Parent explainers, in Nick's own words

Short videos from Test Prep Gurus, each with the full transcript on the page.

One question per page, answered the way Nick answers it for families.

Grade roadmaps

What should we be doing in 9th and 10th grade? — Nick's answer is that freshman and sophomore year are not about testing yet, they are about grades, reading and writing, math fundamentals, trying activities, and building habits.
What does my child need to do in 11th grade? — Nick's answer is that junior year carries the most weight, because it is the last full year of transcripts colleges see before they decide.
Is senior year too late for the SAT or ACT? — Nick's answer is no: in 12th grade a strong score can still change admission chances and scholarship offers at most colleges, though the UCs and Cal States do not use scores.

Should my child take the SAT or the ACT? — Nick's answer is that every college in the country accepts both, so the real question is which test fits your student, and the way to find out is to take one full-length practice SAT or PSAT and one full-length practice ACT within a few weeks of each other and compare.
When should my child start SAT or ACT prep? — Nick's answer is the end of 10th grade and the start of 11th, not freshman year, when much of the tested content has not been taught yet, and not senior year, when there is no bandwidth left.
What does test-optional really mean? — In this conversation Nick and a former admissions officer explain that a missing score is not read the same way for every applicant, and that a highly selective college may assume a student from a high-income area who did not submit a score did not do well.
What is superscoring? — Nick's answer is that most colleges will cherry-pick a student's best section scores across two test dates and combine them into one superscore.
How is the National Merit selection index calculated? — Nick's answer is that you double the verbal score, add the math score, and drop the zero, so a 540 on reading and a 580 on math give a selection index of 166.
What does my child's PSAT score mean, and what comes next? — This is the full 90-minute PSAT scoreback night Nick gave for the Irvine Unified School District.

Do we have to fill out the FAFSA and the CSS Profile? — Nick's answer is yes, both, whatever your income, because some colleges require a FAFSA on file before they will award merit aid, and merit aid is not tied to income at all.
What should our family be doing over the winter? — Nick's answer is that December, January and February are the planning and strategy season that sets the tone for the rest of the admissions process.
Safety, target and reach schools: what the words mean — Nick's answer is to sort colleges into three buckets by comparing your GPA and test score against the range a college typically admits.

What does my child's starting score actually mean? — Nick's answer is that a starting score, whether it is a 17 on the ACT or a 1500 on the SAT, is feedback on what to work on and not a measure of intelligence or of where a student will go in life.
Why shouldn't I tell my child they're smart? — Nick's answer is to praise effort and process instead of intelligence, because praising intelligence teaches a child to protect a persona of natural talent and avoid the risk of mistakes.