Cathy, there is no question you did the world much good in helping highly anxious high-achievers reduce their stress. Your decision not to continue tutoring SAT and ACT tests clearly comes with their best interests in mind. I LOVE that you are gently talking parents into letting kids skip the tests if they are applying to all test-optional schools.
The demise - or lessening importance - of standardized tests reaches beyond undergraduate education. To minimize stress and focus on her studies, my daughter decided during her fifth year at Northeastern to forgo the GREs and only apply to test-optional doctor of physical therapy (DPT) programs. The number of US test-optional DPT programs had grown from 21 to 70+ in just three years, and had no correlation to quality of program.
She is currently beginning her DPT at USC, ranked #4 on US News & World Report (if that holds any value in your mind). She gained admission to two #1 ranked schools as well. I hope her story may be helpful in your conversation with parents, though I realize this isn't the same as the SAT/ACT.
LOVE both the college essay and life coach for teens route for you! Your niche will still apply.
Damn, just when we were about to hit you up for tutoring C&E! I'm so sorry you're not going to be able to keep doing this thing that has been so rewarding for you and so perfect for your writing life. Will you do more general academic tutoring instead, for math maybe? I'm sure you'd stay very busy...
BTW, I passed your wonderful advice along to the more uber-ambitious of our teens. She doesn't listen to me when I say to slow down, breathe, enjoy, but maybe she'll listen to someone who's NOT her mother.
Someone else got in touch saying the same thing about their junior, and I offered to send her the long document I did for some college friends with a junior this year. I can send it to you, too!
And hopefully your overachiever can hear the message from somewhere! It's so hard to make young adults with still developing frontal cortexes (corti?) take the long view given other parts of their brains are telling them ever tiny thing is gargantuanly important and they might die if any one of them goes awry. Still the early kids can learn that saying yes to eveything doesn't mean you do everything. It means you get a surface sampling of everything at the expense of depth. By skating on the surface of all the things they never get to enjoy how great it feels to dive deep. It's much much easier to make that point with a kid who has a clear passion--that adding too many things chips away from time that could be spent on that passion.
Anyway, I'll email you my document about testing this fall verses next spring. There's also some stuff in there about the college search in general and college essays.
What a huge shift for you. You’ve been doing this for so long. Good luck with all the future holds!
Thank you!
Cathy, there is no question you did the world much good in helping highly anxious high-achievers reduce their stress. Your decision not to continue tutoring SAT and ACT tests clearly comes with their best interests in mind. I LOVE that you are gently talking parents into letting kids skip the tests if they are applying to all test-optional schools.
The demise - or lessening importance - of standardized tests reaches beyond undergraduate education. To minimize stress and focus on her studies, my daughter decided during her fifth year at Northeastern to forgo the GREs and only apply to test-optional doctor of physical therapy (DPT) programs. The number of US test-optional DPT programs had grown from 21 to 70+ in just three years, and had no correlation to quality of program.
She is currently beginning her DPT at USC, ranked #4 on US News & World Report (if that holds any value in your mind). She gained admission to two #1 ranked schools as well. I hope her story may be helpful in your conversation with parents, though I realize this isn't the same as the SAT/ACT.
LOVE both the college essay and life coach for teens route for you! Your niche will still apply.
We'll see what happens! I'm going to give myself a bit to really focus on the novel and move on from there!
Damn, just when we were about to hit you up for tutoring C&E! I'm so sorry you're not going to be able to keep doing this thing that has been so rewarding for you and so perfect for your writing life. Will you do more general academic tutoring instead, for math maybe? I'm sure you'd stay very busy...
BTW, I passed your wonderful advice along to the more uber-ambitious of our teens. She doesn't listen to me when I say to slow down, breathe, enjoy, but maybe she'll listen to someone who's NOT her mother.
Someone else got in touch saying the same thing about their junior, and I offered to send her the long document I did for some college friends with a junior this year. I can send it to you, too!
And hopefully your overachiever can hear the message from somewhere! It's so hard to make young adults with still developing frontal cortexes (corti?) take the long view given other parts of their brains are telling them ever tiny thing is gargantuanly important and they might die if any one of them goes awry. Still the early kids can learn that saying yes to eveything doesn't mean you do everything. It means you get a surface sampling of everything at the expense of depth. By skating on the surface of all the things they never get to enjoy how great it feels to dive deep. It's much much easier to make that point with a kid who has a clear passion--that adding too many things chips away from time that could be spent on that passion.
Anyway, I'll email you my document about testing this fall verses next spring. There's also some stuff in there about the college search in general and college essays.