Well, for me, junior year is almost done, and with the closing out of junior year means the closing out of standardized college entrance exams. This year has been filled with quite a number of tests of various things, from PSAT to SAT to ACT to Subject Tests to AP exams to all of these other things. However, one of the more contentious debates between tests of this class is between the SAT and the ACT. Both are general-subject standardized college entrance exams, and are often said to “compete” between each other to be the test of choice. Well, now that I’ve prepared for, taken, and gotten scores for each of these exams, I thought that I’d take the opportunity to review them and offer my opinion on the one that I like better. (I do promise that although my scores differ a bit between the two exams, I am not considering how I scored on each exam in this review.)
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Tags: ACT, College Board, College Entrance Exam, English, essay, exam, math, reading, review, SAT, science, test, Writing

Happy May Day! I’m reporting in stationed from Long Beach, with today being the first day of the 2008 California State PTA Convention (which I blogged about a few days ago). I’m also right in the middle of AP exams review here too, so I’m quite busy right now. But of course, I’ve got time to take a look back on the very busy month of April.
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Tags: ACT, AP exams, April, Best Of, CMEA, orchestra, STAR, testing

Junior year is the year of the standardized test. It’s the year of PSAT, ACT, SAT, AP, and many other jumbled non-acronymic letters that float around there, and I’ve had (and still have yet) to go through every single one of them. I took the PSAT last October, the SAT on March 1st, and the ACT today. I have SAT Subject Tests coming on May 3rd and another SAT run-through this fall. I took one AP test last year and have two more coming up in May, as well as one more during senior year.

However, there’s definitely one thing about all this that I’ve learned that I would have flat out refused to accept this time a year ago. Doing well on one of these tests doesn’t just depend on you knowing the academics, it requires you to learn how to take the test. Doesn’t that kind of sound like those video games where the only way to win is to buy the book that tells you how to win? Yeah, it’s kind of like that.
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Tags: ACT, Advanced Placement, AP US History, article, colleges, Kaplan, preparation, PSAT, SAT, standardized, testing, The Princeton Review, thoughts, tips