Five (or more) New Words

While studying vocabulary lists is certainly a helpful, productive step toward increasing your lexicon, the best approach is to underline words you do not know when reading.

Pick up any worthwhile journal of current events (New York Times, Economist, Wall Street Journal), and you will discover as many words as you need to know. Journalists have a knack for picking the right word for the right occasion, so this is a great way to not only learn a new word but also understand how to use it correctly.

In this new addition to the Academic Approach blog, words will appear in context with a link to the original piece. Do you know what these words mean? Can you guess from the context in which they are used. Test yourself and then look them up to see if you're right. This is an exercise that you should do on a daily basis for the rest of your life.

Great Words from Frank Rich's Column

If the next step in this declension is less face time for Palin on Fox News, then we’ll have proof that pigs can fly.

What they said — and didn’t say — from the CPAC podium not only shows a political opposition running on empty but also dramatizes the remarkable leadership opportunity their fecklessness has handed to the incumbent president in post-shellacking Washington.

There was one serious speech at CPAC — an economic colloquy delivered that night by Mitch Daniels, the Indiana governor much beloved by what remains of mainstream conservative punditry.

The party leadership is no less cowed by that majority today than it was pre-Tucson.

As we’ve learned from his track record both in the 2008 campaign and in the White House, he sometimes coasts at these junctures or lapses into a pro forma bipartisanship that amounts, for all practical purposes, to inertia.

Beyond The Test

DePaul just became the biggest private university to make the SAT and ACT optional for undergraduate applicants. According to admissions officers at DePaul, the university sought ways to invite a bigger pool of applicants into the fold. For some time, DePaul has been watching its undergraduates closely to see what metrics translate into academic and professional success. In these studies, it became apparent that standardized test scores are not the best predictors as to how a student will perform in college and in the marketplace. As a result, admissions officers tend to look for "noncognitive" traits in the school's applicants, such as leadership, commitment to service, and ability to meet long-term goals.

This move places DePaul in the company of other schools, such as Wake Forest University, that have joined the SAT Optional Movement.

Milk That College Visit

With many high schools approaching Spring Break, it's a good time to start cultivating a list of colleges you're interested in applying to next year.

College visits are important for many reasons. It gives students a chance to experience the environment they might choose to live in for four years. Students can also get a sense of the resources the college has to offer. Not that students need to have a definitive idea of what they'd like to pursue in college by their junior year, but it would certainly be helpful if they leaned on any one of their interests as they wandered around these campuses. If you're interested in studying film, be sure to visit the film department and inquire about the opportunities available to undergraduates. If you want to study mechanical engineering, take a good look at the professors in the department and find out if they do any research on campus. What are the facilities like?

Take advantage of the college tours, and don't be afraid to ask lots of questions.

It would also be in your best interest to take notes about your experiences on these campuses. Many schools ask students to write a few hundred words on why they are interested in "this particular school." These essays are always easier to write when you have some personal anecdotes to allude to, separating your answer from the run-of-the-mill responses most students provide.

College Apps... the iKind

It won't be too long before you could just get a Ph.D. by using an app on your phone. For the time being, there are several apps to guide you along your journey to college.

America's most perused college guide just underwent a digital makeover for the iPad, making the Fiske Guide available in a new incarnation: Fisk Interactive College Guide. This new app allows eager high school students and parents to organize those top picks in a compact, user-friendly manner.

This is one of several apps that are geared toward college admissions that are featured in the New York Times.

What college apps would you like to see?

May the Force Be With You

Tomorrow is the big day: OFFICIAL ACT. 

You've certainly put in the time, so there's no need to get nervous. Get a good night's sleep. No need to go out. No need to cram. Wake up early enough so that you can enjoy breakfast. Bring your admissions ticket, pencil, student I.D., watch and calculator. Finally, try to get to the testing center 30 minutes prior, allowing yourself time to settle into the environs.

Aside from the rules and strategies, embrace process. The pencil is a tool, and you should use it for process of elimination, underlining key terms and phrases, and writing down formulas.

Don't do math in your head. Write down equations and use your calculator to compute.

Finally, don't get stuck on something. If you don't feel like you have a grasp of what is going on in a question, move on. There are always easier questions to find, and it would be a shame if you ran out of time because you spent too much of it scratching your head.

We are all looking forward to hearing about those results. They should be available online within two weeks.

Calling All Parents...And Students

It's easy to see your children do well in school and think that everything is covered. They must be good readers, right? They get straight A's, even in their American Literature class.

Year in and year out, Academic Approach works hard to improve reading comprehension scores, including those of Grade-A students. What we find is that once students acquire a certain level of literacy, they plateau, when, in fact, reading is a rigorous exercise in mental stamina that requires much more than simply understanding words on the page (or screen, for that matter).

With this in mind, we recommend both students and parents take a long look at some good reading habits that will serve as an effective prescription for college preparedness and more.

Show Up for the ACT Prepared

Now that you have gone over everything from misplaced modifiers to finding the amplitude in a sine curve,  it's time to review what you need to bring to the test this weekend to ensure that you will be admitted into the testing center.

Watch? Check. Calculator? Check. Admissions ticket? Check. Don't speculate. Check out the entire list of things you need this Saturday.

Good luck!

Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow...Or the Day After!

Calling all Juniors! Yes, you're signed up for an ACT or an SAT (or both!). It's right around the corner, and you've been studying, taking practice tests, and you can't wait to show the world that you're ready to dominate it. This is good news, but there are more things to think about.

Lee Bierer at the Charlotte Observer put together a nice little check list of things to consider over the next few months in addition to this all-important test. Some highlights include signing up for subject tests (May or June are good dates), planning out some college visits, and thinking about a resume-building activity to do this summer.