By helping high schoolers and their parents survive (and even thrive during!) the college admissions process, I’ve learned a lot about how different families handle these big life challenges.
These days, all of my one-on-one coaching sessions take place online. But in my first years as a test prep tutor, most of my lessons took place directly in my clients’ houses and apartments. By seeing and hearing my clients interact with their parents and siblings on their home turf, I realized something that still informs my approach to this day: every family has its own reality.
It dawned on me that my responsibility wasn't just to get my student the highest score they were capable of. A great coach could also help make the baseline reality of this potentially challenging process as low-stress as possible—for this particular family, in this particular home.
After working with hundreds of students, I've seen many different ways that the years of test prep and the college process can go awry—and I've learned how to help families navigate those missteps with acceptance, tranquility, and even humor. That experience has given me an insight that most students and parents don’t have access to: the observation that the college process CAN actually be sane and focused…and how to make that happy dream your reality.
So let’s look at two visions for how these years can go. As you’ll see, things can get pretty rough, or the admissions process can be an enriching challenge in which a high schooler gets to take pride in his achievements and learn about himself. It’s a fork in the road with real repercussions—but you’re the one holding the map.
Option #1: exhausting Junior Year
The summer before junior year, Mom signs Ellie up for an intensive SAT course. Unfortunately, the course doesn’t actually have much concrete content to offer. And although the instructor has Ellie use up the first 4 of the real College Board practice Digital SATs (of which there are a limited number) in order to “measure her progress,” her score only increases from a 1260 to a 1280. This is because she hasn’t actually reviewed math or reading comprehension or grammar in any detail, and has instead learned only vague “study tips.”
In an effort to make more improvement happen, Mom soon hires a tutor—a “super-smart” twenty-something who just graduated from Princeton and got a perfect score on the SAT back in 2019. Super-Smart Tutor doesn't have much of a gameplan for Ellie’s studying, or much specific knowledge of standardized test-taking skills. Instead, he reviews Ellie’s missed practice test problems with her, then the two work through a generic test prep book together.
Since Ellie doesn’t seem to be making much “progress,” Mom increases Super-Smart Tutor’s sessions to 3x a week. Since all of these sessions involve working through a practice test module or two, soon Ellie has run out of real College Board practice tests to take.
Mom signs Ellie up to take the October SAT. The increasingly burnt-out Ellie scores a 1250—lower than her first score—and Mom is beside herself. Mom calls all the fellow parents in her rolodex, looking for the next emergency strategy. After all, anything less than a 1500 is a “disaster”! Ellie will never get into Yale with a less-than-extraordinary score.
Mom gets the idea from a mom friend of hers to change tack; maybe the SAT just isn’t Ellie’s test. So, Ellie gets signed up for the December ACT. Mom continues to hire Super-Smart Tutor, telling him exactly what she wants him to accomplish with Ellie at each session (“You should drill Reading questions—that’s her weakest section”; “Have her do tons of coordinate geometry problems so she’s prepared for every possible way they could ask—other students learn concepts, but she needs sheer repetition”). Maybe Mom even hires a second tutor, also "mega-smart," because the ACT is a different test, and don’t you need a different tutor for a different test? (Ellie hasn't made up her mind about which test she’s going to use for her college apps, so she's still worrying about, and studying for, both.)
So in addition to taking 3 AP classes, being the captain of the basketball team, and writing songs on her guitar, Ellie has a tutor for ACT Reading and English, a different tutor for ACT Math and Science, the original Super-Smart Tutor for the SATs..all in all, she has four tutoring sessions a week. She is signed up for ACTs in December, February, April and June (because of score choice, Mom figures, it can’t hurt to do every available sitting!), and is signed up for SATs in December and March.
Despite (or because of?) all the stress and work she's putting into managing this process, Mom might feel consoled (look at all the work Ellie is doing!)...or she might feel totally at her wit’s end.
Ellie, meanwhile, is definitely ready to give up. She’s been made to feel that she’ll let down everyone in her life if she doesn’t get a “yes” from Yale, but she spends so much time tutoring for the ACT and the SAT that her AP grades are dropping.
Also, she doesn’t have time to write songs or even play guitar anymore—even though those were the things that calmed her and gave her busy days a sense of meaning. But that’s the thing her mom says she has to slash, because it’s not an extracurricular with a title: you can’t be president of song-writing! And guitar won’t get her into college anyway, since she’s not “competitive.” Instead, Mom has signed Ellie up to participate in a couple “service trips” to developing nations during Spring Break and summer break—which she’ll have to squeeze in between campus visits to every single highly selective college on the East Coast.
She can always return to guitar when all this “college madness” is over and she can get to “be herself” again.
And we haven’t even TALKED about 12th grade!
Senior year: Hellish edition
Ellie’s last year of high school turns out to be just as relentless and demoralizing as the previous ones. Mom insists she keep meeting with her army of various tutors, and her frazzled daughter continues taking the dSAT in August and October and the ACT in September and October. Mom also hires a separate person to help Ellie write her college application essays and “make her look good.” Mom and Dad (who enters the picture here) insist that Ellie apply to 27 different schools, most of them “reach” schools. But what does Dad care if those numbers don’t make sense? After all, his colleague at the law firm just got his son into Yale Early Decision!
After all the applications are in, Ellie feels resentful towards her parents and utterly worn out. During senior spring, Ellie does the bare minimum to “keep her grades up” in her classes, and practically has an anxiety attack waiting for college admission decisions to come in. She eventually gets into a small handful of the schools on her list, and chooses the most prestigious out of those, which some of her friends consider a “safety.”
Dad, while disappointed that Ellie didn’t make his Yalie dream a reality, is still glad he gets to brag to some of his colleagues about where she was admitted. Emotionally destroyed by the whole process, Mom is just relieved Ellie got in somewhere. But Ellie is at the end of her rope when it comes to academics and related work. Wait—you mean I don’t get to retire now? I have to actually go to the school and really begin studying? But nope—even though Ellie now feels totally burned out, and probably down about herself and her future, this is only the beginning. Great beginning, right?
***
Phew! I almost passed out from panic typing that out.
NO one wants to spend their last years of teenagehood this way. But unfortunately, I can affirm from having witnessed it many times: this is what a lot of families actually do to themselves during junior and senior years. (And imagine how much fun it is for everyone to anticipate doing it all over again when Ellie’s younger brother Matt hits junior year!)
But it doesn't have to be like this.
***
Option #2: Enjoyable Junior Year
Picture this instead:
Kaitlyn is about her begin 11th grade. She and her mom and dad all hear other parents and students at school freaking out about SAT and ACT prep and picking colleges. Seeking an alternative to this collective panic, they make an appointment with an expert who can give them some big-picture advice for the journey to come.
With the help of the school’s college counselor (or perhaps a private college counselor, if the one at school is fairly hands-off) and the Fiske Guide to Colleges, Kaitlyn and her parents come up with an initial list of five colleges that seem to be good fits for Kaitlyn’s personality, life goals, and academic interests.
Kaitlyn has a natural curiosity about math, but, like Ellie, she also really loves the guitar and writes songs. She’s looking for a school that can nurture these existing passions but allows her the flexibility to explore other areas of academic interest as well. Though she’s captain of her basketball team, she’s not at the superstar level that will get her recruited for college teams, and doesn’t see herself becoming a pro athlete. She does want to end up somewhere in the Eastern U.S. (within a few hours’ driving distance from home), but doesn’t necessarily want to be in a massive city like NYC, where she lives now.
After some research (done by her college counselor and/or on their own), Kaitlyn and her parents have assembled about five schools that appear to be good matches for her.
Kaitlyn and her parents then go consult a pro test prep expert/mentor who can fill in the blanks on the rest of this seemingly mysterious process. For that initial appointment, all that Kaitlyn and her family have to do is to bring their short list of colleges and and a completed diagnostic ACT and SAT.
With just these three pieces of information, Test Prep Mentor works her magic.
First, the Mentor gets to know Kaitlyn by asking a series of questions, figuring out how Kaitlyn is motivated, what her family dynamics are, and what the family’s goals and expectations for this process are.
Using that information as well as the diagnostic practice tests and college list, Test Prep Mentor determines which test—ACT or Digital SAT?—is right for Kaitlyn. Especially because Kaitlyn struggles with running out of time on fast-paced tests, the Mentor determines that the SAT will better display Kaitlyn’s strengths than the ACT.
After Test Prep Mentor conducts more in-depth research on Kaitlyn’s college list, she determines several more things:
Which target scores are required to get Kaitlyn into her college list. (A 1350 is fine, turns out! No need to drive herself nuts gunning for a 1500.)
What Kaitlyn needs to get in a single sitting of her chosen test, versus what score she needs to Superscore to.
Which colleges on her list even DO Superscoring and/or score choice.
What Kaitlyn’s testing strengths and weaknesses are.
Which tests and test dates Kaitlyn will sign up for and take.
What Kaitlyn needs to do each month until those test dates.
Kaitlyn and her mom and dad sign her up for a tutoring package that includes weekly private sessions and a certain number of Parent Calls, all of which they can schedule/reschedule/cancel online. Whenever Mom and Dad want to check in about Kaitlyn’s progress, they can just schedule a Parent Call with Test Prep Mentor to have a private conversation. If Mom and Dad want Test Prep Mentor to chat with Kaitlyn’s college counselor or neuropath, they can use one of their package’s Parent Calls for that purpose, too. They just schedule everything online, and it’s as good as done!
Each week, Kaitlyn chips away at a doable chunk of SAT prep. Her Mentor makes sure Kaitlyn is clear on what her homework is, and she simply works through a given week’s assignments before her sessions. If she is confused about any part of her homework, she hops onto Weekly Office Hours with Test Prep Mentor and gets her questions answered. All she has to do is look at her smartphone calendar to see when Office Hours are that week, and click the video conference link at the given day and time. Et voilà! Instant face time with Test Prep Mentor.
Or, if Kaitlyn prefers to puzzle the problems out for herself, she can consult the online courses and ebooks that come to her free as part of her package with Test Prep Mentor. Whether she’s more of a video- or a reading-based learner, Kaitlyn can review these thorough explanations for every type of problem on the Digital SAT as often as she wants.
Since Kaitlyn knows exactly what she has to do each week, and how she needs to spend and conserve her energy for the marathon that is test prep, she doesn’t feel overwhelmed. She can focus on keeping up her A average on her 4 AP classes, basketball, writing songs on the guitar (she loves performing them for her sisters!), and building meaningful friendships that help her feel supported and let off steam in healthy ways.
During school breaks, Kaitlyn and her parents visit the universities on her list. In the process, they discover that one school they hadn’t really known much about is in fact a fantastic fit with Kaitlyn’s personality and goals for her future. Kaitlyn could really live her happiest life there! And her Test Prep Mentor reviews the median scores for students admitted to that school and determines that Kaitlyn only needs to earn a 1350 to be competitive there.
Kaitlyn takes the SAT in March and again in May. She gets a 1380 in May and is done. Since that’s all that’s required to open the door to her new favorite college pick, Test Prep Mentor insists that they conclude their SAT prep and instead spend time on other things that matter: cultivating Kaitlyn’s growing passions for songwriting and math.
Senior Year: zen edition
After getting all 4’s and 5’s on her AP tests—and totally rocking her finals, since she had enough time to study for them—Kaitlyn spends the summer before 12th grade doing what she loves.
She doesn’t have to prep for the SAT any more, after all. She takes a singer-songwriter workshop and even a class on digital music editing. She also finds an internship at an engineering nonprofit. Though she is only answering phones and taking notes at meetings about the firm’s work designing well systems in rural Cameroon, she’s getting the sense of what a career in engineering might be like. She decides that though she loves math and engineering in and of themselves, what really makes her heart sing is the prospect of using her science skills someday to make an impact with people in need.
Though Kaitlyn has gained lots of self-knowledge through her enriching summer, she’s still feeling a bit unsure of of what exactly to focus her Common App essay on. Since she clicked so well with Test Prep Mentor the first time around, Kaitlyn seeks her services out again in August. With a 6-hour Personal Statement package, Kaitlyn gets guided through the process via one-on-one brainstorming and editing sessions.
Thanks to this expert’s feedback and big-picture planning, Kaitlyn has time to revise her 650-word essay several times until it really glows. By the end of their time together, her Personal Statement dynamically conveys who Kaitlyn is and what she wants to accomplish in the world.
Kaitlyn begins senior year with her entire Common App finished, having only a few more supplemental essays left on her college app plate. Because she isn’t overtaxed, she thrives in her upper-level math and engineering courses and keeps taking guitar and music editing workshops over the weekend. Bit by bit, she completes all her applications, submitting her first choice as Early Decision and the remaining ones soon after. No waiting until January 1st for Kaitlyn!
And come December 21st, Kaitlyn gets an early Hannukah gift: she’s been accepted Early Decision to her top choice school! She can enjoy her winter break worry-free!
Kaitlyn’s parents are elated and proud. Not only have they made it through the entire test prep and college process without much suffering, but their daughter has also matured into a reflective, considerate young adult who knows how she wants to make the world a better place. And they can spend the entire spring semester celebrating both of these wins—together.
For Kaitlyn and her parents, the college process wasn't a millstone tied around their necks, an endless series of stresses and anxieties made even worse by a sense of failure and doom hanging over everything. Those two years were challenging, sure, but they were also full of chances to learn and grow as people and a family, and they rose to those challenges together.
So what determines whether you end up in Ellie’s reality or Kaitlyn’s?
You do! There are a lot of choices to make as you approach the intimidating years of test prep and college applications—I get it. I wrote this post to remind you that it's the big-picture choices that count the most. Those are the ones that determine what the reality of this experience will feel like for you and your family. With the right attitude and strategy (and guidance!), the reality you want is just a choice away.
And one of those key, early big-picture choices is to find yourself a Test Prep Mentor who will break up the enormous project that is college admissions into manageable, week-by-week tasks...and provide you with a specific-to-you approach to the tests and applications so that you don’t waste your time working on things that won’t improve your chances. My Ace the Test: Game Plan + Tutoring package combo is a great option if Kaitlyn’s reality is where you want to be.
