ACT Case Study: Between June ’16 and Feb ’17, we spent 4 sessions on English, 2.5 on Math, 2 on Science, and 0.5 on Reading. Three-of-four sections improved by an average of five points, taking the composite up to 34! (the 1 point gain in Reading is statistically the same, but we’ll take it nonetheless). The best part was that we didn’t need to rely on a superscore, since this last test showed our best in each section. This Myers Park student was already a top performer, and that four-point increase took her from competitive to highly competitive for her target schools.
The key here was focusing on English, the easiest section to use to improve your total score, along with Science (Seriously, it is).
ISEE Ca
se Study: Six Sessions focused on Math only before his 2017 test. I know the column headings don’t show in the scan, but column 3 lists this student’s QR percentile going from 68% in 2015 to 89% in 2017 (stanine 6 to 8), and Mathematics Achievement from 37% to 67% (stanine 4 to 6). Huge congrats to the family!
What helped here was refreshing his memory on the fundamentals, and showing him how the test was asking if he knew those fundamentals, just without using those direct words 🙂
SAT Case Study: These tests are not deep, they are broad. These tests do not want you to know everything about everything, just the fundamentals about everything. Coaching that concept for only 3 sessions in Math took this Charlotte Latin lady from a 570 on her October PSAT to a 680 on December’s SAT. That’s 10% higher in national rankings.
ISEE Case Study: Ni
ne sessions across all sections with improvements in three-of-four. QR especially improved, moving from stanine 2 to 6! Note that this example doesn’t show a top-tier student. My Guiding Principle is simply ‘higher’: it doesn’t matter what level you are at today; I point you higher and show you how to get there. Everyone can improve and show their best to their target schools, including Charlotte Country Day where he will be attending in 2017.
Big improvements came from working on Sentence Completion pacing (in the Verbal section); 30 seconds goes by quicker than you think until a coach points it out to you!