Connector buddies, and the other freshman 15 in SAT Writing

February 26th, 2010

Joanna is a TA and Content Developer at Knewton, where she helped identify the grammar rules students need to know in their SAT prep.

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The two portions of the Writing section on the SAT test the same rules. At Knewton, we break them down into a list called the Freshman 15. Your ticket to a sweet score on this section is to learn these rules. Think about it this way; if someone could give you a list of every vocabulary word that could possibly be tested on your exam and you could ace the sentence completion section by memorizing a list of about 15 words, you’d be ecstatic, right?

What’s even more exciting is that the simplest rules, the ones that are the most easily memorizable, are the ones that are tested on the “hardest” questions. Why is that?

Well, none of us, in everyday speech, would use, let alone recognize an error in a sentence like: “I am at once delighted with the contents of your speech but annoyed with your tone.” The correct version of this sentence is: “I am at once impressed by the contents of your speech and annoyed with your tone.” But once I tell you that “at once…and” must come as a pair, I bet you’d never miss a question testing this concept. Knowing this rule — and the fact that other connector buddies like “neither…nor,” “between…and,” and “just as…so” go together — will get you a hard question right on the Improving Sentences section every time.

The same 15 or so simple and digestible rules come up again and again. Learn them and you’ll be at once eager to tell everyone about your score increase and ready to apply to better colleges.

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SAT Test Day Tips: 10 Tips to Make Life a Little Easier on Test Day

February 25th, 2010

Rich is one of Knewton’s expert teachers, and his strategies can really boost your SAT prep.

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No matter how much practice you do, and no matter how much you try to anticipate exactly what SAT test day will be like, you can’t really know what it’s like until you go through it.  I should know: I’ve done it a few times, both for real and as an educator.  But even though there’s no way to replicate the experience of test day, that doesn’t mean that tips aren’t helpful!

So, with that in mind, I wanted to give you a few pieces of advice:

1. Know your test center

If you’re not taking the test at your own high school, I’d recommend scoping out your testing center ahead of time.  Learn where it is, how to get there, and even what the inside looks like. One of the most difficult things to deal with is unfamiliarity.  On top of the stress of dealing with test day, you may have to deal with taking the test in a location you don’t know.  Strange surroundings lead to anxiety, so if you can get to your testing center ahead of time and just take a moment to acclimate yourself to the surroundings, it will be a big help in the long run!

2. Relax

The night before the test, do something relaxing and get to bed early.  Watch a movie, read a book, go out with family or friends. Anything to set you at ease and take your mind off of the impending stress. Eat a good, nourishing meal.  And don’t touch any study materials!  Last-minute cramming will only stress you out further, and it’s a waste of time anyway, because if you haven’t internalized the info by the night before the test, you certainly won’t internalize it by the next morning.

3. Check your gear

Take a moment to make sure you have a few sharpened #2 pencils and a functioning calculator.  The last thing you want is to be in the middle of a math section only to find that your calculator doesn’t work. Or how about suddenly realizing that your pencils aren’t #2?  You’ll wish you had checked ahead of time.  And all you’ll need is a plain, no-frills, four-function calculator.  The arithmetic on the SAT is very basic and won’t require something like the brand new TI-7490123, or whatever the latest model is.

4. Fuel up

On the morning of the test, eat a good breakfast that will keep you energized and alert throughout the morning.  Go with your standard “part of this complete breakfast” fare — cereal, milk, orange juice, yogurt, etc.  Avoid doughnuts or any other pastries with lots of fat and high amounts of sugar.  Extra fat will make you sluggish and kill your concentration.  Sugar will give you a really quick buzz and make you super-energized, but soon after, you’ll crash and burn, most likely during the first few sections of the test!

5. Kick the caffeine

While we’re on the subject of food, you should avoid caffeine if at all possible.  Some people need that dose of coffee or tea to jump-start their morning.  If you know your body well enough, and you know you can’t function without a little caffeine in the morning, then it may be best to stick with your cup of coffee or tea.  But just realize that caffeine is a diuretic, which means that you’ll need to make more sudden trips to the bathroom.  And usually, proctors will not let you leave the room until designated breaks.

6. Show up early

Get to your testing center early, and be prepared to wait in line.  You’ll probably have to show up at 7:45 a.m, even though you probably won’t start taking the test until around 9:00 a.m. or so.  I definitely recommend bringing something to pass the time, such as a book or a magazine.  It will relieve the stress of anticipation.  And this is worth repeating:  do NOT bring a test prep book for last-minute cramming.  Again, if you don’t know it by now, you won’t know it in the next 30 minutes.

7. Bring snacks

More food advice (this is making me hungry!):  Bring a snack, because you’re going to be there past noon.  The test itself is 3 hours 40 minutes, but that does not include breaks, waiting in line, getting seated, passing out test booklets, etc.  When all is said and done, you’ll probably leave the testing center at around 1:00 p.m., if not later.  That’s a long time to go without food.  You are allowed to eat and drink during designated breaks, so I recommend bringing something like energy bars and a small box of fruit juice.  Energy bars are especially good, because they often have added nutrients and enough carbs and protein to substitute a meal.

8. Ditch the cell phone

If at all possible, DO NOT BRING YOUR CELL PHONE!  I recently took an SAT in which someone’s phone went off in the middle of a section.  The student tried to ignore it, hoping whoever was calling her would hang up, but that didn’t happen, and she was asked to leave the room.  Most likely, her scores were invalidated, as the policy states that you can be removed from a testing administration if your cell goes off (or if you are caught using a cell-phone calculator, for that matter).  Don’t even risk having this happen!  Leave your phone at home.  You can deal without it for a few hours.

9. Get ready to tune out

Be prepared to deal with lots of annoying noises.  It’s just going to happen, so you might as well prepare for it.  The guy behind you constantly sniffling at high-volume.  The girl who marks her answer sheet loudly and furiously, slamming the pencil to the paper.  People all around you stomping or shuffling their feet.  Cars going by the school, or people talking outside.  There are any number of really annoying distractors possible, so you should acknowledge that they will be there.  The more you accept it, the better you’ll be able to deal with it and divert your focus back to the test.

10. Stay in the moment

Finally, only worry about NOW!  Once you’ve finished a section, move on and don’t think about it until after the test is over.  The worst thing you can do is waste time during one section mulling over what you did on the previous section.  While you’re wondering whether you should have put A instead of B on question 7 of the last section, you’re eating up time on your current section and risking further errors.  No doubt, this is a pressure situation, and you’ll likely question yourself several times.  But one question isn’t worth the fuss.  You can obviously get a good score without getting every single question right.

Oh, and a little added bonus tip:  After the test is over, reward yourself!  Take the rest of the day to relax, eat your favorite meal, hang out, or whatever you want to do.  I personally find that doing something active really helps, because you’ve just been sitting for several hours, and you’ve been stuck inside your head doing mental gymnastics!  Go for a run, or play basketball, tennis, or whatever sport you enjoy.  Or if the weather’s nice, simply spend some time walking around outdoors.

If you follow these simple tips, your test experience is bound to go a lot easier.  Good luck!

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Posted in SAT, SAT Tips | 11 Comments »

B-school personal statements: do's and don'ts

February 24th, 2010

This post was written by Josh Anish. Josh is the Senior Editor at Knewton, where he helps students rock their GMAT preparation and offers guidance about the B-school admissions process.

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Lots of students write in asking questions about the personal statement. And for good reason: This is your one shot to really introduce your personality to an admissions board. It’s like you’re running for President and you’re speaking at the convention. You get a podium and only a few minutes to present your case to the voters.

With that in mind, here are some time-worn Do’s and Don’ts of personal statement writing.

Don’t: Talk about the school so much. Admissions officers already know how great their institutions are (or aren’t). Customization is important, but two or three sentences about the school should suffice.

Do: Talk about yourself a good amount. The school’s library isn’t awesome; it will be awesome for you to study in it. Create a narrative in your statement and place B-school within it. Something like undergrad –> work experience –> learned a ton –> ready to learn even more –> afterward will move on to even greater aspirations.

Don’t: Dwell on the negatives. No need to mention that D+ in Italian History (was Michelangelo his first name or his last?). It’s okay that you couldn’t find a job for 4 months after graduating from college. Your GMAT score is what it is. The personal statement is like a first date; let her know about the credit card debt months later, after you move in.

Do: Accentuate the positives, especially when it comes to your work experience. Be specific: You didn’t just work for Goldman Sachs; you streamlined their derivatives platform which ushered in a period of 3x growth (assuming that’s true, and if it is: good for you).

Don’t: Make your statement too precious. No need for shtick. You don’t have to write like a Flaubert scholar (though you should proofread your essay several times).

Do: Play by the rules, lay out your narrative, and deliver the facts. Shoot for safe over sorry. A risky personal statement is just that: a risk.

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Posted in GMAT, Knewton, MBA Admissions | No Comments »

The importance of SAT vocabulary prep

February 23rd, 2010

This is the first post from our friends at Word-Nerd.com. Vocabulary study is a big part of our SAT prep course, so we were excited to hear their thoughts on the subject.

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How important is vocabulary study on the SAT? This simple question has recently become the subject of a great deal of debate in the world of SAT prep. When analogies and antonyms were dropped from the SAT, vocabulary became directly relevant to just Sentence Completion questions. Since Sentence Completion comprises only one-third of the Critical Reading section, the prevailing wisdom turned against vocabulary study.

“Big Test Prep” (you know who they are!) declared that vocabulary preparation was a waste of valuable student time. This opinion has since trickled its way down to classrooms, guidance counselors and college admissions gurus, but it only makes sense if a student starts thinking about the SAT just a week before test day, when time is of the essence. If you are reading this post, you are not that person! You’re already planning ahead and motivated to earn a high score. There are some very good reasons why you should search for that definitive sat vocabulary list so you can add vocabulary to your SAT arsenal:

#1 One-third of the Critical Reading section is based on vocabulary. Approximately 300 points are directly related to vocabulary, with about 200 of those points coming from moderate to hard sentence completions. You may encounter some difficult words like “xanthous.” Do you know what xanthous means? Probably not, but you should if you study vocabulary. It is that simple. Don’t leave those 200 points on the table!

#2 Your English teacher would rather teach “War and Peace” than vocabulary. As a result, you may not be learning enough vocabulary in school. Many schools have bought into the idea that vocabulary preparation is not important, and therefore you may not be doing enough to learn new words. Of course, if you come across a word you don’t know, you should look it up, but for most students, that will not be enough preparation to score well on Sentence Completion questions.

#3 The person sitting next to you on test day probably has not been studying vocabulary. That person is not going to answer those tough Sentence Completion questions correctly. For you, this is an opportunity to get a leg up on the competition. Most students will have little trouble with the easy questions, but those same students will miss the hard ones. Therefore, if you answer a difficult question correctly, you will receive crucial points that most students will not. The good news is that deducing which words fill in the Sentence Completion blanks is usually easy — if you know the vocabulary. Studying vocabulary gives you an edge and the opportunity to score in the higher ranges.

#4 Love is a battlefield, and so is college admissions. What can those extra points do for you? It should go without saying, but it can mean the difference between being admitted into the college of your choice, or not. It can mean the difference between earning a great scholarship, or not. And to take it even a few steps further, admission to a better school can mean a better job down the line. That should be enough to convince you!

So now that you are on board – and I know you are – what’s next? Don’t waste your time on mind-numbing activities like reading the dictionary or looking for long lists of words on the internet. Your brain learns best when it is able to associate new words with words it already knows. Word-Nerd’s vocabulary prep is based on that theory; it groups over 1,500 of the most commonly tested words into meaningful categories, like “color” and “eating,” so that they are easy to remember.

By the way, xanthous means “yellow-hued.” By upping your vocab study, you’ll make sure you know that on test day!

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Posted in SAT, SAT Tips | 8 Comments »

Extra practice app from GMAT club

February 22nd, 2010

Our friends at GMAT Club released a handy iPhone app a few months ago.  If you’re on the go, you can still get extra Quantitative questions, time your practice tests, and learn from their detailed user forums. Last week it was in the App Store’s “What’s Hot” List, so it’s a great time to get on board…

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Posted in GMAT, GMAT Tips, Quant Guide, Verbal Guide | 1 Comment »

SAT vocab in real life

February 19th, 2010

We’re getting closer and closer to the launch of our SAT prep course. In the meantime, here’s a real-life tip: You have to learn SAT vocab words, but you don’t have to use them.

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Posted in Inside Knewton, Knewton, SAT, SAT Tips | No Comments »

A core concept is central to MBA essay success

February 18th, 2010

This post is from Linda Abraham, founder and president of Accepted.com. Also check out the Accepted team’s first post on our blog for tips on law school personal statements.

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I have just finished reading Made to Stick by the brothers Chip and Dan Heath. I recommend it highly to those of you in sales, communications, or teaching. Quant jocks? You probably don’t need it.

The authors researched and identified the factors that cause communications to succeed or fail. They boiled their research down to “six principles of stickiness.”

  1. Simplicity
  2. Unexpectedness
  3. Concreteness
  4. Credibility
  5. Emotions
  6. Stories

This post will focus on the first principle you should apply to your application essays: Simplicity.

Your B-school application essay needs a core idea. That essence or central point becomes the driver of all content for that essay. When responding to specific questions, your core must directly and elegantly answer the question. When writing a less-directed essay, you still need a driving concept; you just have more choice as to what your concept should be. Everything else in the essay should support that concept.

If writing multiple essays for one application, each essay has to have a core. Those themes should mesh and complement each other, but not duplicate.

The remaining principles of Making It Stick are means of effectively relating your core idea, but first you need to have a core. Unfortunately, many B-school applicants treat their essays like many teenagers treat their bedroom closets—as a place to put all kinds of “stuff” that may be useful or perhaps once was useful. There is no logic or organizing principle, no driving force. These messy closet essays then read like the mishmash they are.

Essays that are resumes in prose or that attempt to tell your entire life story descend into the mishmash category. MBA essays replete with irrelevant detail stray from their central mission. They are not engaging or persuasive. In fact, they bore.

When you write your essay, start with a central idea and then make sure that everything else supports it. That elegant simplicity is not simplistic and is not easy, but it is highly effective.

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Accepted.com’s staff has been checking clients’ work for the essentials of great B-school application essays since 1994. Visit accepted.com/mba for professional advising and editing services as well as sample essays, tips, free ecourses, webinars, and more.

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Posted in GMAT, MBA Admissions | 1 Comment »

A Short History of the Standardized Test Prep Industry

February 17th, 2010

I’ve been writing more on the Huffington Post recently, and my latest piece is a history of the standardized test prep industry. What started with one man became a massive, international business, and my experience in that business is what motivated me to found Knewton.

Here’s the full story:

The test prep industry began in Stanley Kaplan’s Brooklyn basement just after World War II. The son of Jewish immigrants, Stanley believed standardized tests were some kind of elitist plot to keep minorities out of the Ivy Leagues. His philosophy was that anybody could improve at standardized tests. The testing industry and larger education establishment loudly proclaimed that idea to be wrong, foolish, and practically immoral. But Stanley, standing alone for a long time, was proven right.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in EdTech, Education & Technology, From Jose, Inside Knewton, Knewton, Test Prep | 4 Comments »

The college essay: getting started

February 16th, 2010

This piece is from Andrew at CollegeEssayOrganizer.com. He’s been in the SAT game for years, and he’ll post here from time to time with college essay tips.

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A lot of the time, the hardest part of a college essay is just getting started. Too many schools, too many questions, not enough time. Not to mention, the way the essay prompts are written, they make it seem like you need to know what your life’s work is before you even graduate high school.

The name of the game for starting your college essay isn’t so much knowing exactly what you’re going to write, but which prompts you’re going to have to deal with in the first place. Once you have those assignments figured out, whittling down the amount of work you actually have to do can be a pretty easy job.

First, do yourself (and your parents) a favor and make a list of the schools you’re most interested in applying to, and try to identify your top choice. If you can’t pick a number one school just yet, that’s fine, you can worry about that later.

Then, once you’ve identified the schools you’re interested in, see how many of your essays ask similar questions. With a little organization, you can actually minimize the amount of work you have to do: think three essays instead of seven, five essays instead of twelve, that sort of thing.

College Essay OrganizerWe developed College Essay Organizer to help you see all your essay requirements in one place and show you how you can write as few essays as possible to answer all your required questions.

Doing this kind of work takes just a few minutes all together, and it helps you get your head off your desk and makes the whole essay process seem a lot more manageable than it used to be. Plus, when your parents come knocking on your door to find out if you’ve done anything with those gosh darned essays you’ll be able to say yes, thank you, please get me a beverage.

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Posted in College Admissions, SAT | No Comments »

Knewton to be mentioned in new book

February 15th, 2010

This post was written by Josh Anish.


The Edupunks are back. And we’re punkier than Punky Brewster (or does that reference disqualify us?).

Expanding on her piece on How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education, which also gives Knewton a shout out, Fast Company writer and author Anya Kamenetz has written an entire book on Do-It-Yourself Education.

Jose will be quoted and we’ll be featured in the reference guide for self-learners.

The book comes out April 1 (no joke), but you can pre-order it now.

That is all.

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Posted in Knewton, Press | No Comments »

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