Welcome, everyone, from the Irvine Unified School District. I can see people are filing into the webinar right now, so what we're gonna do is play a short video. It's really wonderful, essential stuff for high school students and parents of high school students. It's on how to deal with anxiety and pressure-filled situations. It's a very short, entertaining video, and so we'll just play that one. Everyone is getting in and getting settled, and then we'll jump into presentation.

[A short video is played on reframing anxiety as excitement.]

Okay, all right, looks like we're filling in. Very exciting. We've got more than 700 families that are registered for tonight, and so I'm going to turn it over to Connie Jacobs to give us a little intro, and then we'll jump into it.

Excellent. Hi, everyone. I am really excited you're here tonight at 7 PM webinar. It's going to be amazing, so I'm really happy you're here to join us. I'm Connie Jacobs. I'm the coordinator of college career readiness counseling for Irvine Unified School District, and part of what I get to do is talk with really cool people, learn more about testing, get some insights. And so you will learn a lot here tonight about test scores, what they mean, next steps.

So before that, I'm going to read a little bio introducing our presenter, Nick Standlea. Nick earned a perfect score in the SAT and founded Test Prep Gurus, a company that combines test-taking skills with life skills for college and beyond. For over a decade, Test Prep Gurus has helped thousands of students boost their scores by hundreds of points while keeping their sanity intact. That's good. Test Prep Gurus is a leader in SAT and ACT preparation and works with students from all over the US and the world. Nick is the co-chair of the Orange County College Fair and host of the Nick Standlea podcast, which I've heard before, and it's really great. So I love that you're doing that for everybody. So with that being said, I'll go ahead and let you take over.

All right, thank you, Connie. I appreciate it. And yeah, huge audience tonight, so this is very exciting. What we're gonna do tonight, because I know we're talking about PSAT scoreback night, so we're gonna do an overview of college admissions, really big picture, and then we're going to dial it down a little bit into the role that test scores are playing in that process in a broader sense. And then we'll cover specifically your PSAT scores and how they're going to be used. And then we wrap it up at the end with timelines and different steps that you can take based on your graduation year.

And if you haven't seen it yet, on the right-hand side of your screen there should be a poll up there, just to let me know who I'm talking to. Looks like we've got a nice balance between juniors, sophomores, and then freshman or younger. And everybody is welcome here. There's something for everybody. We've even got a couple of seniors on the call tonight. And yeah, let's jump into it.

Oh yeah, before I show you that slide, I do have to warn you, this first slide is a little bit of bad news, but after that we'll get to the good news. Okay, let's start with the bad news. So the bad news is that, when we look at the number of applications from 2020 to 2021 -- and we picked that year because that was in the middle of COVID and lockdowns and all that stuff, and everybody thought that applications would go down because students weren't even sure if they were going to be allowed on campus -- and yet this funny thing happened. Even from 2020 to 21, when we look at this -- this is a smattering of famous colleges here: Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern, and you can see the other ones -- the gray bars are the number of applicants in 2020, and then the red bars are the number of applicants in 2021. Across the board they went up.

And this is not great news, because when the application numbers go up, since the colleges aren't admitting more students, the admission rates go down. And I don't say this to scare anybody. I say this because this is what is driving anxiety amongst parents all across the board, and I think we should just talk about it head on. And this, of course, shows the admission rates ticking downward from 2020 to 21. And for anybody who's curious, yes, those trends have continued in the subsequent admission cycles.

Now let's get to the good news. Famous colleges aren't the only excellent colleges. And I use this word now, famous, or phrase, famous colleges, because all those schools that we listed before, right, our Dartmouths, our Dukes, Georgetown, Harvard, we know those schools. They are famous, and so a lot of kids apply to those schools. And what we see now is kids from all over the country and all over the world apply to these same top 25 ranked schools.

Big message I want to deliver tonight is that those are not the only colleges around, and they're not the only excellent colleges that exist. We've got more than 2,000 four-year colleges, and the wonderful news is that the vast majority of them would love to have your student attend that college. Everyone on this call comes from a fantastic school district. You literally attend some of the best public high schools in the country. You come from California, which has good schools to begin with, and so you're going to be an exciting prospect to a lot of colleges. You will have options.

If you want to apply to some of those top 25 schools, that's absolutely fine. Just know that the odds are very difficult at those schools, and you want to have what we call a balanced college list. Which means you have some schools that are a reach -- and if we're talking Ivy League, Stanford, Duke, MIT, those are reaches for everybody. Even if you're the valedictorian and you recently just cured a rare form of cancer, it's still going to be a reach. It is that difficult now to get into those schools.

And so we also want to have some schools that are target schools, which would be those schools right in the middle, where your grades and, if you are submitting a standardized test score, lines up with that school, where it's probably going to be a 50/50 when you apply there. And then we want to have some likely schools. And I don't use the word safety, because I think it has a derogatory sound to it. I like likely schools. You're likely to be admitted there. There's nothing wrong with likely schools. Those are the schools most likely to give you a lot of scholarships and merit-based financial aid. So that's independent of your financial need. They're going to try to incentivize you to come there by lowering the cost of college, and graduating debt-free is a great thing for every family out there.

So that's number one. Famous colleges aren't the only excellent colleges. There are a lot of great options out there. Expand your horizons. You can look up any school on the internet now, and in California we've got access to a wide array of schools. The Claremont Colleges just up the road here, they'll give you an idea of what a liberal arts campus looks like. So some of you will be able to visit the East Coast and see some of those small liberal arts colleges, but everyone can drive up to Claremont and get an idea of what a small, intimate liberal arts campus looks like, and that'll give you an idea of what those East Coast schools are like. You can drive to any of the UCs to see what a huge school environment is like.

And I encourage everybody to do that: visit the schools in the immediate area, of different sizes, different types, to get an idea of what you're interested in. And if you have the ability to do so, visit some schools across the country, because you'll be surprised and delighted by a lot of those schools, especially some of them that maybe you didn't know about when this process began.

And that brings us to number two: that it is easier than ever before to find personalized, right-fit colleges. And right fit is really what you're looking for when you enter into this process. And what do I mean by that? The standard process

that a lot of families go through is they go, "Okay, how high are my grades? How high can I push an SAT or an ACT score? And then what's the highest rank school I can get into?" I would suggest a different approach. Sit down with your student and ask them some questions. Have that student explore: who are you today? Who do you want to become in the future? What change do you want to affect in the world? What might you want to do when you graduate from college? Think big-picture stuff.

And based on those answers, then start to dial in: what schools would help me become that person or achieve those goals for the future? And then we back down. Okay, do my grades and scores fit at those schools? And then develop that balanced list, where you're definitely going to have some yeses, you've got some maybes on the list, and then you'll have some options to choose from.

And quick example. My daughter is currently a freshman. She's obsessed with helping animals. She's volunteering at an animal shelter. She next week is going to bring home a puppy that's going to be trained to be a seeing eye dog, and then in two years that dog will be passed on to someone who needs a seeing eye dog. And she's been asking about colleges, because I'm in this line of work. And it's not about, okay, what's the highest rank school you can get into. It's looking up animal science programs and veterinarian programs. You see Davis has a great program, Cornell has a great program. Now Cornell is going to be really tough to get into. There's another school in New Zealand that has an amazing program, and I think they have a 70% acceptance rate. All of those schools fit her long-term goals, if they remain her long-term goals by the time she's a senior, and they should all be on that list, right, where we've got a reach and a target and a likely school. And that's the process I would encourage each and every one of you to go through.

And then the great news, the best news of all, is that college admissions is more individualized than ever before. In this test-optional environment, kids have multiple pathways to get in to competitive colleges. And so bottom line is, you're going to have options. Good things are going to happen. And families should approach this not as a stress-filled situation, but a chance to connect and ask some really important questions about who you are and where you want to go. And it can be a really wonderful bonding process if we approach it with that framework.

Okay, let's talk about college admissions and these entrance tests. In 10th grade, that's probably when most of you took your first PSAT. Judging by the number of freshmen on here, I'm guessing some freshman took it as well, which is fine. We've got two major tests, the SAT and the ACT. SAT is on a 1600-point scale, two sections, more or less a verbal section and a math section. And yes, they're broken into subsections beyond that, but you're going to have two scores, a verbal score and a math score. You add them up, it's on that 1600-point scale. Really simple.

The ACT is slightly more complicated, but every college in the country that is test optional will accept either one. The ACT is on a 36-point scale. We've got four sections: reading, writing, math, and science, and they average those four scores together. Fun fact: the science section has very little to do with any of the science that you study in high school. Not too much to do with biology, chemistry, things of that nature. It really is about understanding charts and graphs and visual information. If, when you take a practice ACT or a PreACT, you don't do well on the science section, that's fine. It's unlike anything you've done in school before, and we see the biggest gains of any section on either test on the science section, mostly because it's brand new to kids. They usually run out of time, they usually don't like it, and by the end of a prep process, once they're familiar with it, usually it's one of their favorite sections, if not their favorite section. So don't let that turn you off with the ACT.

Now the UCs, since we're talking California here, the UCs are test blind, which means they will not look at a test score. Even if you submit one to them, after you're admitted they will accept a score to be used for course placement, and you can test out of some of those huge 300-person class intro courses at the UCs, and so it can be useful that way. But it will not help you in the admissions process.

What we have seen is that, in light of the UCs and the Cal States as well not using SAT and ACT, is that AP classes and the scores on your AP tests are taking on outsized importance. Taking a community college class in the summer, or as part of a dual enrollment program during the school year, also holds outsized importance for those UCs. So that's just something to know. If you really have your heart set on a UC, that is a way to help your odds when you apply to those schools, because they are getting a lot of applications every single year. I think UCLA is well north of 150,000, and so anything you can do to stand out in that process is a good thing.

Oh yes, and I did not mention this before, but on the right-hand side of your screen, or if you're on a phone the three little bars on the right-hand side, there's a chat function there. And I'm actually going to switch that to private. So if anybody wants to ask a question and you don't want anybody else to see it, don't worry, no one else will from this point forward. And I'll see those and I'll tackle those questions at the end.

Okay, test optional versus test blind. So we talked about what test blind means. Test optional means you can send in a score and it may bolster your application, but they're not required. And bolster is an important word there, because when I talk to college admissions officers, they're not really interested in penalizing kids for sending in a score that they think is not as strong as they want it to be. And so in this test-optional environment, they're looking at scores as something that can add to an application, but they don't want to take away from an application just because they don't love the score. And so they will simply ignore it if it's not in the range that they're looking for. And I think this is good. It takes a little pressure off the testing process, and that's a good thing for kids.

Now, we'll be talking a lot about test optional tonight, because as you can see on your screen there, 91 and a half percent of these four-year colleges across the country are test optional. It is the vast majority. We've got a small slice that still require SAT or ACT, and then basically you're talking the UCs and Caltech that don't use the SAT or ACT whatsoever.

Oh, and those questions are pouring in. All right, I promise I will get to them at the end. I did see one saying, can we have a copy of the presentation? Absolutely. I will put a link up on here that will link to our website. In fact, I can put it up right now just so you've got it. It says free mock ACT or SAT. Basically, if anybody needs a mock test for the ACT for Irvine School District, we do this 100% for free, since we work with your district and we're giving this presentation. So we're happy to help anyone that needs help. And you can take a free mock SAT, ACT, or PSAT, virtually any standardized test you're looking for. You can do that online, or you can do it in person in one of our office locations. We do have a branch in Newport Beach that is very close to the Irvine schools, there's another one in Orange, so between those two you'll have access to one or the other. And you can take a practice test in person if that's what you want to do, or online in the comfort of your own home.

Okay, why do SAT and ACT still matter if they're now optional? Grade inflation is a pretty big deal right now. And the other thing I want to link on the screen here is this, for anyone who is interested, this New York Times article that came out yesterday in the Sunday edition of the paper. A lot of really interesting information about grade inflation. I've been talking about it on webinars for the better part of a year and a half, but the media is starting to catch up with all of that.

And things that we have observed is that in 1997 we had 39% of students graduating with an A average, meaning unweighted -- we're not giving an extra point for honors or APs -- that your GPA is between 3.8 and 4.0 when you graduate. It has ticked up to 55% in 2021, and we have crossed the 60% threshold as of 2023, which is not on the screen there, but we did just cross that threshold. And so we got a lot of kids getting a lot of A's, and that New York Times article speaks to it. The dean of admissions at Brown, same with Harvard, both spoke about that. And that is pushing the needle back towards

these standardized tests in this process. Because when we have so many qualified applicants, so many well-educated students these days applying to top colleges, it becomes difficult to differentiate and make a fair choice about who should get in and who shouldn't, based on GPAs that are very, very similar. And so what colleges are not interested in doing is saying, oh, this kid has a 4.13, which is not quite as good as the kid who has a 4.12. They don't want to get down into that. And so that has led them to look more at standardized tests again, and they are coming back with a vengeance, so to speak, in the latest cycles.

Here's a little more information. This was from Yale. They were the first ones to come out and say that test scores had become the single most effective factor in predicting a student's first-year and four-year grade point average at Yale. A number of these colleges echoed the same sentiment in that New York Times article, that standardized test scores have now supplanted GPA as the single best factor to predict graduation rates from college and your GPA in college. And this is leading them to really taking the test very, very seriously again.

MIT I think had the most interesting comment on it. They've gone back to requiring the test, and they said the reason for that was that they found, by not using the test -- because they actually did not use the test for, I believe, two admission cycles -- that they found it actually hurt kids coming from underperforming high schools and underrepresented groups. And part of that, I know, in the Irvine School District we have very high-performing schools, but surprisingly MIT brought to light this fact that close to 50% of high schools in America do not offer calculus, and many of them don't offer high-level AP courses. And so these kids at these underperforming schools don't have a chance to show what they can do. But the people at MIT know, if there's a kid at a weak school that comes from a place where kids don't tend to excel academically, and that kid shows that they can do well on an SAT or an ACT, they found those kids are very successful when they come on campus, because they have some raw talent.

And I would be the first one to say that the SAT and ACT are not great predictors of your capacity to achieve in the future, but they're also not completely useless. They're testing mathematical and verbal fundamentals, and they provide a common yardstick for all students. And I think most kids can understand this when we say, are you aware of any teachers that give out a lot of A's at your high school, or teachers that are really hard and don't give out hardly any A's? Usually kids are hyper aware of that. Well, there are whole high schools that it's harder to achieve a strong GPA, and there are high schools where it's much easier to achieve a high GPA. And so I don't think any of these colleges want to use SAT or ACT as the deterrent to get in. It's just one tool amongst many, where they go, okay, this is the common yardstick where everybody did the same thing on the same day. And if we need to adjust GPA based on the high school a kid went to, it's a way to help them do that.

A little bit more data along those lines. So this graph looks at trying to answer the question, do scores help when kids apply? And this includes the past several admission cycles. We've got Amherst, Boston College, Colgate, Davidson, Emory, Notre Dame, Tufts, Penn, USC, Virginia, Vanderbilt, and Wellesley up on the screen there. The gray bars are the admission percentages for students applying without a test score, and then the red bars are for those applying with a test score.

Now, many people will notice right away that the red bars are higher than the gray bars. I want to unpack that a little bit. We do see that kids are getting in in the test-optional pathway, and at some schools these percentages are very close. If we look at Vanderbilt, it's not making a huge difference there whether you submit a score or not. But at some schools it's making a massive difference. When we look at Boston College, we've got a nine and a half percent admission rate when applying without a score, and then it leaps up to nearly 26% when applying with a test score.

So a lot of this is down to the colleges that you are individually applying to. But what I will note is that each year the gaps are getting bigger, and in light of some of the research that was mentioned earlier, we do expect these gaps to continue to get bigger. And so it's much along the lines of taking an AP class. Most students do not take APs because they are really fun and it's a delight to do more homework. Most students take those APs to challenge themselves in subjects -- interested, yes -- but also in preparation for college, and to show that they are college ready. And I think we can put the ACT and the SAT in the same bucket. It's one more tool to show that you are college ready, willing to challenge yourself, and colleges are rewarding that for students who are doing that.

So many good questions. Oh my goodness. Yes, and the answer to all these questions is yes, we will be covering this. And I promise I will go through all of these questions at the end. If we do run out of time, I will email people with answers to your questions specifically, but we're probably going to cover a lot of it along the way here.

Standardized test scores and scholarships are often overlooked in this test-optional environment. But a lot of this goes back to pre-pandemic, which is when the test-optional movement really kicked off. Many, the vast majority, of scholarships were tied to GPA and standardized test scores, and so some of that, even at all these test-optional schools, that process hasn't changed.

And I'll give you an example here. So Texas Christian University, that's the first one up, TCU. This was last year. We had these two girls from a local private school in Orange County, and they were eerily similar. In fact, I thought they were sisters when I first met them, but they were just best friends. They live next door to each other, so they're in the same exact zip code and living situation, attended the same preschool, elementary school, middle school, and high school, took the same classes through high school, competed in the same sport, were on the same club team. It was such a wonderful science experiment, because they were so eerily similar. And then one of them decided to take the ACT, one of them did not, and they both applied to Texas Christian University.

And what I think is interesting about the results is that TCU's very explicit on their website that they don't penalize kids in the admissions process for not submitting a score. And true to that, they both got in to TCU. But the difference here -- and we had very similar income levels for their parents -- was that the student without an SAT score had to pay the full sticker price, whereas the student with a 31 on the ACT received $112,000 scholarship, which obviously makes a massive difference when that kid graduates from school.

And then we've got similar examples that we've seen in this past cycle at Chapman, at SMU, students receiving large scholarships. Even when many kids are admitted test optional, those scholarships are still tied to GPA and standardized test score. And so it's one more reason for students to keep their options open and not ignore these tests as you move through the process.

Just to sum up, because I know this is a ton of information, it's late, you guys just started school again, we're just going to sum up on this before we move into our PSAT scores. If you're applying only to the UCs and the Cal States, you're not going to need test scores. If you are applying to selective colleges in California or the rest of the country, so USC, Stanford, they are test optional, as are the vast majority of selective schools around the country, you would want to go through the process of taking tests, preparing for them, to keep your options open. Same thing for earning scholarships.

On that fourth one, as I mentioned, to keep your options open, since this is a very fluid process. When we see a lot of kids have their heart set on a major and a particular school, and then they get their yeses and nos back during senior year and everything changes and their interests change. I mean, it's just the nature of the beast. And so anything we can do to keep options open is usually a very good idea.

Okay, what is a good score on the SAT or the ACT or your PSAT? I want you to keep this one in mind. There are no good or bad scores. There are only scores that will help you reach your goals for the future. What do I mean by that? I'm gonna put another download up on here. So we looked at a number of popular colleges. This one will be on the right-hand side, not the left-hand side. And we did some quick work for you, just pulling in the admission rates and then the typical range of SAT or ACT to be competitive at those schools. And these are not necessarily all the 100 top ranked schools. They're just the 100

most applied to schools, and we found that parents have found that very useful, because they can quickly look up. Okay, I am interested -- let's say a student has a 25 on the ACT, a very attainable score -- and at Redlands University that's going to place them right in the middle of the pack, and so that is going to be a competitive score at that university. That's great. If they're also interested, though, in say Pomona College, where we can see the typical ACT range is from 31 to 34, that 25 is not going to help them in this process. And so if Pomona College is a priority for them, then they may want to do a little bit more work to bring that score up. If they were to do that, let's say they brought it up to a 32 to be competitive at Pomona, it's also going to help at Redlands, because if Redlands sees a score that's above their typical range, that's when you get into those scholarships and that merit-based aid.

And I did see a question about this: what is merit-based aid? So I'll answer that real quickly. Merit-based aid is independent of financial need, primarily based on GPA and standardized test scores. And so if your score's above the range that you see on this flyer, that college is going to be very incentivized to give you merit-based aid. And the pool of merit-based aid around the country is just as big as the need-based pool of money, and so there are a lot of scholarships at different schools along these lines.

Okay, your PSAT score. So we looked at, you've got the math score and the verbal score, you're going to add them up to get your total score. Couple of notes on the PSAT. It's capped at 1520 instead of 1600 on the regular PSAT that you take in 10th grade and 11th grade. It's capped a little low if you took that PSAT 8/9, and the reason for that is that the PSAT 8/9 doesn't have the highest level difficulty questions that are found on the 10th and 11th grade version. And then the PSAT does not have the highest level difficulty questions that you find on the actual SAT, and so they cap what the highest score can be at each level and it moves up accordingly. If you scored a 1520 on this recent PSAT, congratulations, that is amazing, fantastic, and you're going to have all kinds of great options coming down the line.

The big thing for the PSAT -- and I'm going to put a video up on screen to talk about National Merit Scholarships, and because there were a ton of questions about that in the chat already, I'm going to put this video up, it should answer your questions on the National Merit Scholarships.

[Video: National Merit Scholarships.] The selection index score is used for determining National Merit Scholarships. This student selection score is 124. The 124 is derived from three raw scores from each section of the PSAT. We're going to add the three scores together, multiply by two, and we get 124. Just to keep you on your toes, the College Board decided to put the National Merit selection index score on yet another scale. This one ranges from 48 to 228. A quick review of the eligibility requirements for National Merit Scholarships. The key one here is that sophomores cannot qualify, only juniors. Approximately 1.6 million students take the PSAT annually. Of those, just about 1% will be semifinalists. About half of semifinalists then go on to win scholarships, so this is not easy by any stretch. Please note that if you qualify as a National Merit semifinalist, your high school will notify you of this honor in early September of your senior year. Key point: this is a state-by-state competition, and the barriers to entry vary considerably from one state to another. Notice that the five highest scoring states typically see cutoffs ranging from 220 to 224, while the five lowest scoring states typically see cutoffs that are 10 points lower, which is a considerable difference.

There we go. Okay, so to recap that, the National Merit Scholarship is only tied to the score you receive junior year. Sophomore year, that's really just a practice test. The P does not actually stand for practice, but it might as well, right? It's just a good chance to go through this, just show up at the given time, take the test, get used to standardized testing. Junior year doesn't really matter either. Colleges are not going to see your PSAT score. If you don't like what your PSAT score turned out to be, it's fine, it's not going to matter in this process. Only good things can happen as a result of your PSAT.

The only time colleges will find out about it is if you scored exceptionally high -- again, it's a little less than 1% of test takers in California -- and you enter into this National Merit Scholarship competition. And even just being a semifinalist, you really don't need to win the competition. I think if you win it there's a $2,500 reward, which can pay for some books when you get to college. Just being a semifinalist, though, opens you up to more than 180 scholarships across the country, and those are all given out at individual colleges. For instance, Boston College, for anyone that is a National Merit semifinalist, Boston College will give you, if you are admitted, which you most likely will be, $25,000 per year off your tuition. So it's worth $100,000 over those four years. And there are many similar scholarships related to the National Merit scholarship competition, but they all come from the individual colleges, and so you only are eligible for them when you apply to those schools. And so the reason people take that competition so seriously is not necessarily for the $2,500 that you win for the actual merit scholarship competition, it's really all the things that happen when you get into different colleges and the money that you receive there.

If you're a junior and were close to -- and again, we do think the cutoff for this current year will be 221 or 222 in California, which is a very high number. It's a lot easier in Montana and South Dakota to be in the National Merit Scholarship competition, but hey, we still get to live in California, so I think it all evens out. So 221 or 222 is that selection index score that the juniors would be looking for, to hit the cutoff to be a semifinalist. And you'll find out about it -- you're actually not going to find out about it, your high school will notify you at the beginning of your senior year. So it's a little ways away, but I can give you a preview of what that cutoff will be.

Often we see students that are just shy of the cutoff. It's fine. Not being a semifinalist is fine. You have the same crack at all those same scholarships with the actual SAT and the actual ACT. So yes, Boston College will guarantee it if you were a National Merit semifinalist, but if you earn a score that's equivalent on the actual SAT or ACT, when they admit you, you're going to see an extremely similar, if not the exact same, financial aid award when they send you your financial aid package.

And so again, the PSAT is just a chance to go through the motions, learn about this process. All our data shows that the more kids go through this process, the more familiar they become with standardized tests, the better they do. It's why practice tests work, it's why taking the PSAT is helpful, and so everybody who did that is doing well.

Oh, somebody says they can't hear me anymore. It might be on your end, because I can see that the mic is working and there's only one person that seems to have said that, so just check everything on your end. There will be a recording of this presentation that is automatically sent to you, so tomorrow you should receive a link to the presentation if you need to review anything again. And if anyone just wants the actual slides to go through it yourself, you can click that link on the left-hand side of your screen, and we'll follow up with an email that includes an attachment with the slides.

Okay, so what do we do next? And let's tackle this grade by grade, and let's put up another handout for everybody. This is going to be on the right-hand side of your screen there. Now the normal timeline for SAT and ACT has changed over the years, but let's talk about the standard timeline, which was that in 11th grade you take the PSAT and then you take a mock ACT. So that's usually a decommissioned ACT, for example. It's one they used to use, and then those questions have been used enough times that they said, we don't want anybody to know the questions ahead of time, so we're going to release that test into the world. And then a company like ours takes that test and we use it for practice exam, so that kids have very accurate scores.

And you want to use the PSAT and the ACT score, compare them, and pick one or the other. I don't want anybody wasting time preparing for both SAT and ACT, because there are no colleges that want you to send in both an SAT and an ACT. They just want the best score you can send them. And most of that comes down to rankings. Those colleges are always trying to play the rankings game. I think it's a little

bit of a silly game, but they're all trying to play it, because they know applications go up when they move up the rankings, and alumni money tends to go up as well because people are proud of their alma maters. And so they're all playing that rankings game, and those standardized test scores still figure into the rankings, and so they really just want the highest score you can send them.

Quick side note, I did see a question about superscoring, so I'm going to answer that now. Superscoring is when you take the test more than once. So let's use the SAT for simplicity's sake, and let's say the first time you took it the verbal score is higher than the math score, let's say it's a 600 on the verbal, 500 on the math. The next time you take it, the scores are reversed, now it's a 500 on the verbal and a 600 on the math. If you send the college both of those SAT scores, the majority of schools now -- and this is really true in this test-optional environment -- will cherry-pick the 600 verbal and the 600 math and combine them into a 1200 when they look at your application. This is important because you never actually achieved a 1200 on any individual sitting. You actually had an 1100 both times. That's the beauty of superscoring, is that you get to use the best of those two test sittings to your advantage, and so this can really be a big advantage for students and families that know about this.

On the ACT, superscoring is even more powerful, because you have four sections, and it's highly likely that if you take the test two times or three times that you will have some outliers amongst those scores. And so you want to take the best two sittings, send those to those schools, and if it would result in a higher superscore, you want to send those to those colleges.

Okay, back to our timing. In the fall you'd choose SAT versus ACT, and then in the spring you'd take an official test. 12th grade: in the summer before 12th grade you'd refine your college list, your scoring goals, and your retesting plans, and then the summer or the fall you'd take a second SAT or ACT and you would be done. We've got our early action and early decision deadlines for taking those tests at the bottom of the screen there.

Now I will say, a lot of students have drifted away from the standard timeline. It is developmentally correct for a lot of kids, taking tests in the spring of your junior year and the summer before senior year. It is still the right path in terms of brain development for many, many students. So you may have friends that are taking tests earlier and earlier, which is what we keep seeing. That doesn't mean you have to. It doesn't mean you're behind in this process, it doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. Do what's developmentally correct for you. The more advanced math classes you take, the more prepared you're going to be for the math sections of these tests. There's nothing wrong with waiting until June, spring of junior year, to take your first test, and then using a summer test just to get a second score and see what happens.

The accelerated timeline. This is the one that we're seeing more often right now, and we're actually trying to help families determine when it is developmentally correct for their child and when it's not. Sometimes this is the right path. Let's talk about this real quick. And that download on the screen does have all of these for you, so you can look at this later, because this is a lot of information. But I do like to spend time on these slides, because this is one of the most important parts of the process, which is doing the right things at the right time.

So what we see more often is kids are starting in the summer before 10th grade. They're taking the mock tests and choosing then, and even doing prep before 10th grade. Unless you were scoring abnormally high on these tests, this is probably not the right path. They usually have this express goal of completing everything by the end of 11th grade. There are some exceptions where this is a good path for some students. If they are -- talk to your counselor. You have great counselors at all of the Irvine schools. Use those resources, set meetings with those counselors, ask them questions, make use of those wonderful people you have working in the Irvine School District. If you have questions about testing, anybody on our staff -- if you send an email to info@prepgurus.com, a staff member will answer it. We're always happy to help families just make good decisions. We can look at the scores that you've got and let you know which timeline is most appropriate for you.

I really like this balanced timeline, which is that things usually start after 10th grade ends. So after 10th grade you've already got a PSAT. If you haven't taken a mock ACT during sophomore year, you take one in the summer before junior year, and then you can make a plan for testing. It doesn't mean you have to begin prep, you don't have to begin taking tests, but you can make a plan. And I think planning reduces anxiety and gets the whole family on the same page, so we know what's coming, when. You can look at, am I involved in a sport, am I involved in theater, or maybe you're musically inclined or art inclined, and there's a certain time a year that's really stressful for you. Obviously you want to place the tests in a time period where you're not stretched too thin, so you have some energy and time to devote to the process.

Then in 11th grade you can kind of make that choice. If you're scoring high, then maybe you take one in December of 11th grade. If you need a little more time to bring up your scores, you wait until spring to take that first SAT or ACT. And then we've got the summer and the fall of senior year to take an extra test if we need to. And even just knowing that you've got a backup date that's in fall of senior year, it takes the pressure off the first time that you take it, just knowing I've got another chance at this if I need it. And that will actually boost your score a little bit, when we take the pressure off. Just quick tip for parents there: anything we can do to take the pressure off these scores tends to help them go up. So it's good for mental health and it's also good for performance, and everybody wins.

Okay, just a repeat for my 11th graders on this call, because the 11th graders are the ones that really need to know. You took the digital PSAT in October, and all of the future SAT sittings will be digital. Now, when you're choosing between SAT and ACT, it looks like about two-thirds of kids perform better on paper-based exams than they do screen-based exams. A lot of this has to do with the supercomputer we all carry around in our pockets. We scan when we read a phone, and so we scan when we read on a computer screen, and so it really looks like it's hurting verbal scores on this new digital SAT. We do have some techniques to help students overcome that, but if you're a kid that does better on paper-based exams, then the ACT is going to be a better fit for you.

My recommendation to everybody: you already took the PSAT, take a mock ACT, compare those two scores. And of course if you take a mock ACT with us, we will have a quick five-minute chat with you about how to compare the scores, adjust for any time difference between when you took those tests, and then help you figure out which test is better for you. Then you make your plan, then you execute the plan, and that's really all there is to it.

Can a PSAT take the place of a mock SAT? Absolutely, yes. That PSAT looks like it is pretty darn accurate, and so if you took the PSAT you don't have to worry about a mock SAT. I would still recommend taking a mock ACT to compare the two and see which one you're naturally a little bit better at. I don't have a dog in this fight, SAT versus ACT. They're equally easy to prepare for. My only thing right now is for current juniors: if the scores are really close, I probably would edge you towards ACT for this current year, just because that SAT is new.

For sophomores, freshmen, younger students, there's always an adjustment period whenever the people that make the SAT change the exam, and they tend to do it every five or six years, whether it's small changes or big changes. And I've been doing this for close to 20 years now, and so I'm very used to this process. That first year, we see some high highs and some low lows, and so there's just a little bit more variance in the results. Sometimes kids get tests that haven't been properly normed, and I'm not going to go into all the statistics of it, but sometimes you can run into a test that's abnormally difficult and it's really not fair. Whereas the ACT, tried and true, has barely changed in the last 20 years, and so you know exactly what you're going to get. So for current juniors, I would still say if the scores are equal, ACT is probably a safer bet. If your SAT

score is higher than your ACT, go with the SAT. That's absolutely fine.

Well, that was a great question. I don't know how to pronounce that name, but: can you discuss the new SAT format and content? I can. We are running a little tight on time. What I will do is show you one problem. I think we have time for one problem from the digital SAT. And one thing that they've done is they really have compressed the reading passages. The reading is where we find the biggest changes, and they've changed how they assess difficulty on them. There's a lot more trickiness on the new version of the digital SAT.

You can read that question for yourself real quick and then we can discuss it. Actually, in the interest of time, I'm just going to jump right into it, because we are getting close to the end here. What I would want students to do is jump to the question right away: which choice best describes the function of the second sentence? That's going to direct your reading. You would jump to, aha, the underlined portion, that's the second sentence, really focus on that. I would then cover up, not look at the answer choices, because the answer choices on the verbal section of this digital SAT are designed to trick you. So I would not look at them.

What I want you to do is real quick, on the notes section on that digital SAT format, you would type in very quickly your own summary of the sentence that they're asking you about. And so in this case we would highlight a few things, because you do have a digital highlighter on this new version of the SAT. We can see the relevant information is highlighted there, and then we summarize that sentence for ourselves. And in this case, I would say -- and by the way, proper names are never important on the SAT or ACT, so I don't need to know that Betelgeuse is the name of the star they're talking about, I don't need to know the name of this particular astrophysicist, I skip over that information and look at the core of what they're talking about. And it looks like they ran an experiment, results characteristics were largely unknown, concluded this method could not sufficiently reveal. Great, I'm gonna say that means issues in the research, or they know what happened but not when or why.

Then I go to my answer choices and I just try to match up my summary with their answers. And you will actually learn how to do this very quickly if you practice this process and this way of attacking these questions. As I match them up, now I can quickly go: it explains how the work of Nance and colleagues was received by others in the field -- no, that does not match what we were talking about. It presents the central finding reported -- no, that's not what they were talking about. It identifies the problem that Nance and colleagues attempted to solve but did not -- that might be it, I'm gonna keep that one. Then I look at the last one: it describes a serious limitation in the methodology -- no, that's not what I'm looking for. And then I can quickly eliminate those wrong answer choices and I'm there at C, the correct answer choice.

On a different presentation we have coming up, we're going to go through more of these digital SAT problems and how to attack all the different problem types, but in the interest of time tonight, we're going to keep flying right along.

This is the number one question I get in these seminars, because I'm giving one, my gosh, in the month of January, three or four a week at different high schools and PSAT scoreback nights, and talking about testing. And this is one I keep hearing: if my kid's not naturally a great test taker, should he or she bother to test? How much improvement is possible?

There are a lot of questions I would want to ask an individual family about what their goals for college are to properly answer this. Where do you want to go to school? Who are you? What colleges are going to help you get there? Is testing going to be necessary? So I want to put in the caveat that I would want to ask some initial questions before giving an answer to parents or students. But since everybody asked this question, I will answer it in a general sense, in that, how much improvement is possible?

We saw a kid last year. He started with a 17 on the ACT, which means -- or sorry, a 16 on the ACT, which means 66% of students are scoring higher than him on the exam. 16 is well below the median score for the ACT. He had his heart set on some very selective colleges, including Georgetown, and he was very motivated to work hard at this process. Worked with us in a one-on-one program, and then actually did a subsequent one-on-one program as he saw improvement. And it was not all at once, but slow and steady, he kept moving his score up, kept moving his score up, eventually reached a 31 on the ACT, which put him in the top 5% of ACT test takers.

And I'll be the first one to say, I did not think that that level of improvement was possible until I saw it with my own eyes. That is a really dramatic turnaround, to move from 66% of people are scoring higher to only 5%. And he did get into these super selective schools that he had his heart set on. And he also had strong grades to begin with, he just, his test score he felt was holding him back, and he really wanted to change that for himself and be in control of his own destiny.

But those are some of the things we'd be looking for, to help parents and students make those decisions if testing is appropriate or not for a particular kid. The how much improvement is possible, to answer that question: probably a lot more than what you think. These are not intelligence tests. They are tests that can be studied for, like any test. And so if you put your mind to it and put in the right amount of time, the right amount of energy, your score will go up. And I think that's a good way to look at these tests, because I don't like it when kids feel like they're either good at this or not good at this. It is all about taking control of this process, deciding what your goals are, and then taking steps to achieve them. And I think that's a message everybody can feel good about.

Testing along the lines: think of those exams as opportunities, not assessments. It is not a judgment on you as a person and what you're capable of in the future. All these tests are going to do, especially in this new test-optional environment, possibly help you to win scholarships, possibly help you to gain admission to selective colleges. And if the prepping is done in the right way, you should learn to read faster for a higher level of retention, you should learn grammar rules that help your writing, you should do better in your math classes as a result of studying the math. And if you're taking the ACT, learning to interpret charts and visual data is a very useful skill in real life. And so I really like anything that is not just studying for the test, it's building skills for college, for beyond that. And I think that ACT science section really lends itself to

Before I jump into questions, what I'm going to do, I'm going to show this quick video here. I think this is my single favorite thing to share with parents, especially if you've got a junior. You can start prepping for this now, which is to write your own letter of admission to your student. I'll let the video show you this.

[Video: a short film in which two parents read aloud a letter they wrote to their daughter before her first college decision arrived, telling her that their pride in her does not depend on any admissions outcome.]

We give a lot of free useful information through our Instagram account, videos like this. I would highly encourage everybody to follow us at Test Prep Gurus. Great way to just continually be educated on the admissions process, and a lot of inspirational stuff like this. There's a lot of data that's presented on there, just to keep you up to date, especially in this fluid time where admissions policies are drastically changing from one year to the next. And

then along those lines, I'll put the mock ACT link back up there. You can actually scan that barcode with your phone if you've got this on a computer, if you want to get the slides that way. If you clicked for a free mock ACT, we will send you the slides. You can see up there different ways to connect with us.

The podcast does have a number of episodes about college admissions. About 50% of the content is about college admissions. Some of the other episodes you'll find are just with high-performing athletes and high achievers and interesting people to talk to. So there's a lot of content on the podcast. You can quickly see which ones are about college, if that's exactly what you're interested in, and just skip to those. There was a great one today on college rankings, or so I was told by some college admissions people. And yeah, again, you'll find the links to all of that through the Instagram account. So that's a great way to just stay in contact and keep learning about this process.

Okay, let's get to -- so here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put up one more poll up there just to ask for some feedback on the webinar. And if you're still here, I hope you really enjoyed it. We will have some follow-up webinars to get into some of the finer points of some of these things, people that want to attend them. And what I'm going to do, since we are right at 8:00, if anybody needs to click off now you can, and thank you for coming. And it looks like by the poll there, this was very helpful to the vast majority of you, and some nice comments in the chat about how helpful it was, so I'm glad to hear that. And then what I'll do is I'll stay on and I'll answer questions, and we'll just be on here as we go through the questions. But if anyone needs to go, I promise we will email you the critical information. And if you're waiting on a question to be answered, we're going to get to those. Oh my goodness, there are hundreds of questions in.

Okay, how do you know which course to take at a community college? Great question. I would say go for the courses that you are passionate about. I like to say colleges don't necessarily want to see well-rounded kids as much as they want to see pointy ones. What do I mean by that? I mean that if you're going to say that your major is, you want to be a journalist, then they want to see that you did well in your humanities courses and challenged yourself with the highest level classes available at your high school in the humanities. AP Bio might not play as big of a role. In fact, it's not going to play as big of a role. So if you're looking at AP English and AP Bio and you're really passionate about the humanities, follow those passions. That's how you choose your AP courses. And if that AP Bio is going to stress you out too much, that's the one you don't need to worry about, take the regular biology.

And same thing, if you were going to take a community college course in the summer, follow your interests. Your interest will serve you well in this process, because when you write your essay, you want that to reflect who you are. And don't be afraid to say something risky, certainly with college essays. The idea is not to please everyone, it's to really connect with the college that's a right fit for you. And so if that essay expresses who you are authentically, and then the things you say you want to study in college line up with the courses that you challenged yourself with in high school, well, that's going to make sense to someone who reads the application.

If you say you want to be pre-med, well, you can figure out pretty easily, I want to do well in my science classes, maybe my math classes too, I want to challenge myself in those courses. If I was going to take a community college class, I'd go challenge myself in something that would tie in to that pre-med major. And if you say, I have no idea what I want to major in in college, that's okay too. It's perfectly fine to apply undecided and just keep exploring. It's okay. I like community college classes for certain high school students just to go explore a line of study, because every time you find a class you don't like, well, that's something you're not that interested in, and that's okay, you've crossed something off the list. If you keep looking what really drives you and excites you, you're gonna eventually find it. The only time you don't is when you stop looking. So just keep the search up and good things will happen.

Will UC schools be unblinded to scores after 2025? That's a great question. So that settlement -- it was a lawsuit settlement -- was the reason the UCs decided to go blind to test scores. We do not know what they're going to do in 2025, because that's when the settlement -- there was a big fight in the school over those policies, whether to use scores or not, before the lawsuit happened, and the fight was a political one. The research clearly showed, even then in 2020, 2021, that those standardized test scores were very predictive of success at the UCs. So you had a lot of professors, a lot of faculty that were pushing to not just make the tests optional but to keep them required. The lawsuit really turned things on its head and they didn't use them at all. So I think, because it's a political question and not just a rational science question, there's no way to know what they're going to do. And so we just have to wait and see in 2025 or 2026 what they decide to do. And again, we'll keep you updated with the latest developments.

Community college courses sometimes are taken as pass/fail. Will they count, or do they have to be taken for a grade? My feeling is, if you just want to take it pass/fail to take the pressure off, that's absolutely fine. Try to think of community college classes as a chance to explore a little bit, rather than something that's going to determine what college you get into. I mean, so often, because of the pressure families feel, everything feels about resume building, and I think anytime we can get back to exploring who you are and what you're excited about, that's a good thing.

So if you want to take the class pass/fail, you probably won't get college credit for it. I mean, because if you take a community college course and pass it -- most colleges, sorry, and earn an A or a B in that class -- most colleges will give you credit for that when you go to college. So you're not only helping in the admissions process, you're also saving some money down the line. If it's pass/fail, you probably will not get college credit for it. But again, don't let that be the sole determinant of it. Figure out -- it's really all about who you are and where you want to go, and just keep exploring.

Now, scholarship opportunities for the PSAT 8/9. I'm not aware of any scholarships tied to the PSAT 8/9. It's just an indicator of where you might score on the PSAT that is given in the 10th and 11th grade. And again, that comes to your 11th grade PSAT. The 10th grade is also not tied to any scholarships, and so they're just giving you an idea of where you're going to be in 11th grade.

And someone also asked, do some people prep for the PSAT in 11th grade? There are some students that do that. Certainly not everybody needs to. But if you're within striking distance of that National Merit cutoff -- and if you ever want to send us an email just to ask if you're within striking distance of it, we're happy to answer that and help you along, and help you make that decision if prep makes sense or not.

Okay, if you're considering out-of-state colleges, should you consider only private colleges, because why pay out-of-state fees for a public school, it's so expensive? They had a lot of O's in that. So, really good question. And I'm very sensitive to the cost of college, because it has risen over the last 20 years at more than double inflation, and I have a kid who's gonna be in college soon.

Okay, there are very complicated answers to this question, but there are a number of ways to achieve in-state prices at out-of-state schools. I don't have an answer for every single out-of-state school out there, it will require some research. But if there are some out-of-state public universities that you're really interested in, get on their website and do some homework on what financial options they have available. There are a number of schools that will even publish charts that if you score high enough on a standardized test plus the right GPA, when you have that golden combination, they'll then, as a form of a scholarship, grant you tuition.

In general, I would say apply to a variety of schools. You want a balanced list in terms of how hard they are to get into, in terms of location, and you also want to

balanced list in terms of finances. So if you have some in-state schools, some out-of-state publics, some out-of-state privates, and some in-state privates, you're going to get a variety of yeses and nos, and then based on those yeses you'll get a variety of financial aid packages. And it's another reason I really like those likely schools, because they offer more flexibility financially. And again, if your stats tend to be a little bit above their typical applicant, they're going to be incentivized to offer you more scholarships, and that applies at a variety of schools. And who asked this question, Jean, if you're still on there and you have some specific schools you want to ask about, you could always email us and we will do our best to help walk you through that process.

What can you do to stand out in school? I think earning strong grades is really helpful. Try not to stay up all night every night in order to do so, though. Find the right balance for you. And looks like the same student also asked about AP classes. It's very individual to each student, but you want to find the right balance, and ideally challenge yourself with those high-level courses in the courses that you're more interested in. Because again, those colleges like those pointy students. If you've taken those high-level science classes all along the way and then tell a college you want to study something related to sciences, they're going to be forgiving that you didn't take AP World and AP US History and you took the regular classes there. And that's a great way to find balance.

Is it better to get a 4.0 taking regular classes or a 3.4 taking AP classes? That is a very specific number, Andy. Obviously the best thing is to earn strong grades in those AP classes. But this does tie into the last one, I won't repeat all of that. Find what works for you, do your best in those classes, trust that the process will work out. Again, you're coming from a great school district, you have great college counselors, you have parents who are able to help you through this process -- and I know that because you're on this webinar tonight -- and you've got resources. Find what works for you, and know that it's going to work out for everybody on this call.

Are out-of-country schools worth looking into? Absolutely, if that is exciting to you, it can be a great fit. At the Orange County College Fair, which will be coming back next year in the spring, a number of international schools show up. That's a great way to be able to speak face to face with people from those international colleges without having to actually travel to the country to see the colleges and speak to people there. And so any of the big NACAC college fairs should have a number of international schools at them, and that's a great way to connect and learn more about those campuses and see if it's the right fit for you.

For any students who are interested, I'm a big fan of studying abroad when you're in college. Usually not until sophomore or junior year, but if you're really fired up and you say I want to study abroad all four years, it can be a really enlightening experience. And there are great colleges all through Europe, Australia, New Zealand. I mean, you name the country, there's probably a good school there.

Okay, for a student that got a 1520 on the PSAT -- congratulations, that is super rare, fantastic -- would there be benefit in getting a full score? So with a 1520 on the PSAT, I'm assuming this student is a junior. If he is a junior, you're going to be in that National competition during the next year. You're going to need to take the official SAT to get a confirming score, which they just have you take the test again to confirm that PSAT score. You actually don't have to score as high to confirm it, you just have to be in the ballpark. And so I'm sure your son will be able to do that, and so lots of good things are going to happen and doors are going to open for you. If you have follow-up specific questions, you can check with us offline as well.

Volunteering activities that can earn me hours. Yeah, again, follow your interests. Don't just do it to build the resume, because those things often ring hollow when you try to write about them in an essay. If you were just picking up trash because you thought it would look good to a college, it's hard to make it sound like that really meant something to you. And so try to embrace your uniqueness and things that really are a little bit different, that are interesting to you, and then get involved. Just get involved in anything outside of school, or it might be a club within the school. Show that you can be a leader in those situations, that you're willing to serve others without financial gain. Or if you're really interested in business, create an app, create a small business. I mean, anybody can do it now on the internet. I say take a little time -- there's no rush to build the resume -- take a little time to figure out what you're excited about, what you're interested in, and then follow those interests. They will eventually lead you to the right path.

I mean, I can think of, there's a student right off the top of my head, his parents were really worried about him playing video games all the time. This was a number of years ago. He played way too many video games, and he did some prep for the SAT. We chatted about all the video game playing, but through the talks it came out, he said, I love these games, I want to make these games. And he got into a video game design program for college. He's now graduated from college and I can see on his social media that he's working in that industry. And so I don't want to say this to just say playing video games all day is a good idea -- don't misquote me there -- but if you're really passionate about something and want to go next level with it, there's a path out there for you.

Is there a website that we can check the range of the scores for the optional test? Pretty much if you Google SAT range or ACT range and then the name of the college, it will pop up from the college. There was also that flyer that we shared.

Do AP classes really matter in terms of admission? It depends on the college you're applying to. If it's not a super selective school, they're probably not going to matter. Some schools will prioritize your grade in those AP classes, and I would say they're more 50% prioritize the grade in the AP classes over the score on the AP test. But the score on the AP test is what is going to get you college credit at colleges that extend that. And at the super selective schools, they do tend to care about the scores on the AP exams. And so that's a complicated answer to that question. What I would say is, if you can earn an A in that AP class and the test itself at the end of the course is freaking you out and you just, for your mental health purposes, need to skip that test at the end, it will probably still work out. But there are colleges at the top end of the selectivity spectrum, those famous colleges we talked about, they usually do like to see fours and fives on your AP tests.

Okay, I'm gonna get a few more. These are tough questions, you guys. The optional writing section on the ACT: 99% of situations, you do not need to worry about it. I can think of one college with a journalism program -- it's only for students applying to that specific journalism program -- and they tell you, please take the writing section of the ACT. You really don'n need to. The one other exception are students where English is not their first language. If they don'n have a TOEFL score that shows their English competency, sometimes you can use that ACT writing section as a supplement, in place of that TOEFL score. But in general, for 99% of people, you don't need to worry about the optional writing section at the end of the ACT.

Can you take the SAT in the spring and then retake the ACT in the fall? Absolutely. There are test dates all throughout the year.

Oh my gosh, and we've received 26 new messages since I started these questions, and everybody's still on the call. Well, thank you for your attention and staying with me. I really appreciate your time.

Is there a maximum number of times you can take the SAT or ACT? There is no maximum, but I want you to think of that not as a reason to take it 11 times. There is a point of diminishing returns. And think of it as a way to take the pressure off a little bit, right? If it goes wrong -- I mean, two things. If it goes wrong, you can always take it again. And we have score choice, which means you get to choose which scores go to which colleges. You don'n have to automatically send all of them. And so there's not a terrible amount of pressure on any individual sitting for the SAT or the ACT.

Is there an ideal month time to take the digital SAT? No, there

is not. You're probably going to hear some rumors that, oh gosh, the August sitting always has the easiest questions on it, or oh man, the May SAT has the easiest questions on it. I always hear rumors about that. They're not true. It's a randomly selected process each time, so there is no one best time. Do the time that fits into your schedule.

How do you get the highest superscore? Well, take the test more than once, and do as well as you can on all the sections each time, because it would look funny if you dropped from a 700 to a 400 because you just didn't try on one section of a test. Let the superscoring take care of itself. Just look at the scores at the end and you can quickly determine if you could superscore with your individual test scores, and then you send those two tests to the colleges that you're applying to.

Okay, the PreACT that you took in school. I do think it is good, and you can use a PreACT in place of a mock ACT. However, the PSAT is a little bit more accurate than the PreACT. It's still well worth taking it, because you're going through that official process and it will help you to get better at standardized tests in general, which there are a lot of them. It's not just the SAT and ACT. There are graduate school exams, there's the bar exam when you graduate from law school, there are tests when you graduate from medical school, there are finance exams if you work on Wall Street. The exams keep coming, and so think of it as a chance to build your standardized skills. But if you want to talk to us about comparing scores, you can send us the PreACT score and we can discuss it.

We did cover this one: if we get the exact same score on both a mock SAT and an ACT, which test should be taken? If there's no difference between the two and you are currently a junior, I would lean towards ACT. If you are a sophomore, email us and we'll discuss the nuances of that.

Will colleges look at the PSAT score for admission? No, they will not. Only if you are a National Merit semifinalist or better, in which case it's only going to help.

Should I send in a score if it's below the school's average but still within the range from your table? I would say if it's within that range from the table -- those are updated numbers of the typical admitted applicant based on last year's admitted students, so it might not be right at their exact average, but they're not looking for a specific score, they're looking for it to be in a range, right? They know there's not a big difference between a 24 and a 25. That's in the range that they're looking for. And so if it's a close call, it's okay to send in the score. Again, admissions officers don't want to penalize you for sending in a score.

Okay, and does the ACT or SAT help on getting scholarships when applying to test blind colleges? If a school is test blind, they have separated their scholarship process from the standardized test scores. So we're probably talking about the UCs. The UCs moved all their scholarships over to not include standardized test scores, so you don't need to worry about that.

Okay, we're almost there. What's the significance of a PSAT taken during freshman year? I think we just covered that, but it's good experience. It gets you used to this, it'll be easier when you take it again 10th grade and 11th grade.

Can I be a National Merit semifinalist if I'm not a citizen or permanent resident? You do have to be a US citizen to actually qualify for it. But if you scored that high on the PSAT, what you can do is score just as high on the official SAT or official ACT and you will get all the same benefits. So you're not going to lose out on anything, you just have to do it on a slightly different exam.

All right, and then a lot of thank yous, and thank you for all these nice messages, my gosh. And I'm just going to do two more, and then if I missed any questions, email them to us and we will get back to you that way.

How challenging is admission to service academies? I mean, the Naval Academy, Air Force Academy, look it up on their websites, check it out for yourself. I mean, they are competitive colleges, there's no doubt about it. There are some that are more competitive, some that are less, but they are tough to get into. But they are kind of a special case, and so there's some stuff to discuss there, and as you do the research you'll see what's necessary. Again, you can email us to get some more details on that if you have some follow-up questions on that.

Irwin, appreciate your comment there. If you're not familiar with the US educational system, I would highly recommend the Test Prep Gurus podcast as well as the Instagram account. Just each week you're going to get something new, learn about another piece of the puzzle, and that will help build up your knowledge in this process. There is a book called Admission Matters. It's a little bit outdated because it was written before the test-optional movement. I'm unaware if they've done an update to it since then, but that will give you an overview of the US educational system.

How can I take advantage of being bilingual? Great question. Let colleges know you're bilingual. If you speak French, well, go through all the French courses up to AP French and do really well in those classes, and then let them know in your essay what it's like to be a bilingual student. And they're going to see it by those grades in those classes, and a lot of colleges really like bilingual students, so don't be shy about that.

Does doing an expensive summer internship of $5,000 give you a sure shot of admission at a school? Does it put you at an advantage over the rest? Great question, because it does not. So even if -- I'm not picking on Johns Hopkins here, I'm just using it as an example -- if Johns Hopkins University has a $5,000 or $10,000 course that they do in the summer where you get to go on campus and be there, you will get to experience the campus and learn more about the college, it is not necessarily going to help in the admissions process, because it's such an obvious pay-to-play situation. There was a time in the distant past where that was helpful. Now it's become very frowned upon. And so if it's something you're really interested in, don't let it turn you off from doing a program like that, but if you're just doing it for admissions purposes, that's not really gonna move the needle.

Okay, last one. Is there any advantage if you studied in Dubai for freshman and sophomore year and finishing here? Yeah, that's a great story. Talk about that cultural change in your main statement or some of the supplemental essays. I'm sure you've got some great insights into what that was like and challenges that you had to overcome. That could be a great topic. Maybe you'll decide to write about something else, but they'll see it on your transcript as well, and that might be exciting to different colleges. So yeah, I think that should serve you well there.

Okay, it's 8:30. I've taken up so much of everybody's time. We're more than happy to help in any way that we can. Thank you so much for tonight, and we'll let you know about the next free webinar that we're doing. Because obviously we do test prep one-on-one with students, in classes, but at the end of the day we're all teachers and we're here to help families. And so if you need help, just reach out, we're here to help.

Yes, all right, you are all welcome. Thank you for all the thank yous. I hope to see all of you again soon. And Connie, thank you so much for the nice introduction, and everybody at the Irvine Unified School District, always a pleasure to get to speak to your families and to each and every one of you. And with that, good night, everyone. Yes, thank you Billy, appreciate it. I appreciate all the love. All right, everyone, good