After 11 years of working with students on the SAT and ACT, it has become profoundly clear to me that a student’s level of motivation for the preparatory process will dramatically impact the testing outcomes. Motivated students make the requisite sacrifices, invest the necessary time, and nearly always come out ahead.
What happens if my child is not motivated to do the work required or does not seem interested in attaining a higher score?
It is essential to understand a student’s motivational profile and college aspirations. The SAT and the ACT are meaningful only in the context of applying to selective colleges. A number of factors influence motivational levels:
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Listen to Jed as he joins Karen Powell, host of Education Forum on America’s Web Radio, to discuss a wide variety of tutoring and education related topics. The whole interview is now available for you to listen online or download.
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Look left: students are working. Look to the right: more of the same. Look up at the board: it’s still there. Okay. Get a hold of yourself. Back to the test booklet. Read the passage. Wait. What did I read? Read it again. Blank. Look left. Look Right. Back to the board. Repeat.
This is the ritual of one of my students who struggles with test-anxiety. When the anxiety switches on, she begins this cycle. And when she begins this loop, her hopes of a good score, the payoff for all the hard work she’s put in, slowly fade away.
Test-anxiety is real. And its effects can be debilitating. One of my former SAT students, so concerned about hitting the score she needed to win the scholarship that would pay for college, had run crying out of three consecutive SAT tests before she came to work with us. One of my GMAT students was able to keep his cool on the semi-pro golf circuit and could focus on sinking the winning putt, but would go into a negative spiral and throw away everything he had learned when he hit a rough patch of problems on the GMAT.
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At our last monthly tutor meeting, we spent some time brainstorming ways to inspire kids who have become stressed out, burned out, or outright fed up with the college application process. And let’s face it – that’s most high school juniors and seniors. The process is invasive – the Common App asks every question short of a toothpaste brand preference – and it’s demoralizing. With acceptance rates for some schools in the low single digits, it’s easy for kids to feel as though nothing short of a moon landing or cure for cancer will be enough to set them apart.
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For many, even the sound of the phrase standardized test induces an instantaneous state of discomfort—a mixture of disappointment, defeat and anxiety. For others, a sense of accomplishment, achievement and nearly contagious confidence beam from them when the topic arises. What might explain such contrasting experiences of students who often play on the same sports teams, sit in the same AP classes and sometimes even live in the same house?
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