My Boarding School Blog

So you feel anxious and nauseated with the upcoming entrance exams. Whether it is for your ACT or SAT the dreadful feeling seems to grow each day you approach your examination date. Overcome your fear by preparing well enough to get you ready to take on the test and score high. You will need a lot of positive thinking along the way to help you get motivated into studying ahead of time.

College entrance exams are given to screen and evaluate a student’s cumulative knowledge that he or she acquired from high school. Skills in test taking are also evaluated like deductive and analytical skills that are very important skills necessary to survive in higher education.

Reviewing for college entrance exams shouldn’t cover entirely what you have learned in high school for the brain may be overloaded with too much information. A common mistake made by most students is they try to study and review everything extensively to the point that they become overwhelmed and eventually panic if they cannot remember every detail of information they have reviewed causing some of the most intelligent students to fail.

Knowing what you need to review is an advantage that can be used to effectively answer the test questions correctly. Here are some of the points you need to touch on for your review.

Language – basic sentence structure and grammar.
Spelling – test exams can give out sentences and the student must recognized the misspelled words used in the sentence.
Algebra – review basic operations of decimals, fractions, integers and whole numbers. Student should familiarized self with common formulas used in conversions, solving algebraic equations.
Geometry – interpretation of graphs and relationship of data should be covered in the review. Points, lines and shapes should be ran through and a list of common formulas should be remembered well.

On the night before the test day the student should have sufficient sleep and should not review anymore to give the brain time to relax and recharged for the next day’s test. Upon waking up, take a shower and make sure to eat breakfast to supply the brain of the necessary glucose to help remember all those that you have reviewed. Do not eat too much as this will make you sleepy, make sure to have plenty of water to hydrate and enough vitamins to keep your brain cells going throughout the test. Have some candy in your pocket in case the exam takes too long and you’ll need some sugar to refuel your working brain.

Make sure to read the instructions carefully, read it twice or thrice for full understanding. Many students fail their exams not because they do not know the right answer but they failed to follow the instructions. Should you feel panicky or sleepy take deep breaths and tell yourself that you can go through with this. Relax and calm yourself because tension and nervousness never helps in taking an examination.

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Standardized tests are examinations in which all students answer the same set of questions usually in a multiple choice format with only one correct answer per question. There are many debates arguing whether standardized tests can truly measure a student’s academic performance. Some argues that answering a series of questions by choosing the correct answer among the options does not cultivate creative thinking or create anything.

The reliability of standardized tests can be 100% reliable if the results are the same when taken twice. But for all tests there is what we call a measurement error. A measurement error is the variation of an individual’s score due to different testing conditions or the taker’s mental or overall state at the time the test was taken. Because of measurement error two individuals with different scores on a test today might get the same scores on the test given the following day.

Standardized tests cannot really measure difference between two individuals as they rarely cover different factors of an individual’s intellect furthermore a student’s overall academic excellence is not brought by just excellence in cognitive ability rather it is a combination of cognitive, analytical, creativity and skills. Students learn when they can actively extract meaning out of their actions then connecting this knowledge to something that they are trying to learn. Most standardized tests only concentrate on narrow skills and memorization on facts.

Listed below are the most common standardized achievement tests administered to students today.

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)

A standardized test for college applicants published by the College Board, a non-profit organization in the United States is one of the most common tests high school students are preparing for.

American College Testing (ACT)

Is a standardized test for college admissions to screen applicants for higher education in the US produced by the ACT Inc. It is a multiple choice examinations covering subject areas in English, Math, Reading Comprehension and Science.

Standardized testing is faced with a lot of loop holes in fairly evaluating our student’s academic performance. A much better way to evaluate student achievement should be done by integrating teacher observation, student work and performance assessment. In these factors a student’s overall hard work is evaluated fairly. This is a good reference for companies that offer standardized tests so they can progress from the ancient testing method that we use today.

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If you wish to study in the US for an undergraduate associate program or bachelor’s degree you need to prepare yourself for the entrance exams you need to endure to qualify and achieve premium education offered by US Colleges and Universities.  The Educational Testing Service (ETS) is a non profit organization that provides assessment tests based on extensive research. Among the tests they administer are TOEFL, TOEIC, GRE and The Praxis series in more than 9,000 locations worldwide. Their work encompasses research, assessment, test administration, test scoring and instructional products and services.

Here are some of the tests required for college applicants.

Scholastic Aptitude Test

Scholastic Aptitude test or (SAT) is needed by undergraduate applicants. It has seven sections on verbal, math and experimental. Admission decisions are dependent on SAT scores that is why it is important to prepare for this exam. The test lasts for 3 hours with the following different type of exam questions: analogies, critical reasoning, sentence completion, problem solving and quantitative comparisons.

Graduate Management Admission Test

The Graduate Management Admission Test or (GMAT) is required by most business schools in the US. It is administered by the ETS and they also administer the GMAT Computer Adaptive Test or (GMAT-CAT). You can check their website for more information. The exam consists of multiple choice sections both quantitative and verbal and an essay section called AWA, Analytical Writing Assessment which is administered first. The AWA includes two writing tests lasting 30 minutes each typing the essay into a word rich text program in the computer.

Graduate Record Exam

The Graduate Record Exam is administered to students who want to study graduate or Post-Graduate in the US. This test helps administrators to measure and gauge the intellectual capability of students coming from different colleges and universities. Most undergraduates are screened through their academic scores and analytic skills to further evaluate their capability to pursue a Master’s program.

Test of English as a Foreign Language

The Test of English as a Foreign Language is a test for students who are not native English speakers. In order to pursue Graduate or post- graduate study in the US one’s English proficiency needs to be assessed. TOEFL is required for more than 2,500 universities and colleges in the US and is also a standard test in admitting foreign students in other countries like Canada and UK.

Most of these tests are administered using a computer called Computer Adaptive tests.  It only takes basic knowledge of computer to undergo this kind of test. In the CAT, there is a large database of questions where the computer randomly chooses from different levels of difficulty. The first level is always intermediate and from your answer the computer will determine the difficulty level of the next question. Before hitting the next button you must be very sure of your answer as you cannot go back and change it.

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