I got my PSAT scores… now what?

Dec 5, 2022

This week, most sophomores and juniors have recevied their PSAT results. We promise, even if you are disappointed by the score, there is no reason to freak out just yet!

Before we get into it, please check out this blog that generally explains how you should interpret your PSAT scores.

Although the PSAT won’t impact the majority of students applying to college directly, it does offer a golden opportunity to craft an effective academic and test prep plan. A score is more than high or low, good or bad: it’s important to use your score to help inform the decisions you make when it comes time to prep.

For us, there are two important ways we use PSAT scores. First, we can use the breakdown of each section to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses. This can let us know if you are better suited for the SAT or ACT. You can check out this blog that explains some of the differences between the two tests and which kind of student succeeds on which test.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, your performance may indicate something deeper. The PSAT’s are a wakeup call around students foundational reading, math and grammar abilities. Every year, parents call us with similar concerns: their child’s PSAT score does not match their grades or expectations. It’s not uncommon that a student receives straight A’s at school and also receives a less-than-impressive PSAT score.

To this, we recommend our Tutorial program. Inspired by the elite, integrated programs at Oxford and Cambridge, The Tutorial is a 1-on-1 program for ambitious 8th-10th graders with high hopes for college. In The Tutorial, our savant tutors meet weekly with students to help them integrate skills and concepts needed to excel in high school and beyond like: study skills and time management strategies, customized learner behavior changes, and critical reading, math and grammar skill development.

School today is failing our kids.

Instead of integrating knowledge, students cram for a test and then immediately forget the material. The result is low PSAT scores, insecure kids, and worried parents. It doesn’t have to be this way. Our ambitious Tutorial students are asked over 100 critical thinking questions every session. Here, they actually integrate knowledge and skills for mastery learning. A semester of The Tutorial with a savant tutor who deeply knows and accepts you can fundamentally transform your academic trajectory for good.

Included in The Tutorial:

Free Learner Personality Assessment & MindPrint Cognitive Assessment
1-on-1 Learning Coaching from Savant Tutor
Reading, Math and Grammar Enrichment
Holistic Subject Tutoring
Texting with Tutor
Yearlong Subscription to SmartyPrep
Subscription to RoamResearch

Getting feedback from the PSAT’s early means we can holistically address a students weaknesses instead of waiting until it’s too late. Remember, your child has incredible untapped potential lingering just below the surface. We can’t wait to unlock their inner brilliance!

If you are interested in learning more about our transformative Tutorial program, contact us today at [email protected] or call us at 888-702-8801 to schedule your free consultation.

Utilize High School to Prepare for College

Mar 16, 2022

How to approach your high school classes so you’re prepared for college

Students and parents come to us all the time worrying that their high school courses aren’t adequately preparing them for college. We find this concern in reality; a lot of high school courses don’t require the kind of research, reading, or writing that most college courses do. Further, the pace and structure of college courses will catch most students by surprise. It’s also an unfortunate reality that lots of students who got by in high school really struggle their freshman year adjusting to a new workload and schedule. While we recommend Academic Coaching as one method of ensuring you are prepared to succeed in college, we’ve also put together a list of tips that will help you build good studying habits now, so college feels like a piece of cake.

1)Schedule your study time

Treat studying like any other class or commitment. Choose a time and location for studying every day or every week and stick to it. Treat it with the same level of importance as you would any other extracurricular or class. You can even go one step further. Plan out what you hope to accomplish each study session, by breaking your time into blocks and scheduling different assignments. For example, if you plan to do work from 5PM-7:30PM, schedule 5-5:45PM to review bio notes, schedule 5:45-6:30PM to complete reading for history class, and schedule 6:30-7:30PM to work on history paper.

2)Asking for help.

If you talk to any successful college student, they’ll have experience going to a professor or TA’s office hours to ask for help. Maybe they aren’t even confused by a class topic. They just want to walk through an upcoming paper or discuss the best way to study for the final. Building a relationship and opening lines of communication with your instructors is so important in college. Hence, one should get used to it in high school. Not only do instructors appreciate when a student is conscientious and engaged in their coursework, but it can also come with added benefits when it comes time for grades. Your high school teachers likely have after school hours or lunch time where they’d be happy to schedule a meeting. By learning to reach out and ask your high school teachers questions, you’ll be impressing them and preparing for college life.

3) Develop good sleeping habits.

Be sure to aim for 8 hours of sleep every night. Sleep is critical for letting your brain process information. It’s a good idea to develop good sleeping habits early so that you don’t find yourself exhausted in college. Lots of freshman in college find themselves up at 4 AM cramming to finish an assignment due the next day. This will likely lead to a bad assignment. However, it could also lead to bad assignments for the rest of the week because you’re so tired. Following tip #1 and the tips in this blog on how to not procrastinate can help here.

4) Learn to prioritize.

In college, you might not always have time for everything. It’s important to know what is most important and what you have to get done first. By learning to prioritize in high school, you’ll set yourself up to succeed in college. Prioritizing also means finding a healthy work/life balance. Sometimes it’s okay to push back studying time to attend a lecture on campus or a club meeting. You want to leave college feeling like you did more than just earn your grades.

5) Participate in class discussion

This might be the most important tip. In smaller college classes, participation will likely account for a portion of your final grade (sometimes as much as 25%!). Many college courses, especially in humanities or social science majors, are discussion based. For lots of students, this is one of the scariest parts of college. Especially if you’re a freshman in a class with juniors and seniors! Our best advice is to get comfortable participating in high school by regularly answering questions and joining discussions in your classes. Better yet, get used to answering questions even if you might be wrong. Incorrectly answering questions can lead to major learning moments and the development of a growth mindset. Read this blog to learn more about how your mindset can lead to more academic success.

While everyone else is struggling to get their assignments done, while getting sleep and having fun, you’ll be ace-ing freshman year if you follow these tips.

Navigating College Admissions

Mar 10, 2022

The college admissions process is in a state of flux. Popularly held values have shifted. This has had people reconsidering whether the current admissions system is equitable or even effective. It has made them try to change things in the places in which it appears not to be. And ultimately, it is the public that defines what is profitable (and thus what is possible) in the free market. Thus, there is a real chance of change. A public who have the right mindset towards improvement are making many of these new judgements. However, they lack the practical experience and factual knowledge to make any such changes effective and sustainable. Speaking as a passionate tutor with years of experience with the college admissions process, I propose the following as the ideal college admissions process.

Standardized Testing

Criticism of these tests is not unwarranted. Some current standardized test questions are flawed, but standardized tests are neither the holy grail nor evil incarnate. They should not be made to carry too much of the weight of the admissions process. Rather, they should be part of a larger system to give evaluators an understanding of a student.

Evaluation Process

Part of this larger system should be an expansion of how we evaluate students. We should not just limit ourselves to paper exams. We must expand and invest in oral examinations to ensure a more holistic process. Oral evaluations would present an opportunity for a far different type of pressure testing than do written exams. Optimistically, expanded exams involving oral testing and effective skill-specific evaluation might incorporate some elements of the current AP system. In this, there is a different structure for tests. The evaluated skill determines it. Instead of being limited to students who took AP classes, though, it would be part of the standard process much like the SAT or ACT exams. If done well, this would allow colleges to evaluate a student’s ability to do something with their skills.

Students’ Skill Development

There should also be reliable data collected on students’ skill development over time. Looking at a student’s course manuscript at the end of high school rarely holds the value that it should when the quality of education varies so drastically from school to school. Another element of the current system that can supplement this is the eye towards extracurricular activities. They can say a lot about whether a student is intellectually interested and what they have done to pursue those interests.

If we found ourselves investing in a new system like this, then we might finally have an admissions process that really says something about what a student is capable of, allowing them to truly find their way to the best college for them.

What makes a good tutor?

Mar 19, 2020

We firmly believe our tutoring team is the best tutoring team in all of Baltimore, and that’s largely because of who we hire and how we train. Our tutors scored 98th percentile or higher, underwent an intense hiring process, and completed rigorous training. Our tutors have a long history of tremendous results.

This blog is the first of a series that will outline all of the traits we see in our tutors, and why these traits lead to productive sessions and positive results.

Today, we’re going to focus on our “student centric” approach to tutoring.

When we say “student centric,” we are referring to the fact that each session is curated to a student’s unique needs and abilities. Now, you might be thinking, well all tutoring is one-on-one, so shouldn’t it be inherently “student centric?”

Wrong.

While one-on-one tutoring does, of course, mean there is some level of individual attention that wouldn’t be present in a classroom, not all individual attention is created equal.

Some tutors have a “tutor centric” approach to tutoring. This means they direct the session’s focus to what they themselves are good at explaining, playing to their own strengths instead of the student’s weaknesses. The likely explanation for this “tutor centric” approach is not that it’s beneficial to the student— it’s more likely a safeguard for the tutor who might not feel comfortable explaining more convoluted or advanced topics. Some tutors might downplay the importance of some topics or skills, and emphasize the importance of others (the ones they feel more equipped to explain).

Take quadratic expressions, for example. This is an Algebra 2 concept that many students really struggle with. This concept is tested on every SAT, and usually more than once. If a tutor really struggles explaining these questions, they might downplay their importance, focus the student’s attention elsewhere, or just avoid the topic all together. Obviously, this “tutor centric” approach fails to cater to the student’s needs and will certainly not maximize score gains. Worst of all, the student likely won’t realize it’s happening until they get to the SAT and have never seen the topic.

With Streamline, you don’t have to worry about that. Our tutoring approach is wholly “student centric.” In training, our tutors go through every recent SAT and ACT, as well as a master test we’ve created of all the hardest SAT and ACT questions. We don’t send our tutors into sessions until we know they not only have the knowledge of each and every concept, but also the vocabulary and pedagogical skills to effectively communicate them.

If you’ve been to any of our offices, you might’ve realized we have an open floor plan. This is so, if any of our tutors do get stuck on a question (hey, it happens to the best of us!), they have another expert tutor feet away who can jump in.

If you’re a great tutor, you’re not concerned with what you’re good at— you’re concerned with what your student is bad at.

If you’re a great tutor, you’re not worried about making a mistake— you’re worried about why your student is making their mistakes.

In short, a great tutor focuses only on the student in front of them, and curates a session that fits the student’s needs, and the student’s needs only.

The science behind motivation

Mar 17, 2020

What is motivation and why is it important?

Motivation is an internal process of goal-directed behavior. Sometimes it’s induced by drive, other times by need, but motivation is really just a desire for change. Motivation is important to most aspects of human behavior. It leads us to engage with the world around us in an adaptive, solution-oriented way. Motivation has a lot to do with the way students engage with their school work (and their standardized test prep!).

Why does motivation matter?

Psychologists have found that when students are motivated, they learn better and remember more of what they learn.

People are generally motivated in an attempt to achieve two different goals:

Mastery goals: To develop their competence
Performance goals: To perform well in comparison to others

Studies show that mastery goals facilitate long-term learning and performance goals help short-term learning. Furthermore, studies show that extrinsic rewards can improve learning because of modulation of the hippocampal function, the part of the brain that regulates motivation, emotion, learning, and memory.

So why is getting motivated so hard?

Psychologists have identified three things that make getting motivated difficult.

“I have to”

When a student feels they are forced to do something, they feel an unwillingness to do the task. Sometimes, a student might not even do something they want to do because they feel like they have to do it.

However, this can be resolved if students change the way they think about the task. Understand that everything you do in life is an active choice that you have made. You choose to do the task because you know it will help you learn something new, get a good grade, get into college, and make your parents proud.

“I can’t do this”

Many students are unmotivated because they feel like they’ll fail if they attempt something or they don’t know how to begin. They may figure it’s better to save the time and work and not do it at all.

However, students can overcome this by realizing that putting in the time and effort will yield results. Students must learn to recognize that encountering difficulties is necessary for growth and progress. Accept the challenge, ask for help when necessary, and reap the benefits of hard work and commitment.

“I’m bored”

Some students find themselves unmotivated because they think everything they’re learning about is boring! If this sounds like you, you need to use your passion to keep you motivated. Keep this passion and your dreams in the back of your mind as you do the school work that you are uninterested in.

No matter what you want to do as a career, you need school to get you there. Even if you’re convinced that your dream job doesn’t require a college degree, a college degree is a safety net and you’ll thank yourself later.

Staying motivated is something we all struggle with, and shouldn’t itself be discouraging. Understand why you’re lacking motivation, so you know what to do to overcome it.

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