Goodbye to all this?

Junior-itis? Or is it just me?

My best friend is a senior, and he - no surprise - has a bad case of senior-itis. He's more than just a little crazy these days, but he's looking at prom and graduation and a summer job and then the rest of his life...

Me, it's just like I woke up in a new world that on one hand feels so much more serious and full of acronyms (ACT, SAT, GPA, ED, EA) while on the other hand is all about just being a kid (OK, a big kid) just a little while longer. Get a few of us together at lunch, and we are one big pile of crazy.

Is it the pressure? Maybe. Or are we just mature enough to know our days as kids are numbered?

ACT or SAT. That is the question.

Or is it both? Neither?

April 14 is national ACT test day, and I'm taking it to see how my scores look. What's interesting is how many of my friends tell me that colleges want SAT, not ACT.

So I researched it, and found out that it's kind of a regional difference. Most of the midwest states have a tradition of taking ACT tests, but the east coast is all about the SAT.

College websites tell a different story:  they'll take either one, and some of them don't care if you take neither.

What's more important is to take a look at something called "common data set" for each college (Google it for each college; it's faster) which shows the most recent scores for the students accepted to that college, 25%-75%, along with what percentage took ACT or SAT.

It's one way to see if that's a college where you might fit in, data wise.

SAT and ACT prep

www.number2.com

That is all.

SAT Question of the Day

Easiest SAT prep you can set up in the next 5 minutes and then be reminded every day to do:  the Question of the Day on the College Board website. Annoying sometimes when you see it day after day in your email inbox, but really does work.

Here's your link

No rest for the almost-adults

With some encouragement (OK, a lot of encouragement) I'm planning a summer that, like every summer for the past few years, is a little more work and a little less play. Is this what growing up looks like?

I'm still counting on hanging out by a pool somewhere as often as I can, but I've got a lot of ground to cover.

Getting my drivers license, a week long PSAT prep class, and two different summer camps - one for materials science (where I hope to learn exactly what that is) and the other a two week engineering camp that I actually had to compete to get into BUT the scholarship pays for everything and I get to live in a dorm and see what being an environmental engineer is like.

Eleven weeks seems like a long time at the beginning of summer, doesn't it? I'm going to make this one count.

SAT vs ACT

Check your college for any preferences between the two tests, but I keep hearing we should all take both tests to see which one we better on.

Elapsed versus remaining time

Here's something to do on a slow Saturday. It really opened my eyes as I'm trying to prepare for timed tests like the ACT and AP exams.

Here in Texas we've been taking TAKS tests since the third grade, but those are untimed in the sense that you can take as long as you need. Tests in courses are pretty much set to a length the teacher knows can be completed. So even though I've never had much of what they call test anxiety, I've been worrying about the timed tests after the practice SAT test I took a few months ago.

So I decided to try to get a better feel for how much time was left to finish. To do this, I started with my iPhone, and just kept checking it, but this was a distraction as I worked to finish a section of a practice test. Then I bought a little timer that show the remaining time, just a two-color clock face that shows the ever shrinking amount of time remaining. That way I could just glance up and judge whether to speed up some.

Different way to look at it, and it helped with the worrying.

Here's one version but check your smart phone first to see if you can set it up that way, or try the app store.