The American Honors Network: an innovative way to save money on the way to a diploma from a top-tier college

Each year a growing number of American high school students opts to begin college careers at  a community college rather than a four-year institution.  In the past, these were often students who didn't take their high school classes seriously until it was too late.  A weak high school transcript meant they needed to spend two years proving themselves before they could move on to a university.

Lately, however, the recession and concerns about the financial returns of a four-year degree have meant that many students opted for community college, not for academic reasons, but for financial ones.  A disproportionate number of these are the very students that colleges would love to recruit in order to add diversity.  Locally, the Wake Tech PAC program was designed for these students.  Enrollees who met the program requirements during two years at Wake Tech were guaranteed transfers to NC State University through an agreement between the two schools. After four years a students could have an NC State degree at a considerably reduced cost.

Someone has now taken this concept to the national level.  There is a growing consortium of community colleges and selective colleges and universities - both public and private - operating under an organization called the American Honors Network.  Elite schools eager to recruit top students with diverse backgrounds have agreed to recruit heavily from a list of community colleges who, in turn, have agreed to design rigorous honors programs in order to allow for the seamless transfer of credits.  You can read more about the program here.

When it comes to punctuation, less is more

In my last post, I mentioned that I had taken a practice ACT writing section without reading the passages.  I used certain rules for deciding which choice to answer that take advantage of the odds of particular types of answers being correct.  If the question was testing punctuation, the rule was that I had to choose the answer with the least punctuation.  I did this even in cases when the choice was obviously incorrect even within the answer choice.  For example, if one of the choices was "the teachers classroom"  I would have to choose it (no punctuation obviously being the least punctuation) even though the correct choice clearly needs an apostrophe.  If two choices tied for least punctuation I had other methods (such as "odd man out") to break the tie.

Among the punctuation questions, my choice was correct about 40% of the time - far greater than one would expect from random guessing.  When my choice was incorrect, the choice with the next least punctuation would have been right about 40% of the time.  The choice with the most punctuation was almost never right.

Now, obviously, it is best to know your punctuation rules and to choose your answers based on which choice you know to be correct.  However, if you must guess from among two or more choices, you should go with the odds and choose the one with the least punctuation, or, at the very least, eliminate the choice with the most punctuation.

ACT English: The Odd Man Out "trick"

"One of these things is not like the others. One of these things doesn't belong...."

This was a song on Sesame Street back in the late 1960's.  Sometime between then  and the 1990's someone decided that this was not a good educational activity and Sesame Street discontinued it.  When I sing it to today's teenagers they look at me funny.

(You can see a Sesame Street clip of that activity here.)

It tends to come up when I am coaching someone for the ACT English section.  The correct answer is frequently the "odd man out" - the one choice of the four that is grammatically different from the other three.

For example, in one question from The REAL ACT Prep Guide the answer choices were:

a.  NO CHANGE  (it was written as "straighten it" in the passage)

b.  straightened them

c.  straightened those

d.  straighten them

Choice "a" is the only one in which the pronoun is singular instead of plural, and choice "a" was, in fact, the correct answer.

I have noticed a number of trends about the frequency of correct answer choices on this section of the ACT, so I recently did an experiment.  I completed an ACT English section without reading the passages.  Instead I chose an answer based on a number of rules.  One of the rules was that if there were an identifiable "odd man out" I would choose it.  For each question I wrote my answer choice and then next to it the rule I had used to choose my answer.  I used the "odd man out" rule 20 times.  The choice was correct 11 times, or 55% of the time.

I know that the anti-test campaigners are routinely horrified by test strategies that allow one to answer a question without even reading the material, but I would like to point out that this particular strategy does require a knowledge of grammar.  One must recognize that one of the choices is different in a particular way.

I am rarely asked to coach for the ACT (the SAT is a bigger deal in my state,) but I will continue to put considerable emphasis on recognizing when "one of these things is not like the others."

Are colleges looking at your social media profiles?

If you are a high school student - or the parent of one - you may have seen warnings that suggest you should clean up your online profile before applying to college.  You may have been told to remove unflattering photos and posts that suggest you have been partying or participating in pranks or illegal activities.  Do colleges look at your online profile when considering you for admission?  It turns out they probably won't.

Consider this from Todd Weaver, Senior Associate at Strategies for College, Inc.  :

"Every admissions rep I've spoken to over the past few years has simply laughed when I ask if they have time to review a potential student's social media sites. They are so busy - typically spending 5-6 minutes reading an application - that they have no time to chase down Facebook, Twitter, or other social media sites that Teens might be on.

This is a "scare tactic" article that pops up every year. Admissions officers will not voluntarily chase this information down.

Granted, if a college has to go to it's waitlist and there are two similar candidates, then, and only then, might they possibly have time to look at a student's social media site."

And this from Christine VanDeVelde,  Author of College Admission: From Application to Acceptance, Step by Step:

"I agree with Todd. We have heard the same thing in talking with admission deans. The exceptions: 1. Scholarship students; 2. Athletes; and 3. When a student has made a claim that the school is seeking to verify by Googling the student."

Ms. VanDeVelde is referring to high profile scholarships (the ones with names), not the basic financial aid packages most students receive.  Furthermore, a college probably won't check to confirm that you were really the president of the German club, but will check if you make an unusual claim:  "I wrote a best-seller."  "I hold a patent." or "I was named ambassador to Andorra."

This is not to say that you shouldn't be careful about how you present yourself online. It's not too early to take basic precautions about what you post or tweet.  However, unless you fall into one of the categories mentioned above, you can scratch "clean up my profile" off your college application to-do list.

Study materials review: Up Your Score

Up Your Score:  The Underground Guide to the SAT has been around so long it is no longer "underground."  First published in the 1980's, each edition stays fresh by recruiting top-scoring students as co-authors.  The 2013-2014 edition is by Larry Burger, Michael Colton, Jaja Liao, Manek Mistry and Paul Rossi.

This guide is intended as a supplement to The Official SAT Study Guide.  Up Your Score does not include any practice exercises.  Compared to other supplementary guides, this book includes more advice on studying (how to concentrate, how to improve your memory, best time of day to memorize something, etc) stress reduction, and general test-taking strategies.  The section on guessing strategies is one of the most interesting of its type that I've read. There is even a section on bubbling technique.  Apparently some students take a ridiculously long time to color in the bubbles. Who knew? Most of the tips are of the type you see in every guide, but there are a few new ones here. This guide is more fun than most.

When it comes to content, there isn't much here.  One third of the book is devoted to vocabulary.  The book doesn't have a whole lot to say on the rest of the critical reading section.  There are 600 words in the vocabulary list.  The bad news:  they are arranged alphabetically instead of by meaning.  The good news:  after dozen words or so there is a silly alliterative story using those words designed to help you remember them.  Another thing this book does well is to distinguish between words you might need to know to answer the vocabulary questions at the beginning and literary terms you might need to know to answer the passage content questions.

The math section begins on such an elementary level that, honestly, if you don't know how to do that then you aren't the sort of person who can learn math from a book.  It then proceeds to brush lightly over far too much material without either giving an opportunity to practice or referring you to appropriate problems in The Official Guide.

The writing section is short and tries to cover both the multiple choice content and essay advice.

I picked up a copy at BJ's for under $10, so the price isn't all that bad.  However, if you've already read another guide, this one doesn't have enough new stuff to make it worth buying.  Check a copy out at your school or local library and then read just the useful bits.  If this will be your first guide it's worth the price, although if you find out that you need more intensive help in a particular section, this one won't cut it for you.

The Cost of Calculators

Before calculators, if we spotted a zero as one of the multipliers, we thought something along the lines of: “Woohoo! Less work for me!”  With today’s students a multiplier of zero barely registers. I swear I have had this exact conversation with multiple students:

Student:  (busily using a calculator to multiply a long string of numbers)

Me:  Sweetie, STOP.

Student:  (looks up)

Me:  There’s a zero in there.

Student:  Huh?

Me:  All of those numbers you are multiplying.  One of them is a zero.

Student:  Ok.  (goes back to multiplying)

Me:  STOP.

Student:  (looks up)

Me:  If you multiply something by zero what do you get?

Student:  (long pause)  Zero?

Me:  Exactly!

Student (gives me a look that says plainly, “And that applies to my life, how?”)

Me:  So you are going to multiply along and get some number. You are going to multiply that number by this zero. You will get zero.  You will multiply that zero by this number and get zero, and so on.  What will you have at the end?

Student:  Zero?

Me:  So write it down, and MOVE ON!

Vocabulary is a stumbling block in reading comprehension

A limited vocabulary is frequently a stumbling block for my students when it comes to reading comprehension.

Both the SAT the ACT include "vocabulary in context" questions:  "In the context of this passage, what does fill-in-the-word mean?" These questions often stump my students.  However, even questions that are not explicitly about vocabulary can present problems.  Consider one question which had as possible answers:  a.  stunned amazement,  b.  silent contempt,  c.  mild concern, and d.  feigned interest.   Imagine trying to answer the question without knowing the meanings of "contempt" or "feigned."  Worse, a student will occasionally miss the entire point of a passage because such a large percentage of the words are unfamiliar that he or she can't work out the gist of the article through the context.

Am I just being a curmudgeon, or have student vocabularies really declined since I was young?  According to an article in today's Huffington Post, it's the latter.  Exam scores recently released by the National Assessment of Educational Progress reveal that the students at the top - those most likely to apply to college - are performing less well than their predecessors.  Furthermore, vocabulary was (as predicted) closely linked to reading comprehension.

If you are the parent of a young child, you will want to take note.  There are vast differences in the rate at which young children are exposed to language.  These differences are usually described as existing between higher and lower socioeconomic groups, but if you are looking at child-care or preschool options, you should pay close attention to the language proficiency of teachers and child-care providers.  Differences in language acquisition in early childhood persist into adulthood.

If you are the parent of a slightly older child, you should continue reading to your child, even if he or she has already learned to read.  Your child should read on his or her own, of course, but by reading aloud, you can introduce your child to literature that is on a more challenging level.  Don't put your child in a position of trying to make up for years of neglect by attempting to learn 2,000 vocabulary words in the month before the college entrance exam.