you’re not quite there yet, so here’s some motivation to stay on top of your academics:

• Prepare Yourself for Next Year
  • You are going to college—it’s really happening. It’s going to be amazing, but there will also be more distractions than you could possibly imagine, and if you think staying on top of classwork is hard now…well, just wait. Use this time at the end of your high school career to build up your focus and fortitude, and succeed academically despite the distractions of senioritis (and the possibility that most of your friends have already checked out). If you go into next fall with this experience and skill under your belt, you’ll have a great foundation for keeping a good balance between work and play at college.

• Pride
  • “We ain’t going out like that…” You’ve worked really hard to get to this point. Why stop now? Later on in life, you’ll be happy to saw things through to the finish line. When you join the working world, you may not have the liberty of “coasting” at the end of projects or deadlines, so it’s better not to get into the habit now. Plus, you’re better than that!

• Legacy
  • How do you want people to remember you? Your teachers have impressions of you, hopefully good ones, which you’ve earned over the past four years. What do you want them to think and say about you after you leave? We had one student who scored amazingly well on her standardized tests, got great recommendations, and got into a ton of schools…and then became a disruptive force in class. Her teachers were extremely disappointed in her behavior and her tenure at her school ended on a down note. You owe it to yourself to leave on a high note, so hang in there—graduation is just around the corner!

Read more

What law school should I attend? Is there a difference?

For many people, the landscape of career opportunities after graduating from college is confusing, large, and overwhelming. Many find that they need more training and specialization even if they don’t quite know the field of work they ultimately see themselves working in. A law degree is an amazingly powerful, flexible, and rigorous choice of study that often rewards someone greatly over his or her life.

Read more

As the end of the school begins to approach, a lot of things start to pile up—SATs, SAT II Subject Tests, finals, papers, sports, AP tests…the list goes on. It’s a lot to juggle, as you sprint towards the finish line in June, especially when the weather gets nice, and studying inside is the last thing on your mind. We’re here to help you organize your time and get ahead of the game, and today we’re going to focus on one of the things that looms largest at the end of junior and senior year: AP tests.

Tips and Tricks

One trick to managing your schedule is figuring out where you can group tasks together, and this is especially relevant when it comes to the APs. If you’re taking an AP class, that usually means that you really know your stuff in that subject. If you really know your stuff in that subject, you have probably already considered taking the SAT II test in that subject. You’ll probably take your SAT IIs and your APs in May. So, you can take advantage of the overlap between those two tests, study for both at once (making sure you cover the areas of both tests that don’t overlap, too), and kill two birds with one stone.

Read more

For most high school juniors, March is the first time they’ll wrangle with the SAT. When those scores come back at the end of the month, they aren’t always as high as students (and parents, and guidance counselors) might have wanted them to be. Don’t let it get you down. Instead of feeling like you started off the standardized testing process on the wrong foot, let us show you how to use that first SAT experience as a springboard to testing success.

If your scores weren’t as good as you’d hoped they would be, the most important thing to keep in mind is this: you will take the test again. Short of a perfect score, most people choose to take the test twice, or even three times. March was your first race, your first time out of the gate, so see it for what it is: the beginning of a process, rather than the end result.

The March SAT really is the starting line for many people, and as such, the information you get from your testing experience, your scores, and your score reports is truly invaluable. This info will give you insight into your strengths and weaknesses, and will help you build a test prep program that fits your needs.

Read more