Month: July 2016

Over the years we have had many requests from parents to send tutors to students’ homes, or to meet with them in other locations such as the library. We do not do this. All our tutoring is done in our office in Boston, or via Skype. We have Skyped with clients all across the United States, and in Europe, Asia and Central and South America.

One of the biggest reasons we do not send tutors outside our office is that we cannot be responsible for the quality of the work if the tutors are not with us on a regular basis.  We have heard stories from parents of tutors not showing up on time, not showing up at all, or showing up impaired to work with their children.

A center based tutoring environment offers many advantages for students. Tutors have access to lesson plans, supplemental material, a team of other tutors to consult, and supervision and guidance from administrators. It is much more expensive to operate a center based tutoring business, but it is the right thing to do in terms of providing a quality program.

Our tutors have access to proprietary lesson plans, supplemental books, and input from other tutors and the center director. Our close relationship with our staff allows us to give them feedback and provide them with resources to help them give the best possible service to our clients. We hear how the tutors interact with students, and we can offer suggestions and resources based on individual needs. A tutor that is sent out on their own has no supervision, no resources and no feedback. We are able to mentor our staff and help them meet the individual needs of each student.

Every few years we shop other tutoring business to get a sense of what they have to offer, and it is always surprising to us when some of the people we talk to provide incorrect information about test basics, cannot answer simple questions, or provide little details about materials used and the results of their work with students. We have found that some companies will say anything to bring in business, but they do not have much to back up their sales pitch.

Many tutoring businesses rely on their tutors to provide material for test prep and they do not supply a standardized curriculum. We have found this to be a recipe for disaster. There is limited material available for ISEE and SSAT test preparation, and many of the books on the market today are outdated, or have significant gaps in content.

Tutoring is very much a buyer beware business. It is important for parents to do their due diligence in researching what options are available and what is provided by the tutoring business. Below are some questions to ask when evaluating a test prep provider.

1. How well do you know the test?  How many years have you been teaching the test material?
2. What materials do you use to teach the test material?
3. Do you actually teach the material, or just tell students when they get something wrong?
4. Who are your instructors, how are they trained, and how experienced are they with the test? Do you do a background check on your tutors?
   
5. How do you evaluate students to determine what they need?
6. What is your success rate, and do you follow up with each student to see how he or she scored on the test?
7. What ongoing support do you offer parents through the process of application to exam and private schools?  Do you have children that have attended the exam schools or a private school?
8. How does your program help students get ready for the curriculum at an exam or private school?
9. Will your program help my child do well in school this year?
10. Do you have references you can share with me?

If the tutoring company cannot answer the above questions to your satisfaction, then you should look elsewhere.

Anne Yount

Boston ISEE Prep
617-553-8083
www.bostoniseeprep.com - Test Prep for the ISEE & Latin School Exam

Boston Tutoring Center
617-553-8083
www.bostontutoringcenter.com - Tutoring Grades K-12

Boston Private School Search
617-553-0540
www.bostonprivateschoolsearch.com - Your Resource for Private School Admissions

Follow my blog at: www.privateschoolguru.com/blog

When I first started developing ISEE curriculum back in 2002, I did an exhaustive search evaluating all the ISEE test prep books on the market. The best book at the time was published by the Princeton Review. What I especially liked about the Princeton Review is that they had a philosophy of learning vocabulary in conjunction with Latin and Greek roots. This approach gave students tools to pick apart more words than they could learn on their own, and it has been a very effective method over the last 14 years in helping students to ace the verbal sections of the test.

While the Princeton Review had a good section on vocabulary, with over 40 pages and an extensive list of words known to be favorites of the test makers, it was not very user friendly.  I developed over 50 vocabulary lessons incorporating Latin and Greek roots which became the basis for our work on building a student’s vocabulary. We also have weekly vocabulary quizzes, cumulative quizzes, and verbal worksheets based on the test format for synonyms and sentence completions. Our students’ verbal test scores last year were in the 80th percentile. Clearly this approach is working well for our students.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at the 2017 version of the Princeton Review book and saw that the verbal section has been reduced to 9 pages, and all definitions for words have been eliminated! Students relying on this list alone will have significant gaps in their preparation for the verbal section of the test.

The essay section of the Princeton Review used to have a great section on writing the essay that contained over 40 pages, and walked students step-by-step through how to respond to various prompts, how to craft an essay in 30 minutes (the time limit on the test) and how to develop idea banks of examples to use on a variety of essay topics. The writing section is now cropped down to 5 pages, with all of this content deleted.

We expanded on the approach in the Princeton Review book and developed a series of writing lesson plans to help students hone their writing skills, and work on the specific format of the ISEE essay. Students relying on the scant material in the Princeton Review 2017 ISEE test prep book will have little assistance in preparing for the essay portion of the test.

The ISEE math section of the Princeton Review book used to be over 60 pages, and it contained many valuable practice drills to help students master many of the challenging concepts presented on the test. The ISEE math section has been reduced to 25 pages, and the practice drills have been moved on-line, with a very small side bar note in the book recommending students go on-line to access the practice drills.

We developed a series of 32 math lessons for each of the three ISEE levels: lower, middle and upper level, to delve deeper into the math content on the test and give students more practice with the new concepts. The math curriculum was designed to teach students how to solve the problems, not just teach them to guess between four answer choices. Our program builds skills that help students in school now, and in the future.

Princeton Review has also migrated all the verbal and reading practice drills on-line, and reduced the content in these sections as well.

The ISEE test changed in 2010, and over 6 years later none of the test prep books on the market has been updated to include all the new material. The ISEE is a very niche market for book publishers, and it does not get the attention that more popular tests such as the SAT and the ACT receive.

Every few years we shop the competition and ask what material they use to prepare students for ISEE test prep. The vast majority of companies rely on these outdated and incomplete books to prepare students. We have yet to find a company that has the extensive and customized math, vocabulary and writing lessons plans used by our tutoring center.

It is a shame that these companies are giving consumers less material every year for the same price. When you buy these books, there will be a lot of work required to supplement the missing material in order to best prepare students for the test. It has taken us many years to develop the material we use, and we are constantly refining our lessons plans to garner the best possible results for our students. It has been a significant investment of time and money for us to develop these materials, but it has paid off in the results we see each year from our students.

Do your homework and make sure the material being used to prepare your child for the test is the most up-to-date material available!

Anne Yount

Boston ISEE Prep
617-553-8083
www.bostoniseeprep.com - Test Prep for the ISEE & Latin School Exam

Boston Tutoring Center
617-553-8083
www.bostontutoringcenter.com - Tutoring Grades K-12

Boston Private School Search
617-553-0540
www.bostonprivateschoolsearch.com - Your Resource for Private School Admissions

Follow my blog at: www.privateschoolguru.com/blog

 

The Educational Records Bureau (ERB) – the maker of the ISEE, has some changes in store, starting in the fall of 2016.

• The ISEE can now be taken more than once. In the past the ISEE could only be taken once every 6 months, which effectively meant most students could only take the test once. Students can now take the test once a season, and no more than 3 times in a 12 month period. There are 3 seasons – fall, winter, and spring/summer. Fall runs from August-November, winter runs from December-March, and spring/summer runs from April-July. Most students need to take the test by early January at the latest for private school application deadlines. This means that most students will be able to take the test twice – fall and winter.
• It is now possible to take the test and not show the scores to a school until after you have had time to review the results. You also do not have to share prior test results with schools, you can share only the scores you choose to share. You must share full score reports, you cannot choose to show only certain sections from different test dates.
• Keep in mind that when a student takes the test as a 4th or 5th grader it is the lower level version of the ISEE, when they take the test as a 6th or 7th grader it is the middle level version of the test, and when they take the test as an 8th grader (and above) it is the upper level version of the test. What this means is that if a student takes the test in the spring/summer as a 5th grader, they will take the lower level test, which is not the same test they would take in the fall/winter as a 6th grader (this would be the middle level test).

For our clients who are applying to private school with a January test deadline, we now recommend they take the test once for practice in the fall, and then a final time in the winter. Most students see a bump in their scores after a second test. Students know what to expect on the second test, they are less nervous, and they have had to time to hone in on their areas of weakness from the first test.

Boston exam school applicants must take the test in November, and they cannot take the middle level test for practice. If they take a test in the spring/summer of their 5th grade year, they will be taking the lower level version of the test, which is not the version they will take as 6th graders (this is the middle level version of the test). The middle level test is harder than the lower level test, and contains more advanced math topics.

If a student is applying to both the exam schools and a private school, they can take the test once in November for the exam schools, and once in January (depending on the application deadline of the school(s) they are applying to) for the private schools. The results of the November test must be submitted to Boston Public Schools in order to meet the testing deadline requirement. The results of the November test do not need to be shared with the private school (unless you are satisfied with the scores and do not feel that the scores will increase after a second test).

We have seen this bump in scores after a second test for many years among our SSAT students. SSAT students are allowed to take the test every time it is offered, and most of our SSAT test takers will take the test in October and then again in December or January. Almost all of our students see a bump in their scores after their second test date.

This is good news for private school applicants. They will now be able to take the test for practice and keep their scores private until they see the results. We suspect that the ERB has made these changes in order to be aligned with the SSAT. Since the SSAT began offering a middle level version of their test a few years ago, this has brought some competition to the choice of test. Most schools still require the ISEE for middle school admission. The ISEE is an easier test than the SSAT, so if given the choice, we recommend students take the ISEE.

The ISEE is still a very challenging test for many students, and students should start preparing for the test at least 12 months before their first test date. Practice makes perfect!

Anne Yount

Boston ISEE Prep
617-553-8083
www.bostoniseeprep.com - Test Prep for the ISEE & Latin School Exam

Boston Tutoring Center
617-553-8083
www.bostontutoringcenter.com - Tutoring Grades K-12

Boston Private School Search
617-553-0540
www.bostonprivateschoolsearch.com - Your Resource for Private School Admissions

Follow my Blog - http://privateschoolguru.com/blog/

I often meet with parents who spend a fair amount of time talking about other people’s children. They try to “size up the competition” at their child’s school, or in their child’s peer group to determine how their child compares in terms of the application process to private school. This is a futile process. Spending time worrying about the competition is not worth the time and effort. They need to focus on their child.

I have had parents speculate about how various students got into certain schools, and tell me about the advantages they perceive these students have in this process. There are so many factors that go into the private school application process (test scores, grades, teacher recommendations, applications, essays, interviews, extracurricular activities, special talents, etc.) it is impossible to know all the relevant details about any other child. You cannot believe everything you hear.

Some parents perceive this to be an “us versus them” situation, and they will purposely withhold information, or be less than truthful about the information they give other parents.  I have heard lots of stories from parents about why their child was not admitted to a particular school (many of these stories do not make sense). I have also heard many stories about what parents think certain schools want in an applicant (many of these perceptions are also off base).

Certain groups of parents at some schools spend a great deal of time discussing these matters, and in the end all that happens is that a lot of misinformation gets spread and everyone gets more and more anxious. It does no good to speculate about what a school wants in a student. You need to be working with a professional who knows the school and can advise you as to the type of student who is a good fit for the school.

Forget about the stories and gossip you hear on the playground. Most of it is rubbish. Focus on preparing your student for the test and the interview. Research the schools in depth and know why the school is a good fit for your child. Be prepared to articulate this in detail in your application and in your essays. Make sure your child understands what the school has to offer, and can explain to the admission staff why they want to attend the school.

When you forget about what everyone else is doing and saying, then you are free to focus on what really matters: your child.

Anne Yount

Boston ISEE Prep
617-553-8083
www.bostoniseeprep.com - Test Prep for the ISEE & Latin School Exam

Boston Tutoring Center
617-553-8083
www.bostontutoringcenter.com - Tutoring Grades K-12

Boston Private School Search
617-553-0540
www.bostonprivateschoolsearch.com - Your Resource for Private School Admissions

Follow my Blog - http://privateschoolguru.com/blog/