Private Prep Voices

Q&A with Emily Wolper of PP College Admissions

Emily is the founder of Private Prep College Admissions Consulting and a former Columbia University admissions officer.

1) What's new with the Common Application this year?

In addition to a new landing page and some other minor changes, the Common Application has a new essay prompt for 2015-2016:

Describe a problem you've solved or a problem you'd like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma-anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.

This is a really interesting new prompt, inviting students to write about ideas, questions and philosophical notions in a more specific way.

2) What's a helpful tip to get motivated with the college essay?

The best way to get moving on the college essay is to think about what an admissions officer should know about you. Too often, students focus on trying to choose a “topic” for the essay, forgetting that the topic should be in service of the larger goal of communicating something specific about the individual.  

3) What's an important message for parents to remember going into the college application process?

Summer is officially upon us. While some high-school students have prepped elaborate college admissions-worthy programs, your teen may not have locked down a plan yet. Don’t worry – there are still options.  

Here are four of our College Admissions Coaches’ favorite ways to ramp up summer at the last minute.  

1.  Give Back

The NYC Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services has a long list of volunteer opportunities which can continue through the coming school year. New York Cares has a Youth Volunteering program offering ways for teenagers to get involved. Or tell your child to sign up at Do Something and make activity books for children in the hospital. Most organizations can always use an extra set of hands in the summer for tackling big projects –the sky is the limit.

2. Get Creative

Love snapping artsy photos on his iPhone? Start a portfolio! Choose a topic, take a photo a day, and post it to a Tumblr page with a mission-driven name. Then promote it through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

3.  Get Informed

Learn something fun this summer and get college credit. Brown offers tons of cool classes with flexible application deadlines, a favorite last-minute option of college coach Emily Wolper. Art classes are available at the New York Film Academy and the School of Visual Arts in New York City, or learn how to code – the language of our future – at the iD Programming Academy. Want to travel abroad, check out Bauhaus to Buenos Aires, a photography show at the MOMA or an exhibit on American culture at the Whitney Museum to broaden perspective in advance of the trip.

4.  Get a Job

Yes, it’s as simple as that. The ability to hold a genuine summer job will impress admissions officers the country over.

Obsessed with clothes? Get a part-time job at Anthropology and start learning about merchandising strategy. According to Private Prep coach Rachel Elmer, retail is always a nice option this late in the game as job training is minimal, but learning and networking opportunities are endless.

“One of my students worked at a clothing store,” Rachel explained, “and was able to use the job as a platform for a fundraiser.  She organized a fundraising event at the store with food and music, and the proceeds went to her favorite charity, combining her love for fashion and her passion for helping others.”

In March 2016, the College Board is replacing the SAT exam with a new version of the test. This development has caused confusion and anxiety among families, schools, and the test prep community.

We are approaching the situation the same way we always do: With honesty, expertise, diligence, and collaboration.

In the coming year, our curriculum team will remain dedicated to analyzing all incoming information from the College Board and developing responsive strategies and practice material to accommodate test changes. In the meantime, we are offering families test recommendations based on what we know. 

For the Class of 2016: Juniors for whom the preferred test is the SAT, we encourage beginning test prep as soon as possible to properly prepare for the current SAT exam. By September, we will encourage students to focus on the ACT exam to ensure a sufficient amount of time to prepare.

For the Class of 2017:

We strongly recommend current sophomores prepare for the ACT given uncertainty of the redesigned SAT. At this point, the College Board has not yet released the full range of possible test questions and we feel thorough preparation is not possible. It is unclear how to compare test results and scoring between the current and new exams, which we believe is important to understand for test prep strategy. In addition, the current SAT offers only limited testing dates until January 2016, which presents potential concern if a student is sick or has another obligation on a test date.

Testing Timer 10% Discount for Private Prep Clients

We have partnered with Testing Timers to provide students with a wrist stopwatch to help with pacing during test-taking. Rather than accept a commission, we felt it was important to reduce the price of the watch for our students since it is a valuable testing tool for everyone. The watch is acceptable in official test settings for both ACT and SAT exams. 

To purchase your watch with the Private Prep Discount:

Go to http://testingtimers.com

Click on shop and you will be directed tohttp://testingtimers.myshopify.com

Add the watch to your cart

Click “Check Out”, and “Continue as Guest”

Enter credit card information or use PayPal account, then continue

After being redirected to Testing Timers, type in “PrivatePrep” in the discount code box

Private Prep’s Ethan Warshowsky, the Science department head, took the SAT II’s in Chemistry, Biology and Physics on February 7th.  He took the tests while being quite sensitive to the experience with the intention of getting into the mindset of a student and better understanding how students interpret standardized tests.  The following essay describes his experience.  

I arrived at 7:45 am, the reported latest time to check in.  The woman at the front directed me to a room based on my last name.  When I went to the assigned room, the proctor was administering the regular SAT only.  When I asked her where the SAT II rooms were, she did not know. She directed me to another room that was also SAT only with a proctor who was equally clueless.  At this point, it was past 8:00 am, the reported start time. I was actually worried that they would not admit me, so I ran back to the front desk and exclaimed: "Excuse me, may I speak to your manager?  This event is so poorly run, this woman told me to go here but I'm taking the SAT IIs!..."

Turns out there is only one person from College Board actually at the Test Center and he was this really nice old man.  He attempted to comfort me: "It is okay, son, they haven't even started bubbling in their names yet!"  It was actually quite heartening.  

The exam felt almost surreal considering the testing room was a middle school English room.  Cute classroom decorations of correct grammar usage and colorful student poems were displayed on the wall. This juxtaposed interestingly with the severity of the tests we were about to take and the level of anxiety in the room.

The woman proctoring the SAT II’s read the instructions quite fast.  She gave us instructions for bubbling in our information and then said: “Look up when you’re finished.”  I thus took my time figuring out College Board’s convoluted answer sheet and kept my head down. Several times I was still writing with my head down and she began moving on with new instructions.  I began firmly telling her to wait for me and slow down. She conceded.  

Most of the students were not listening to the proctor as they were focused on simply catching up on her previous instructions themselves.  

After about halfway through the second test, I began getting mentally fatigued and older memories of my own test anxieties started creeping in. I tuned into these thoughts and paid great attention to what I felt and why.  

I noticed that with my creeping mental fatigue, I was becoming insecure about some of the answer choices I was bubbling. I found that I felt compelled to double-check and re-check questions. Upon playing with this thought process, I realized that I simply was not fully confident with myself. I found myself in a cycle of irrationally rechecking answers. Upon realizing this, whenever that same thought process reemerged, I would look to see if that worry was warranted. As expected, it was not, and whatever answer I had initially put down was what I stuck with. Following that, I allowed my worry/doubt to wash over me. With this experience came a unique catharsis, a sort of lasting peacefulness with myself.  I found that I was calmer in the testing moment, and more focused on the test at hand. 

To perform well, I believe that students should embrace what they fear in regards to the testing experience. Students (everybody) have their demons, and it’s foolish to think that they don’t play into the testing experience. As educators and parents, we have felt the struggle of academic life and have the unique capability of humanizing the test prep experience for students. We should show compassion and set up a safe environment for the student to open up. If a student is afraid of doing poorly, we can slowly allow them to acknowledge and respect his/her fears. Have them know that you fear and remind them that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather comfort with it.

If students are afraid of being vulnerable, be an example and open up first. Many of my students know what I am afraid of and know not to worry about being judged.

I personally believe that this kind of “exposure” is important because it allows for a comfort with oneself. It gives students a mental tool where they can look at their negative thought and say “Oh hey, I recognize you. I confronted you before.”  We can thus provide students with the mental maturity to look at these thoughts objectively, and be mentally prepared to handle the stresses of testing (and life).  

For a mental prep program to truly be efficient, I believe that it should require students to really dig deep within themselves and be courageous about their academic insecurities.  As educators and parents, we must act as guides and show them how to be compassionate towards themselves and their fears.  

Take Away Points

Ensure your students/child prepare(s) for a poorly run event.  The ancillary aspects of testing day may not go smoothly, and the student must not let those kind of hiccups shake him/her.

Know how to find your test location. If lack of organization causes the student to be lost after the reported start time, instruct them to confidently go back to the sign-in area and ask to speak with the College Board representative. Students should know that it’s not their fault if they are incorrectly directed and have to right to sit even after start time.  

Be explicit about what you need as the student. The proctors do not always understand how to proctor appropriately.  If a student feels rushed while filling out his/her answer sheet, instruct them to feel comfortable asking for more time.

Focus on the positive. We should instruct our students/children to feel that their test day is a day to seize rather than dread. They should respect their own preparation and stand up for themselves if they feel that the proctors/organizers are not helping them.

Our Director of Pedagogy Heidi Fisher shares valuable information about tools and techniques we are designing for coaches to use with all students. 

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ASSESSMENTS are an integral part of teaching and can be used in multiple ways - either formative or summative: 

A formative assessment can be given at any point throughout the tutoring process, and allows tutors to provide specific, targeted feedback to students—assisting them with improving their learning. More specifically, formative assessments:

help identify areas of student strength & weakness and target individual areas of need

help tutors recognize how and when a student is struggling, and then allow them to address problems through targeted practice and problems

Formative assessments are also considered low stakes, which means that they have little or no assigned point value. Examples of formative assessments include:

Creating a concept map of a novel or short story

Responding to a series of tutor questions at the end of a lesson

Submitting a proposal for a science project, and then receiving teacher feedback

In comparison, the goal of a summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of a segment of tutoring or instructional unit, and then measure student progress against a specific standard. Summative assessments are often higher stakes, which means that they are attached to a specific point value.   Examples of summative assessments include:

Mid-term exam

Scores on the SAT or ACT