The Academic Approach®

The people who open and close the gates to undergraduate programs at American colleges and universities, that is, the high school college counselors who help students with the application process and the college admissions officers who make the admissions decisions, recently held their annual professional conference.  By far the most heavily attended session at the conference was a panel that discussed the professional organization’s recently published report on the place of standardized testing in college admissions.  The National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) released its report on the “Use of Standardized Tests in Undergraduate Admission” in late-September. Though the NACAC report has received some press coverage, mostly focused on the perennial question of whether or not schools are going to drop the test as an admissions requirement, it would be helpful for parents to consider the less sensational and Continue reading →

One does not have to be a suspicious Luddite to be engaged by the argument offered in Mark Bauerlein’s book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Penguin 2008).  Essentially, Mr Bauerlein argues that American high school students, despite their unprecedented access to information, wallow in ignorance because their attachment to all things digital has eroded “their attention spans and their analytic abilities.”  As Charles McGrath puts it in his recent New York Times Book Review piece entitled “Growing Up for Dummies”: ”most high school  Continue reading →

This fall college-bound high school seniors will most likely find themselves somewhat distraught over that most daunting of all the various components that constitute the application package—the personal essay. However, students need to recognize that the personal essay presents an opportunity to speak in the present about themselves, each applicant in his or her own voice. This is an opportunity to be seized. The essay can be the most powerful component of a completed application precisely because here, for the first and last time in the file, the very person who stands knocking at the door asking to be let in speaks directly to those who will Continue reading →

Taking the SAT multiple times has widely been regarded as risky business. Since every score is recorded on the student’s College Board transcript, then surely it is best practice for students to be conservative, keep blemishes off their records, and avoid testing too much. Therefore, it’s no surprise that only 15% of students who take the SAT will presently sit for it three or more times.

That number, however, is about to get a big boost since the College Board’s recent (June 2008) announcement of its new score-choice policy for the class of 2010. This fall’s junior class and all successive classes will now be able to take the SAT and SAT Subject tests multiple times, record all of their scores on a College Board transcript, but then choose to send to colleges only their best scores from one administration while effectively suppressing scores from all others. Continue reading →

We are very excited to announce the launch of Academic Approach 2.0. We have completely redesigned the student interface as well as the course navigation to make your Academic Approach experience the best that it can be. The new AcademicApproach.com is not only easier to navigate, but it is also filled with audio and visual teaching tools to enhance your learning experience. Academic mentors now guide you through the lessons, while instructional videos add another layer of teaching.

Your personal dashboard has also been updated to provide a more comprehensive course overview and easier access to your diagnostic test results and score reports. All of your test and exercise scores will automatically transfer to your new dashboard and will appear when you log in to your account.

As always, should you have any questions about the new courses or dashboard or if you experience any problems, please feel free to contact us either by email at support@theacademicapproach.com, or by phone at 773-831-4662.

Academic Approach

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The Chicago Tribune created a stir among parents of ACT test takers when it recently reported on the results of a study conducted at the University of Chicago. Unfortunately, the Tribune distracted from the study’s significant findings by both simplifying and sensationalizing the research under the catchy rhyme of a headline that reads, “Doubts cast on ACT drills. Study links cramming in class to lower skills.” The ACT issue was picked up by other media and led to a discussion on ABC News involving no less an authority on the topic than Academic Approach founder and CEO, Matthew Pietrafetta, who soberly contextualized and clarified how and where ACT test preparation fits into broader curricular goals. Continue reading →

For the purposes of discussion, allow me to coin a word: Eblivion: The condition or quality of lacking conscious awareness of ones surroundings due to the distractions of electronic devices.

Understand, my coinage is not inspired by Luddism. Rather, I hope to contribute to a broader discussion of how the instruments that digitally connect, inform, distract and entertain us affect our consciousness. Specifically, I want to reflect on what these effects mean to a teacher trying to model a deliberate and engaged–as opposed to distracted and eblivious–approach to both academic materials and life itself. Before returning to the idea of

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One way that Academic Approach benefits from its partnership with The Economist is by using the magazine’s content to hone our students’ reading comprehension skills. Each week, we offer our students and tutors tips that can be used to make the most out of the magazine.

The exercises that correspond to this week’s issue—subtitled “The Great American Slowdown”—are as follows: Continue reading →

“We of this age have discovered a shorter and more prudent method to become scholars and wits without the fatigue of reading or thinking.” Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub, 1704

Teaching students to think critically seems to be an educational goal that is as broadly demanded and as it is frequently unfulfilled. Generally speaking, all of the parties involved in the ongoing discussion of critical thinking agree that, when acquired, it enables students to thoughtfully weigh evidence, entertain both sides of an issue, advance an argument through substantiated claims, arrive at conclusions through deduction and inference, solve multi-step problems, and so on. Like reading, writing, and arithmetic, critical thinking is

Continue reading →

One way that Academic Approach benefits from its partnership with The Economist is by using the magazine’s content to hone our students’ reading comprehension skills. Each week, we offer our students and tutors tips that can be used to make the most out of the magazine.

The exercises that correspond to this week’s issue—subtitled “All Change?”—are as follows: Continue reading →