My experience: I’ve worked with over a hundred students, and have accommodated a wide range of learning styles. My methods consistently help high-school juniors and seniors increase their scores by a full standard deviation. In addition to the SAT and the ACT, I am formally trained in standardized subject tests and AP Exams (Math, World History, US History, and Literature). I have helped younger students achieve the same results with the SSAT and ISEE, tests designed for private high-school admission out of middle-school.
My philosophy: No matter the test — be it ACT, SAT, or others — standardized testing has its strengths and its weaknesses. On the one hand, it’s a useful metric to evaluate a student’s proficiency in the core academic fields they’ll encounter in college. Colleges use it as a universal and objective standard to compare applicants from varying educational backgrounds and districts, each with their unique grading systems and curricula.
These tests, however, are metrics and metrics only. There are many academically gifted high-schoolers who simply don’t test well, and who have much more to offer than a perfect score on a timed test. And admissions offices are well aware of this: it’s why they conduct interviews, spend a lot of time reviewing personal essays, and gather as much information as they need to get the full picture of an applicant. Sometimes, a student who demonstrates increased proficiency over the course of several test-sittings can be even more attractive than those with high scores right off the bat — it’s an advanced metric, if you will, that tells us more about the human behind the scores themselves.
Regardless of learning style, my job is to help any student achieve the best score that they can, and put them in the strongest position possible to get into college.
My teaching style: My approach to these standardized tests is to treat them like a game, nothing more. All games exercise specific skillsets. Think spatial strategy and probability with Chess, or knowledge and memory with Trivial Pursuit. The SAT and ACT are no different: they test our stamina and efficiency while solving intellectual problems in a timed setting. The key to getting better at these games is learning specialized techniques, and to practice them consistently – to show up and commit for an extended time period. The SAT and ACT may have higher stakes than a family board game, but at the end of the day you can treat these standardized tests in more or less the same way. My job is to teach students these techniques so well so that, through sheer habit, they won’t even have to think about it anymore — they can can just roll into the test center, and play a game that they’ve come to know as well as the back of their hand.
If you’re interested in learning how to improve your SAT, ACT or other test scores, please go to the contact page to set up a phone call with me.
Henrik Herb - Education Consultant 