every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard
My alarming conclusion from How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough, was that the set of qualities that our education system emphasizes – measures, teaches, and drills – aren’t traits that lead to success.
Why are grades so important to us? What, exactly, do grades and GPAs measure, and how did they come to be known as future predictors of success?…
A couple months ago I slipped on some water. I could tell you that I managed to catch all my weight with my right hand, so that I didn’t even get a bruise on any other part of my body.
Or I could tell you — that the over-achievement of my right arm and hand led to breaking my wrist.
Which has turned out to be more of a pain, in every possible definition of the word, than I thought it would be. Of course, I’m right handed. So this post, typed with one hand, will be short.
Related to the subject of this blog, I’ve been gathering information about education, job prospects, and entrepreneurship. This episode of the podcast Start Up, by Gimlet Media, shows an interesting connection between them. In this episode, the ADULT employees talk about the effects of their late hours and stress are having on their health and personal lives.
Their schedule sounds remarkably like high-achieving high school TEENS I know….
National Merit Scholarship Program has released the 2016 PSAT qualifying scores.**
UPDATE 9/25/2017 New information on National Merit Semifinalist 2018 Cutoff Qualifying PSAT Scores.
(UPDATE: SEE NEW POST DECEMBER 2016 FOR 2018 GRADUATES)
The National Merit cutoff score for Texas has gone even higher this graduating year – 2016. The SemiFinalist cutoff score for Texas is 220. The race is getting ever tighter and it’s debatable how relevant it is when qualifying scores represent such a small different between abilities. But there are quite a few excellent schools who use National Merit qualifications to give out excellent academic scholarships, so it makes sense to pay attention to the PSAT. In any case, studying for the PSAT won’t be a total waste, since it does help prepare you to take the SAT later. (It’s original purpose, as in “Preliminary” SAT.)
From our son’s experience, here are my tips on preparing for the PSAT and SAT. Our son achieved a score high enough to be a National Merit Semifinalist. We are very proud of all his hard work (and thankful for a little luck.) But also, in case you haven’t heard yet, the PSAT and SAT are changing, with the PSAT taken in fall 2015 already reflecting the changes.
Here are the 2016 National Merit Scholarship Program Semifinalist Selection Index Qualifying Scores by state from the National Merit Scholarship Program Guide September 2015. Students who make this cut-off will need to submit a “confirming” SAT score (see my guide to best study aids) along with their application for the next stage of the competition in October.
** UPDATE 1/7/2016** The scores below are from the 2014 PSAT test. Qualifying scores were released in 2015 for 2016 graduating seniors. The PSAT scores released today for the newly designed 2015 PSAT, the National Merit Qualifying test for graduating Seniors in 2017, are on a different scale than in past years. I’m working on a post on how to interpret 2015 PSAT scores. And I’ve now complete a post about how to predict which 2015 PSAT scores might qualify for National Merit Semifinalist.
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Back to school is now in full swing! If you haven’t already started, your kids have probably at least picked up their schedules. Or they might be frantically trying to finish their summer projects. In the last week, I’ve heard so many parents mention that they’re dreading the start of the school year. I think the parents might even be dreading it more than the kids!
Are you dreading the school year busyness? (Yes, I looked it up. That’s really a word. “Business” doesn’t mean the same thing that it used to, and so now there is also “busyness.”) Are you dreading the calendar running your life? The hours of homework? The school activities with early morning and late night practice? The lack of sleep?
It might be time to take a good look at why your kids, or you, have signed up for all the activities and advanced classes that are taking up all your time and then some….
The SAT and PSAT are changing. While the College Board has studied and analyzed it, who really knows how it will affect scores. The first change will be this fall, with the PSAT in October 2015 being in the new format. These changes are supposed to reflect changes to the 2016 SAT. My daughter got a chance to try out the new format with the official PSAT Practice Test #1 (Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test) from the College Board….
And we are live!
Well, kinda-sorta. Since I’m doing all my own web development, it will take awhile to get this site structured. But the posts are at least up at this new domain.
This site, High school, College, Success!, here at www.highschoolcollegesuccess.com, will be the new home for the educational and life success posts from my ES Ivy website at esivy.com. This is where I plan on exploring the question of whether or not the current education system, high school through college, is teaching what’s really needed for our kids to be successful. Or at the very worst, is actually hampering the best students. Until I get an About page up and running, you can find out more about this website by starting with my first post on this subject, Success factors 1: What’s the Best Way to Guide Your Child Through High School to be a Success in College and in Life?, and following through the next posts.
If you’re looking for my posts on the best children’s books, recipes, DIY crafts, or family trip planning, you can find them on my other new blog, The Mom Behind the Curtain – because every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard, at mombehindthecurtain.com. (That site might still be in the process of migrating.) If you want to know more about me, E.S. Ivy, then for now the information up on my children’s author page, esivy.com, will have to do. Or look up at the top of my sidebar, and you can connect with with on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest.
Many students and parents right now are nervously awaiting the announcement of PSAT scores, the scores that will be used to determine qualification for National Merit Semi-finalists which will give them a chance at getting a National Merit Scholarship. How nervous? Really nervous. Just take a look over at the College Confidential forums. Even sophomores, who can’t qualify until next year, are nervous.
Of course, once the scores come out, everyone will still have to await the announcement of the cut-off scores for National Merit qualification. As we wait on those announcements, I’ve been thinking lately about what the number of National Merit Scholars mean s about the effectiveness of any one particular high school. Can you use the number of National Merit Scholars as a criteria for choosing a good high school?…
If you’re like a lot of high school students (or their parents), around this time of year you’re probably worrying about how you can improve your SAT score. If you’ve been following my blog, you know I’ve been questioning the worth of a lot of the standard advice you’re given for improving your chances of getting into college and being successful, but one thing I’ve found is that good SAT or ACT scores are still definitely important for college admission. This is one place that it’s still definitely worth your time to put in some effort. (For a information on schools that will even give you a full ride scholarship based on your SAT score, see the post What ACT or SAT Score Can Get You a Full-Ride Scholarship? by My Kid’s College Choice.)
I’m still working on setting up my blog specific to high school, college, and success, but my son just finished studying for the PSAT, which he took yesterday. (For the difference between the SAT and the PSAT, see What is the PSAT on DIY College Rankings.) His scores were already high, but even with private tutoring he’d reached a limit in his improvement. He was frustrated, so I did a lot of research into how to improve your SAT scores. And he did improve. To the point that he was capable of even perfect scores on practice sections. (In case you’re wondering, I was a National Merit Scholar, back in the day. 🙂 But we didn’t even consider him prepping for National Merit Scholar level until his practice test his sophomore year showed him to be within reach of the qualifying score.)
However, the more I dug into it, I realized that the quest for National Merit recognition now is like trying to get Olympic Gold. In the Olympics, all of the athletes have the skills, and top competitors are separated by fractions of a second. Different athletes will win on different days and some will crumble under the pressure. Same goes for the PSAT. It will be interesting to see if the new format of the PSAT has any effect.
But, if your quest is for high SAT scores or to raise your SAT score, it’s at least not a one day shot. And all your efforts studying for the PSAT will pay off when you take the SAT later….
As I’ve outlined in my previous posts, I’ve been pondering how to guide our kids to the best path of success, starting in high school by analyzing success factors. One answer might be that you try to move into a school district according to the high school ratings. Our school ranks well in U.S. News 2014 Best High Schools Rankings, but what does this mean?
I started thinking about this when we noticed that high school kids at our school seemed to have over-whelming schedules and then noted our own experiences with a full schedules of preAP and AP classes.
In my last post, I gave a quick rundown of my take on The Smartest Kids in the World: and how they got that way, by Amanda Ripley.
What I took from that was that was that based on the studies of Finland and Poland’s educational systems, stress, test, and retest might not be necessary for success. And South Korea’s school system shows that a high stress and test environment has some definite drawbacks.
So I was surprised that when I started reading Amanda Ripley’s blog, I kept running into statistics that used AP tests as a measure of whether of a high school was an academic success. She seems to agree with using AP tests as a way to determine school ratings….
AP classes and SAT scores can both be thought of as measurements of success factors for high school. But does one have an affect on the other?
As I mentioned my last post, we noticed a couple of things about our school district that indicated that our school was not preparing students as well as it could to take the SAT and the PSAT. So I started trying to figure out why. Not that I think the SAT is a perfect measure for learning, but it seemed like the level of achievement should at least stay the same….