How do you prepare for the SAT/ACT?

We're often asked - what is the best way to prepare for the SAT/ACT? The simple answer is by not spending any money. The nation's largest colleges and non-profit foundations, many of whom are deeply committed to improving student diversity in college admissions, are philosophically opposed to making test prep the exclusive domain of those families who can afford to send their children to these centers, cutting out millions of high school children who can't afford the same privilege. For these organizations, it is all about providing equal opportunity to all students regardless of financial ability, an approach that is so American and a much better option than providing equal outcomes - like guaranteed college admissions, regardless of merit. Both the SAT and the ACT are attempting to stay relevant as there is increasing pressure from groups who chose equal outcomes to lobby for the elimination of these tests altogether. [Groups such as FairTest have exploited disruptions caused by Covid to convince more than 1,800 colleges and universities to go test-optional]. But there are many colleges that still require the SAT/ACT for college admissions, and when test scores are submitted, colleges will consider them as one more data point to make admissions decisions. Besides, test-optional does not mean test-blind. On January 25, 2022, the College Board announced that the SAT will be going digital beginning in 2024. Taking a full-length practice test on Bluebook is one of the best ways to prepare for the real test. The digital test is shorter because it relies on adaptive testing. That means the test changes based on the students' answers, with the goal of reducing the time students spend answering questions that are either too easy or too hard.All students will take the digital PSAT 8/9, PSAT 10, and PSAT/NMSQT starting in fall 2023. SAT Digital Suite. Image Courtesy: The College Board. The Khan Academy, the College Board and the ACT Academy are outstanding SAT/ACT resources - so good that no other test prep academy even comes close. And all of these are free. Even tutor-learner online sessions are now free at schoolhouse.world. Sessions are currently offered for Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Precalculus, Calculus, Statistics, and SAT prep. Additional subjects may be added in the future. Sal Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, partnered with his college friend, Shishir Mehrotra, cofounder and CEO of Coda. Together, with Mariah Olson, Drew Bent, and a handful of volunteers, they created schoolhouse.world. In Jan 2021, the platform was relaunched and is now ready to scale to hundreds of thousands of students. But if you are looking for additional hand-holding and project management, there are numerous commercial test-prep companies - for example, KD and Testmasters for in-person test prep and Magoosh or Princeton Review online - which help overcome the anxieties of families and children because test preparation is considered so crucial to college admissions. Which brings us to two important points. The first is that these timed tests are measures of scholastic aptitude and predictors of college readiness. In other words, there's really nothing much that students have to study for. Reading, writing and math are skills that are taught to them all through their school years, so the material should be readily apparent to them if they have been paying attention. The challenge for many students is to manage time on test day, and luckily, the Khan Academy has excellent suggestions for students to adopt. Not studying for, however, does not mean not practicing. So you prepare for these tests more by practicing than studying. This leads us to the second point. What do you practice on? If you're practicing for a big tennis tournament, you go hit balls on a regulation-size tennis court with real tennis balls and racquets. Similarly, practicing SAT and ACT content with official questions is the only way to really prepare for these tests. A Kaplan or Barron's practice test at best is a simulated attempt at the actual College Board test. No matter how hard these companies try, they can never get it just right. The degree of difficulty and the distributed intensity of the questions can never be as accurate as the official tests. Let's review all of the tools which students have to prepare for the SAT. The most important book you need is the Official SAT Study Guide. The Khan Academy website is your best friend because it is the official partner of the College Board with outstanding technical features. If you link your College Board account with the Khan Academy account, the KA website will automatically detect which areas of testing you are weak in based on your performances on the PSAT. And it will start serving up lessons and practice questions so that you can improve. Even a private coaching academy will not give you such personalized service! You can set your smartphone or PC to automatically challenge you with practice questions every day at a certain time. You set the frequency, the topic, and the number of questions. There are loads of videos and review content if you are ever not sure about a topic area. And then there are 10 full-length practice tests from the College Board so that you can really create test-day conditions in the privacy of your home. Timing the practice tests for maximum impact is crucial. Studying for the SAT during the summer and taking the test in August is the best solution because you do not have school obligations to interfere with test preparation. Say that the big Test Day is Aug 24. Refrain from taking a practice test the day before. You want to be fully relaxed and confident, so take in a movie or play your favorite video game on Aug 23. Also, never take two practice tests on consecutive days. You should set aside the day following a practice test day for diagnostics and comprehensive review - more on this in point #7 below. Your schedule should look something like this: Aug 24 - Test Day Aug 23 - Relax! Aug 22 - Diagnostics for Practice Test 10 Aug 21 - Practice Test 10 Aug 20 - Diagnostics for Practice Test 9 Aug 19 - Practice Test 9 .... .... Aug 4 - Practice Test 1 Before taking the first practice test, you will have practiced your skills on the over 2,000 official questions on the Khan Academy website, including over 900 questions in Math. Each student is different - but you should plan on a minimum of 30 practice questions every day. Depending upon how many questions you routinely get right, and how much time you require to review video lessons to remedy those skills with which you're uncomfortable, plan on about an hour of diligent study every day. This is not a big ask - it's after all the dry, boring days of summer. If you plan to practice on every question (this may not be possible because of how the site allocates competency badges as you master skills for each test topic), this will theoretically take 66 days. So, working backward from Aug 4, you're looking at starting your test preparation on or about June 1, about 2½ months prior to the test date. This preparation window is standard in the industry. When you buy a package from an online test preparation company, your license will generally expire in 90 days. Even brick-and-mortar test academies plan for a 90-day schedule from the time you start. The nice thing about the Khan Academy is that the cost is zero. You can print out the answer sheets even and use 2HB pencils to oval your responses out. To score your test, go back to the page containing the ten full-length practice tests. Suppose you completed SAT Practice Test 1. Click on the + sign. This will open up two download links - a guide to score your test and a longer "explanations" document. Download both documents (see images after bullet point #8 below). Here's the most important step: Diagnostics. When reviewing the detailed explanations for wrong answers, track if you had more than one wrong answer in a topic area, such as Congruence and Similarity (Math), or Possessive Determiners (English Grammar). If yes, you must go back and review the appropriate refresher video lessons on Khan Academy before taking the next full-length practice test. Many students are too eager to believe that their foundational knowledge is so strong that a remedial review is unnecessary. For well-designed tests such as the SAT/ACT, which pry on tricking students, such over-confidence could impact test-day scores. ACT Prep. If you're preparing for the ACT, check out our post. <!-- replace with your text END-->

By Rajkamal Rao


 

 

 

Image by Rao Advisors

 

We're often asked - what is the best way to prepare for the SAT/ACT?

The simple answer is by not spending any money. The nation's largest colleges and non-profit foundations, many of whom are deeply committed to improving student diversity in college admissions, are philosophically opposed to making test prep the exclusive domain of those families who can afford to send their children to these centers, cutting out millions of high school children who can't afford the same privilege.  For these organizations, it is all about providing equal opportunity to all students regardless of financial ability, an approach that is so American and a much better option than providing equal outcomes - like guaranteed college admissions, regardless of merit.  

Colleges are indifferent to which test you should take and treat both the SAT and the ACT with no bias towards one or the other. The concordance tables that map the ACT scores to the SAT have consistently shown that this policy makes sense. Statistically, one can be nearly 100% confident that an ACT score falls within a narrow 30-point SAT score range. STEM-focused students will probably do better on the ACT because the dedicated Science section contributes 25% to the ACT composite and will help lift the overall score up. 

Both the SAT and the ACT are attempting to stay relevant as there is increasing pressure from groups who chose equal outcomes to lobby for the elimination of these tests altogether. [Groups such as FairTest have exploited disruptions caused by Covid to convince more than 1,800 colleges and universities to go test-optional]. But there are many colleges that still require the SAT/ACT for college admissions, and when test scores are submitted, colleges will consider them as one more data point to make admissions decisions. Besides, test-optional does not mean test-blind. Also, in Texas, scoring a minimum of 480 in reading and 530 in math (Super scoring is NOT allowed) is required to avoid colleges imposing Texas Success Initiative requirements. 

Beginning in 2024, it has become clear that the test-optional party at many colleges is finally coming to an end. We track the announcements of various elite schools, including UT Austin, in this Facebook post. Colleges are beginning to realize after four years of experimentation with student admissions and performance that test scores better help predict students’ college grades, and their chances of graduation and post-college success. Grades are not as accurate a predictor because of issues like grade inflation that make it difficult to assess a student’s work.

Digital SAT. On January 25, 2022, the College Board announced that the SAT will be going digital beginning in 2024. Taking a full-length practice test on Bluebook is one of the best ways to prepare for the real test. Here are excellent tips developed by the College Board for the digital age.

The digital test is shorter because it relies on adaptive testing. That means the test changes based on the students' answers, with the goal of reducing the time students spend answering questions that are either too easy or too hard.All students will take the digital PSAT 8/9, PSAT 10, and PSAT/NMSQT starting in fall 2023.

SAT Digital Suite. Image Courtesy: The College Board.

 

The Khan Academy, the College Board and the ACT Academy are outstanding SAT/ACT resources - so good that no other test prep academy even comes close. And all of these are free.

  

Even tutor-learner online sessions are now free at schoolhouse.world. Sessions are currently offered for Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Precalculus, Calculus, Statistics, and SAT prep. Additional subjects may be added in the future. 

 

Sal Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, partnered with his college friend, Shishir Mehrotra, cofounder and CEO of Coda. Together, with Mariah Olson, Drew Bent, and a handful of volunteers, they created schoolhouse.world. In Jan 2021, the platform was relaunched and is now ready to scale to hundreds of thousands of students.

But if you are looking for additional hand-holding and project management, there are numerous commercial test-prep companies - for example, KD and Testmasters for in-person test prep and Magoosh or Princeton Review online - which help overcome the anxieties of families and children because test preparation is considered so crucial to college admissions.

Which brings us to two important points.  The first is that these timed tests are measures of scholastic aptitude and predictors of college readiness.  In other words, there's really nothing much that students have to study for.  Reading, writing and math are skills that are taught to them all through their school years, so the material should be readily apparent to them if they have been paying attention. The challenge for many students is to manage time on test day, and luckily, the Khan Academy has excellent suggestions for students to adopt. 

Not studying for, however, does not mean not practicing.  So you prepare for these tests more by practicing than studying.

Truth, and nothing but the truth - in just one minute! Thanks @salkhanacademy! https://t.co/BruTl7KFp1

— Rajkamal Rao (@rajkamalrao) November 4, 2019

This leads us to the second point.  What do you practice on?  If you're practicing for a big tennis tournament, you go hit balls on a regulation-size tennis court with real tennis balls and racquets.  Similarly, practicing SAT and ACT content with official questions is the only way to really prepare for these tests.  A Kaplan or Barron's practice test at best is a simulated attempt at the actual College Board test.  No matter how hard these companies try, they can never get it just right.  The degree of difficulty and the distributed intensity of the questions can never be as accurate as the official tests.

Let's review all of the tools which students have to prepare for the SAT. The most important book you need is the Official SAT Study Guide. The Khan Academy website is your best friend because it is the official partner of the College Board with outstanding technical features.

1. If you link your College Board account with the Khan Academy account, the KA website will automatically detect which areas of testing you are weak in based on your performances on the PSAT.  And it will start serving up lessons and practice questions so that you can improve.  Even a private coaching academy will not give you such personalized service!


2. You can set your smartphone or PC to automatically challenge you with practice questions every day at a certain time.  You set the frequency, the topic, and the number of questions. 


3. There are loads of videos and review content if you are ever not sure about a topic area.  


4. And then there are six full-length non-adaptive paper-based practice tests from the College Board so that you can really create test-day conditions in the privacy of your home.
   
   Timing the practice tests for maximum impact is crucial. Studying for the SAT during the summer and taking the test in August is the best solution because you do not have school obligations to interfere with test preparation.
   
   Say that the big Test Day is Aug 24. Refrain from taking a practice test the day before. You want to be fully relaxed and confident, so take in a movie or play your favorite video game on Aug 23. Also, never take two practice tests on consecutive days. You should set aside the day following a practice test day for diagnostics and comprehensive review - more on this in point #7 below.
   
   Your schedule should look something like this:
   
   Aug 24 - Test Day
   Aug 23 - Relax!
   Aug 22 - Diagnostics for Practice Test 10
   Aug 21 - Practice Test 10
   Aug 20 - Diagnostics for Practice Test 9
   Aug 19 - Practice Test 9
   ....
   ....
   Aug 4  - Practice Test 1
   
   Before taking the first practice test, you will have practiced your skills on the over 2,000 official questions on the Khan Academy website, including over 900 questions in Math. Each student is different - but you should plan on a minimum of 30 practice questions every day. Depending upon how many questions you routinely get right, and how much time you require to review video lessons to remedy those skills with which you're uncomfortable, plan on about an hour of diligent study every day. This is not a big ask - it's after all the dry, boring days of summer.
   
   If you plan to practice on every question (this may not be possible because of how the site allocates competency badges as you master skills for each test topic), this will theoretically take 66 days. So, working backward from Aug 4, you're looking at starting your test preparation on or about June 1, about 2½ months prior to the test date.
   
   This preparation window is standard in the industry. When you buy a package from an online test preparation company, your license will generally expire in 90 days. Even brick-and-mortar test academies plan for a 90-day schedule from the time you start. The nice thing about the Khan Academy is that the cost is zero. 


5. You can print out the answer sheets even and use 2HB pencils to oval your responses out.


6. To score your test, go back to the page containing the six full-length non-adaptive paper-based practice tests. Suppose you completed SAT Practice Test 1. Click on the + sign. This will open up two download links - a guide to score your test and a longer "explanations" document. Download both documents (see images after bullet point #8 below).


7. Here's the most important step: Diagnostics. When reviewing the detailed explanations for wrong answers, track if you had more than one wrong answer in a topic area, such as Congruence and Similarity (Math), or Possessive Determiners (English Grammar).
   
   If yes, you must go back and review the appropriate refresher video lessons on Khan Academy before taking the next full-length practice test. Many students are too eager to believe that their foundational knowledge is so strong that a remedial review is unnecessary. For well-designed tests such as the SAT/ACT, which pry on tricking students, such over-confidence could impact test-day scores.


8. ACT Prep. If you're preparing for the ACT, check out our post.
   

 
 

Image 1 for Point #6 above

 

Image 2 for Point #6 above

So, when you enroll your child in a test prep academy, you are simply outsourcing the project management of your child's preparation.  But is this really worth $2,000 - $3,000? 

The big testing companies know that the market is slipping away from them.  This is why many of them are getting into the college counseling industry.  Read our post here about how one famous test company is doing just this and why.

But here's the summary:  Tell your child that he or she is much better off practicing at home on his or her own.  And promise your child half of the savings in cash if they beat expectations!  After all, nothing is more American than that!

When you are ready to report your SAT scores to colleges, please follow the detailed College Board instructions here.

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please contact us for more information.

Rajkamal Rao Sports Journalism Profile

 

Stanford University Track. Image: Rao Advisors

 

I am a U.S.-based part-time journalist/columnist with my work appearing in Tippinsights, multiple media properties of the Hindu Group in India, and All India Radio.

I received media credentials to cover the 2020 Tokyo Olympics but I couldn't attend because of Covid restrictions.

I present below a sample of several tennis/sports columns of mine that have appeared in the press.

Rajkamal Rao - Print/online media

1. Wimbledon's second fall from grace - Times of India op-ed
2. Australia smashes down Djokovic’s pleas
3. President Biden Could Learn From The WTA's Resolve (Editorial)
   
4. Tennis — French Open proves unpredictable, again
5. How the likes of Rajiv Maheswaran are using data to pull out winners in sport
6. At the US Open, bizarre rules topple top seeds
7. Indian cricket is back to its glory days
8. Serena Williams lost, and not just the US Open final
9. Why Nadal and Federer continue their domination
10. Federer and Nadal return to dominate tennis
11. Cricket and its failings
12. The resurgence of Federer and Nadal is a treat
13. Fine wine and the Australian Open
14. Duplicate Olympic spirit? Easier said than done!
15. Is too much money tainting tennis?

Rajkamal Rao - Radio

1. Apr 11, 2023 - All India Radio, weekly sports roundup. WPL summary. 
   
2. Nov 25, 2014 - All India Radio, weekly sports roundup.  Interview with Vijay Amritraj covering CTL in Bangalore.
3. Oct 14, 2014 - All India Radio, weekly sports roundup.  Interview with Olympic Gold and World Gold medal winner Abhinav Bindra (starts at 01:30).
4. Sep 9, 2014 - All India Radio, weekly sports roundup covering the Davis Cup pre-tie activities. At clip marker 05:27, an interview with Anand Amritraj.
5. Other broadcasts (some in Kannada):
   
   
   1. Sep 16, 2014 - All India Radio, 10 PM, weekly sports roundup covering the Davis Cup matches.  A 13 minute clip featuring an exclusive interview with Rohan Bopanna in Kannada, starting at clip marker 06:17. 
      
   
   
   2. Sep 9, 2014 - All India Radio, 10 PM, weekly sports roundup covering the Davis Cup pre-tie activities.  9 minute clip featuring an interview with the Jt. Secy of the Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association; followed by, at clip marker 05:27, an interview with Anand Amritraj in English.   
       
   3. Aug 26, 2014 - All India Radio, 10 PM, weekly sports roundup largely covering the Pro Kabaddi League game between Bangalore and Patna.  17 minute clip featuring commentary in Kannada, starting at clip marker 01:49, followed by interviews with the Bengaluru Bulls coach and the former captain of the India Kabaddi team, an Arjuna Award winner. 
    
   
   My official Muckrack profile is here. As a print/online columnist opining on various topics, I have written 450 published pieces and appeared numerous times as a commentator on television.
    

UT Austin dramatically relaxes essay requirements for Fall 2025

By Rajkamal Rao  

Image Credit: Rao Advisors LLC.

Update: May 22, 2024

The University of Texas will continue to accept the Common App (along with ApplyTexas), but the essay requirements have been dramatically relaxed and shortened for Fall 2025.

Goodbye to the 650-word required essay (the growth essay) plus the three tough supplements. The dreaded "Please share how you believe your experience at UT-Austin will prepare you to 'Change the World' after you graduate" essay is now gone. There are now only two supplements. All of these changes should be good news for thousands of high school students. 

Required essay for Fall 2025 (500-650 words)

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design. 

This is identical to Common App prompt #7. It means that you can submit any essay you wish (including responses to any of the seven Common App prompts), significantly lowering your effort to complete the UT required essay.

Supplemental essays for Fall 2025 (250-300 words).

1. Why are you interested in the major you indicated as your first-choice major?
   
   This has remained unchanged from Fall 2021. A good way to discuss this is to start with what triggered your interest and then pivot forward to what your intended career after college would be.
   
   To research careers, check out the U.S. Department of Labor's website, ONET, which contains detailed job descriptions for over 575 careers. Consider using those themes and some buzzwords back into your essay making sure not to copy content verbatim. Here's the ONET listing for Aersopace Engineers as an example. Also, don't forget to examine related careers.
   
   
2. Think of all the activities — both in and outside of school — that you have been involved with during high school. Which one are you most proud of and why? (Guidance for students: This can include an extracurricular activity, a club/organization, volunteer activity, work or a family responsibility.) 
   
   This is similar to the "Experience" essay from Fall 2021 but the wording has been significantly watered down. For example, the words "describe" or "share" do not appear in the prompt, so you could be more free-flowing in your response. You could talk about your experiences, perspectives, and/or talents have shaped your ability to contribute to and enrich the learning environment at UT Austin, both in and out of the classroom. Or you can describe your "Leadership" qualities in school, a job, your community, and/or within your family responsibilities.
   
    
3. OPTIONAL. Please share background on events or special circumstances that you feel may have impacted your high school academic performance. 
   
   We encourage students to take advantage of this prompt only if you have met with real adversity, such as a loss of job of a parent, impact to family income, perhaps, loss of life. 
   
   For the full list of official prompts, visit UT's Freshman Admissions website.
   
   For a primer on how to write essays and how we can help, click here. To learn how we help high school seniors navigate the college admissions process, click here. 
   

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please  contact us for more information.

About the new Undergrad Degree in Informatics at UT Austin

By Rajkamal Rao  

Image Source: School of Information, UT Austin

The University of Texas has launched a brand new undergrad program in Informatics in its School of Information.  I reached out to Natasha V. Saldaña, the Undergraduate Program Coordinator, with several questions and here are her polite responses. You may contact her here.  

1. How is the School of Information different from the MIS major at McCombs or BHP?
   
   Informatics is multi-disciplinary and has six different concentration areas for students to pursue.  All of them have an aspect of how technology intersects with humans. For students who are interested in CS, ECE, and MSIS, the Bachelor of Science in Informatics (BSI) is considered a STEM major.
   
   If you are specifically interested in Data Science we offer the Human-Centered Data Science major concentration.
   
   Concentration in Human-Centered Data Science
   
   Data is one of the most valuable commodities in the information society, and workers who can use data to gain new insights are in great demand. Diverse skills are required to collect, manage, and analyze data, as well as consideration of the great ethical responsibility that comes with collecting, managing, and analyzing data, and the importance of critical thinking skills. The Human-Centered Data Science Concentration of the B.S./B.A. in Informatics will prepare you for a career involving artificial intelligence, machine learning, information retrieval, data curation, and data analysis. The Human-Centered Data-Science Concentration includes taking Introduction to Human-Centered Data Science followed by advanced topics courses such as Data Wrangling, Crowdsourcing, Machine Learning, and Search Informatics. Choosing the Concentration in Human-Centered Data Science will prepare you for a career in which you leverage data, information, and technology to benefit society.
   
   
2. In which college does the School of Information lie (Natural Sciences, Liberal Arts, etc.)?
   
   The School of Information.
   
   
3. Do you have an Honors program associated with the Informatics degree (like the Polymath or Deans Science Honors)?
   
   At this time, no; Fall 2021 is the launch of the new program and we will begin to build these programs. 
   
   
4. Can students pursue a double major?
   
   Yes, students can dual-degree seek. In the School of Information, there is only one major​.  Students can choose to pursue a BA or BSI. 
   
   
5. Approximately how many students are in the Freshman class?
   
   For the first class, we anticipate 50-60 freshman students.  The additional 40 are internal transfer and external transfer students. 
   
   
6. What scholarship programs do you have outside of the usual UT offerings considering that you're a relatively new degree?
   
   As you mentioned, we are a new degree and because of this, we do not have any established scholarships.  We are working to build these as we grow.
   

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please  contact us for more information.

Highlights of individual counseling

 

 

 What do you get as part of individual counseling?

Stanford University. Image: Rao Advisors

We like to think of ourselves as the Amazon of college counseling!   We provide a full suite of services - high school course planning, college readiness, college selection, and admissions strategies, financial planning, advice for demonstrating student interest in colleges, structured essay reviews - from when your child is in the 8th grade to when the last college admissions offer is received.

We create a detailed customized roadmap for each child for all remaining high school years including structured plans for how to spend summer months, how to plan and manage extracurricular activities, when best to schedule the various tests, how to prepare for tests at the lowest cost and how to free up a student's time so that there is sufficient school-life balance. 

We provide numerous proprietary tools - weighted average GPA tracker, resume templates, SAT practice logs, 4-year roadmap, college selection using U.S. Department of Education metrics, and a detailed project plan for college admissions. Plus each family receives our popular, proprietary 230-page guide to elite college admissions which is the content source for our public appearances, book, and flagship online courses.  

Families have free access to our Popular Posts page along with regular updates about all things school and college on our Facebook page.  Our low-cost live paid webinars are also very popular. Finally, customers gain free membership into our growing WhatsApp community of over 300 parents.

Families come to us for help answering numerous questions. Here is a sample list of topics we cover during our sessions, tailored to the needs of your student.

 

 A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions. We are indebted and privileged to have earned their trust in matters which are so important to them. Please check out our public Google reviews to see what they say about us.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please contact us for more information.

 

 

 

What colleges look for in High School students

By Rajkamal Rao  

According to The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), the top admission decision factors for colleges are as below. As you enter high school, it makes a lot of sense to focus on the Top 5.



 

Source: NACAC

 

While most colleges worldwide accept students based on grades (or class rank) and scores on a standardized test, top American colleges are unique in how they select their future students. 

Grades, admissions test scores (SAT/ACT), the strength of curriculum (performance on Advanced Placement exams, for example), and recommendation letters are all carefully evaluated. An essential part of an application is often comprised of the non-academic portion of your profile – extracurricular activities, examples of leadership, community service/volunteering, internships, research, work, talents/awards. Along with listing them, you would humanize your experiences in college essays that are designed to explain how you grew and contributed; and what you learned. 

Race, gender, and ethnicity

As American colleges and universities move to equalize opportunities to help create a more diverse society, all of the above merit factors begin to pale in comparison to the one metric that is so hard to measure: a student's background. This huge catch-all umbrella includes various measures that a student can't control, such as gender or race, and the so-called adversity score, which measures such intangibles as family structure, housing, educational attainment of the community, and the likelihood of being a victim of a crime.

The theory is that students who overcome disadvantages and still do reasonably well in high school deserve a shot at admission to the best colleges over those students who are more privileged and may even have a better student profile overall, partly because of the privilege. Studies have shown that regardless of a student's background during high school, graduates from an elite institution such as Harvard or MIT all do equally well, get the best positions in business and industry, and continue leading productive careers. 

Elite Schools' Supply & Demand equation

Demand: There are 24,000 high schools in America, and each has a valedictorian, the student ranked #1. Besides the salutatorian, the student ranked #2 also deserves nearly the same recognition because, over four years, these two students would have often traded places with each other. This makes the group of over-achievers a total of 48,000 students. There are also 15,000 National Merit Finalists (NMF) — admittedly, some who include the class valedictorian and the salutatorian — who are chosen based on the highest scores achieved on the PSAT-11 test. The finalists must also go through additional scrutiny and a review of supplemental essays, school recommendations, and overall academic merit. This means that there are nearly 63,000 academic over-achievers across America. And our simple model here omits every other merit student outside of the valedictorian, salutatorian, and an NMF finalist.

Supply of seats: The combined freshman acceptance of all eight Ivy League schools is about 16,000 students. Discounting this number by international students, who comprise about 25% of each incoming Ivy League class, the effective number of elite seats available to American students is only about 11,000.

During the last 25 years, the number of elite college admission seats has remained the same. So, at a macroeconomic level, this is a classic supply and demand imbalance problem, tilting heavily to the demand side while the supply stays the same.

And there's brutal competition for these prized seats. Consider Asian-American students, some of the most high-performing teenagers striving to enter elite institutions. According to the Census Bureau, the Asian-American population increased from 10.4 million in 2000 to 18.9 million in 2017, an 80 percent increase in a generation.

For the class of 2023 and in recent years, many of these superstar high school students never made it to even one of their choice Ivy League schools.

How to increase your odds of elite admission

High-school students must start carefully strategizing about their roadmap to an elite school four to five years before submitting their college applications. Students must have outstanding academic metrics: GPA, SAT/ACT scores, strength of curriculum, and class rank.

They also have to be the best in school and extracurricular activities. They must demonstrate character by being on the school's athletic or debate teams or representing their school in band, orchestra, or drama. They should show leadership by being elected to a position of importance in student government, being selected as ambassadors, or working on the school's newspaper or yearbook team. They also should demonstrate a passion for a skill or talent, such as playing the violin or creating art. 

And they must engage in community service, such as serving those in need or older adults.

Most students from privileged families strive to build impressive overall profiles, shunted from activity to activity by caring parents.

Applying Early Decision is a crucial strategy to help lift an application over the top, but doing so comes with its own drawbacks. Also, it may be better for Asian American students to not disclose their race on the Common App.

The new definition of 'student promise': Overcoming adversity factors

Americans of all stripes and colors want a fair shot at their pipe dreams. Income inequality is a real issue, and elite colleges are trying hard to address decades of systemic injustices to look at students and evaluate merit differently.

For students who face adversity at home — and who belong to under-represented minority populations — colleges generally exempt them from having to build their extracurricular profiles in the manner described above. For these students, taking care of a sibling and doing chores around the home when a single parent goes to work are far more relevant than perfecting skills on the violin. Even work experience — earning a paycheck at a McDonald's to support the family income — is weighted significantly higher than many traditional extracurricular activities pursued by "privileged" white or Asian-American students.

Because decades of data show a strong correlation between adversity and race, colleges have used adversity as a code word to admit more students from under-represented minority Black, Hispanic, and Native American populations at the expense of white and Asian American students. 

Until twenty years ago, America's elite colleges largely considered only an applicant's accomplishments. In that sense, American institutions were more like professional sports leagues. Imagine if the qualifications to be ranked as a Top-100 tennis player had a "race" component in addition to matches won or lost. Such an idea would have been immediately dismissed. 

This conflict is at the heart of the Supreme Court case against Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill, brought about by Edward Blum, founder of Students for Fair Admissions, the plaintiffs in the current court cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Blum argues that elite colleges should not admit students based on race, although he favors a diverse student body based on diverse socioeconomic income classes.

 

 

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Math and calculator tips for the SAT/ACT

By Jatin Rao

TI-83 Calculator. Image Credit: Rao Advisors LLC

The highest math level that is expected to be tested on the SAT is Algebra II, meaning that the questions are generally easier and less complex than the math questions on the ACT, which includes precalculus content as well.

There are 4 math subjects that are tested on the SAT Math section: 

 

1. Heart of Algebra: This section mostly covers topics that are taught in Algebra I, and the questions are heavily focused on solving basic linear equations and linear inequalities. Mastering this section in Khan Academy is vital before moving on to practice the other two sections. There is also heavy emphasis on analyzing and interpreting graphs.
    
2. Problem Solving and Data Analytics: This section includes some Algebra I topics, but also includes basic statistics and proportions problems. It is key to remember concepts such as mean and median, ratio laws, and exponent rules.
    
3. Passport to Advanced Math: This section is almost all Algebra II topics and relatively advanced geometry. Most of the questions will require manipulating equations and solving for a single variable, thus requiring the most practice overall.
    
4. Additional Topics: This section mostly covers Geometry topics and complex numbers. It is important to remember concepts such as the unit circle and other widely-used geometric theorems.
   
   

There are two subsections on the SAT Math test, a Calculator and a Non-Calculator section. The calculator section questions will generally be harder than those on the non-calculator section, because the College Board knows that the test-taker has a tool to help with calculations.

 
Non-Calculator: The section without a calculator comes first. There are 20 questions and a time limit of 25 minutes. Most of the questions are multiple-choice questions, with a few grid-in questions at the very end. Because this section is generally easier, expect questions from the Heart of Algebra, Data Analytics, and Geometry sections, but be prepared for some tricky algebra or manipulation questions. There will be some graph questions but not as many as the Calculator section. A lot of them will be simple "one-line" questions that only take a few seconds to read and roughly 30 seconds to solve, so it is important to prioritize picking up easy points on questions like these before moving on to the harder problems. 

Calculator: This section appears after the Non-Calculator section. There are 38 questions with a time limit of 55 minutes. There is a generally better spread of questions across the 4 sections, but the questions are more difficult because of the student's ability to use a calculator. Not all questions will require usage of the calculator, so try and save some time by not using it if possible.

While Precalculus topics will not be tested on the SAT, it is preferred that a student has taken Precalculus before taking the test. We recommend accelerating through one of the three preliminary math courses (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II) in order to make space for the student to take Precalculus during his/her sophomore year, and then take the SAT during the summer between the sophomore and junior years, preferably in August. Precalculus does an excellent job of acting as a comprehensive review course for the topics learned in all of the three preliminary math courses, so the student will have the ability to review concepts learned years prior, as well as learning useful new concepts such as the unit circle and trigonometric manipulation and proofs. They will also have the benefit of practicing problems at a higher skill level to prepare for more difficult questions on the SAT and ACT.

Of the two mainstream choices for calculators for standardized testing, the TI-83 Plus and the TI-84 Plus, which do we recommend using?

There are actually only a few differences between the TI-83 Plus and the TI-84 Plus, with the latter offering a few additional features and an improved screen interface for the user. Students should also consider the TI-84 Plus CE (color edition), which is the same as the TI-84 Plus, but with a smaller feel and a colored screen that can make graphs easier to interpret. There are also a few more built-in applications on the color edition TI-84.
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SAT - The TI-83 Plus works just fine. Most of the calculations will be simple PEMDAS or graphing, and therefore will not require any of the advanced tools that are present in the TI-84. Be familiar with the functions in the MATH tab on the calculator, and how to store values and recall them later for more complicated solutions. Become an expert at quickly graphing functions using the "y=" tab, and analyzing the graphs using the TRACE and CALC tabs at the top right. Some of these may help solve some problems faster than doing the math on paper.

ACT - The TI-84 Plus is preferred over the TI-83 Plus. Because precalculus topics are tested on the ACT, it is useful if you can calculate summation formulas and type in complex fractions without the use of many parentheses that could confuse you. Pressing ALPHA + "y=" will open up a menu that can simplify entering fractions into the console. Functions like entering complex roots that are more than the square root, finding the logarithms of functions at a different base than 10, and using the many statistical tools in the STAT tab are all available in the TI-84 Plus, and will likely be used many times during the ACT Math section, where time is of the essence.

AP Exams - The TI-84 Plus or TI-84 Plus CE is the preferred choice. Heavily math-based AP exams like AP Physics, AP Chemistry, and AP Calculus BC will have several complicated problems that require the extra functionality that the TI-84 Plus calculator provides. Make good use of the built-in applications within the APPS tab, which has features that range from converting units to creating vectors to graphing vertical x functions. Especially for the AP Calculus test, being able to graph polar equations, differentiate multiple graphs by colors, type out long summation formulas, and entering integral equations in the TI-84 Plus CE is a big plus.

Overall, the TI-84 Plus color edition is the best calculator that offers many more useful features than the other models and it can be used for all three tests. Plus it can easily travel with the student to college.

 

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services

Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please contact us for more information.

Jatin Rao Bio

Jatin Rao

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Jatin Rao has served, since 2017, as an associate at Rao Advisors LLC, a Texas firm to counsel students about all things college:  readiness, financial planning, selection, strategy and admissions. He currently runs all finance operations for the firm, including invoicing, the creation of quarterly reports, and collections. 

He has spoken at numerous customer webinars and in-person seminars on the road, usually in Austin or Houston, about high school preparedness. He fields audience questions from students and parents after live presentations; develops Excel models that chart college admissions data through blog posts on the firm's website; and provides advice to families about test-prep and high school course navigation during one-on-one counseling sessions. 

 

Jatin is a senior at the University of Texas Canfield Business Honors program and a recipient of the Susie and Skip McGee Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Business. He was recognized by UT with the Distinguished Honors designation for each year from 2020-2022. For 2023, he is a College Scholar. He served as the Director of the UT University Finance Association and is an active member of the Texas Energy Capital club. He has accepted a position at Jeffries Investment Bank in Houston as an analyst after he graduates in May 2024.

Jatin is interested in Japanese culture and earned a certificate in Japanese by completing 24 credits at UT. He is an avid sports fan having co-led his high school's varsity tennis team. He is a devout ping pong player and likes to analyze football, ice hockey, and baseball.

In high school, Jatin was a finalist in the National Merit Scholarship competition in 2019-20, the only student in his graduating class of 726 students to win the distinction. He was chosen by his 26,000-student school district to serve as a student Ambassador. As co-captain of his school's Quiz League team, he won the inter-scholastic tournament as a Sophomore, and a runner-up place as a Junior. He was his school's only National AP scholar completing 15 AP courses with twelve 5s and three 4's. He scored a perfect 36 on his Math and Reading ACT sections, and a 790 on his Math SAT.

 

Jatin can be reached by email or phone: 682.401.5281.

 

 

 
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