Small School Profile: Marymount University

May 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Type: Catholic, Co-Educational
Location: Arlington, Virginia
Enrollment: 3,500
Average GPA: 2.5 Required Minimum
SAT Middle 50 Percent: 890-1100 (CR/M)
ACT Middle 50 Percent: 19-23
Top 10 Percent of High School Class: 7%
Top Quarter of High School Class: 33%
Student to Faculty Ratio: 14:1

Special Programs/Offerings:

Marymount, like Lynchburg College, also offers an Honors Program for a small group of students who have earned a minimum GPA of 3.5 and a minimum SAT score of 1200 (CR/M). Students in this program are given priority in course registration, one-on-one faculty mentoring, and scholarship support. They will also be given the opportunity to complete research projects as undergraduates.

Marymount’s location just outside of Washington DC also makes it an ideal location for those students who would like to get some hands-on career experience. Students at Marymount have been hired for internships with federal government agencies, multinational corporations, local museums, non-profit organizations, and more. Students at Marymount have also taken advantage of the school’s study abroadprograms. Semester and year-long programs are available in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Some of the distinctive majors Marymount offers include Fashion Mechandizing, Fashion Design, and Forensic Science.

Student Life:

Marymount is largely a commuter school, but roughly 700 students live full time on campus. For those seeking religious direction, Marymount has an active campus ministry. There are also over twenty student clubs and organizations ranging from dance troops to professional associations. Marymount’s proximity to Washington DC also means that students have easy access to the capital’s museums, theaters, and weekend night life. It seems unlikely, then, that a student at Marymount will ever have a reason to be bored.

Marymount University

Filed Under: College Search

Lines & Angles Clinic

May 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

After the jump is a review of some terms and concepts that you must know in order to deal with angles on the SAT and other standardized tests. This post also runs through four typical problems that require you to apply these concepts.

Vocabulary Review [Read more…]

Filed Under: Math

Active Reading on the SAT (and Similar Tests)

May 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Over the years, I’ve noticed the universality of a particular rule of thumb: the stronger the reader, the more notes that reader takes. No passage on the SAT – or on any other critical reading test, for that matter – should be left unmarked. Making annotations is key if you want to keep your focus.

So what kind of annotations should you make when you are reading a passage during a test like the SAT? Well, the first thing you should remember is not to get bogged down in the details. The SAT does not require you to understand everything you read; reading for the SAT is not like reading a text for a class. Your goal is to suss out the main idea. That’s it. When the subseqent questions ask you about the details, you can search for those details then.

While you are reading a passage for the SAT (or a similar test), you should write short notes in the margin that keep track of the main ideas of each paragraph.  You can also underline what you feel to be the key phrases or sentences. To identify the main idea, ask yourself what the author is trying to accomplish with each paragraph.

Be careful, though, not to get carried away with your notetaking or underlining; again, finding the main idea is your ultimate goal.

To see an example of an effectively annotated passage, click here. As you can see, the annotater has numbered the paragraphs, underlined a few key sentences, written her understanding of the main idea of each paragraph in the margin, and has also written a one-sentence summary of the entire passage on the bottom. This is the format your annotations should take.

Filed Under: Critical Reading

Are you thinking of taking an AP course?

May 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

If you are, I applaud your ambition! An AP course provides an excellent opportunity to delve deeply into a particular subject matter – and even if you don’t pass the May exam, you will still learn valuable skills that will help you in college and beyond.

However, a decision like this shouldn’t be made lightly. In my four-plus years of tutoring students in AP history, English, calculus, statistics and science, I have seen many flame out and give up. Thus, as students across the nation begin to put together their schedules for the 2010-2011 academic year, I would like to share with you my top four AP prerequisites – the five qualities I believe every AP student should possess:

  • You should like to read. Unless you’re taking a pure math class, you will be expected to spend many hours per week reading – and this reading will not be limited to official assignments. In order to do well on a history, geography, or English exam especially, you must go beyond your instructor’s expectations and seek out materials on your own, as the essays on these exams require you to cite examples that your class may not have time to cover.
  • You should be comfortable constructing a well-reasoned essay. Every AP class save calculus will ask you to write answers of at least paragraph length to more in-depth questions – and the writing requirement is even more extensive for history and English.
  • You should have a B average – at least. In my experience, there are very few exceptions to this rule. Why? Because maintaining at least a 3.0 across the board indicates that you take school seriously, that you are a self-starter, and, hopefully, that you have sufficient background knowledge to understand the texts you will be given.
  • You should love the subject! This prerequisite may be the most important one of all. Even if you are an excellent student and a frequent reader, you are less likely to do well in an AP class if you don’t have the passion. Don’t allow the adults in your life to push you into something that will only be an unwelcome burden for you. If you don’t like history, don’t take AP U.S. History just because it is expected of you; if you don’t like science, don’t take AP Biology. Taking a class simply to pad a college resume is taking a class for all the wrong reasons.

If the four requirements above apply to you, then by all means, sign up for that AP course! I think you will find such a class a rewarding experience.

Filed Under: Advanced Placement - Advice

Small School Profile: Lynchburg College

May 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Type: Independent, Co-Educational
Location: Lynchburg, Virginia
Enrollment: 2,500
Average GPA: 3.0
SAT Middle 50 Percent: 1030 (CR/M)
ACT Middle 50 Percent: 18-22
Top 10 Percent of High School Class: 12%
Top Quarter of High School Class: 35%
Student to Faculty Ratio: 12:1

Special Offerings/Programs:

For top performing students, Lynchburg College offers the Westover Honors Program. Participants in this program have the opportunity to attend special colloquia that tackle local, national, and global issues with an interdisciplinary approach and are granted special status in class scheduling. Westover students also complete an honors thesis during their senior year. Requirements for enrollment in this program include a high school GPA of greater than 3.5 and a minimum SAT score (critical reading and math only) of 1200.

For those students interested in the natural sciences, Lynchburg College is also associated with the Claytor Nature Study Center, a 470 acre outdoor classroom dedicated to the study of the environment.

And lastly, Lynchburg offers a Symposium Readings Program that encourages critical reading of the classics in various disciplines. One of the products of this program is Agora, an academic journal that encourages undergraduates to write papers on the Great Books. At Lynchburg, students do not have to wait until graduate school to get published!

Student Life:

Incoming freshman may be interested to learn that at Lynchburg, first year students are housed together and given special attention in Lynchburg’s First Year Explorations program, which seeks to assist students with the transition from high school to college.

Lynchburg also offers an outdoor leadership and adventure program called New Horizons as well as plenty of opportunities to serve the community.

(Incidentally, I went to Lynchburg College to attend the 1996 Governor’s School for Science, Math, and Technology, and I thought it was a very nice campus.)

Lynchburg College

Filed Under: College Search

Small School Profile: Sweet Briar College

May 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Type: Private liberal arts college for women.
Location: Sweet Briar, Virginia (50 miles south of Charlottesville in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains).
Enrollment: Less than 1000.
Average GPA: 3.4
SAT Middle 50 Percent: 1010-1220 (CR/M)
ACT Middle 50 Percent: 22-27
Top 10 Percent of High School Class: 25%
Top Half of High School Class: 85%
Student to Faculty Ratio: 9:1

Special Offerings/Programs:

Because this school is so tiny, students have the opportunity to customize their majors. According to the school’s website, if the school’s more than 40 academic programs don’t quite fit what you have in mind, you can work with the advising team to construct your own course of study.

Sweet Briar also emphasizes international study. The college administers the Junior Year in France and Junior Year in Spain programs, which provide students with an opportunity to spend up to a year studying in either country. Students at Sweet Briar have also participated in study-abroad programs in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Scotland.

If you are concerned about gaining practical work experience, Sweet Briar offers access to internships and work opportunities. Along the way, the college will help you to build a resume that you can take to your first jobs after graduation. And for those who plan to pursue their education beyond a bachelor’s degree, Sweet Briar also offers research opportunities in all of their fields of study. Those students interested in the pre-professional programs in Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, and Law will especially benefit from this hands-on research experience.

Student Life

On this topic, I think I will allow the students themselves to sound off. Several students and organizations at Sweet Briar maintain blogs and Facebook pages, a listing of which can be found here.

Sweet Briar College Contacts

Filed Under: College Search

AP Students – NOW is the time to start studying!

May 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

It’s the new year. We’ve all been well stuffed with holiday meats and sweets and have (hopefully) enjoyed our visits with extended family members. But now the vacation is over; it is time to get down to business.

If there is one thing that has always worried me about many of my AP students, it’s their tendency to procrastinate. In previous years, I’ve noticed a definite spike in our center’s enrollment come late March. Formerly nonchalant students see early May bearing down on them like a freight train and suddenly feel the need to seek out assistance with the mounds of difficult AP vocabulary or the concepts they never mastered the first time through. But the month of April is not the time to get serious! Studying for the AP exam in any subject should, ideally, be a year-long process.

If you haven’t started studying for the AP exam by this point, you need to start now. The following are some of the things you need to do before February rolls around:

* Buy a review book. In my experience, Barron’s has the most challenging, highest quality sample questions, but REA and Kaplan are also excellent sources.

* Get organized. Collect all of your old tests, notes, and vocabulary worksheets and sort them by topic.

* Make flashcards for all key terms. This is especially important in history, geography, English, and biology, courses that are heavily dependent upon knowing the terminology.

* Start looking at sample questions from previous years. You can find sample questions at the College Board site here.

* Find someone to study with. This can be either a tutor such as myself or a peer. Getting feedback from someone else is crucial to the process of studying.

Again: the earlier you start taking the May exams seriously, the better off you will be!

Filed Under: Advanced Placement - Advice

When Applying to College, Consider the Small Schools!

May 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Often, while instructing my teenaged students, I have found myself spontaneously playing the role of college admissions counselor. In that capacity, I have noticed a distinct trend: my students, by and large, only consider Virginia’s larger and/or more well-known schools. Ask one of my typical students which colleges they are considering, and you will hear a rather predictable answer: “George Mason.” “UVA.” “VCU.” “William and Mary.”

Granted, these schools all have excellent programs; I myself attended the College of William and Mary for the final two years of my undergraduate education and quite enjoyed myself. And there is also something to be said for the power of name recognition once you hit the employment market. But I believe students should be made aware of the disadvantages of attending “brand name” schools – and the advantages of attending a school that is a little out of the mainstream.

Back in the mid nineties – the dinosaur age for my students – I was a college-bound Virginia high school student with strong test scores, a nine-out-of-ten passing rate on my AP exams, and a B to B+ grade point average. I was also a student who had checked that little box on the PSAT form that granted permission for colleges of all sorts to send me information, which means that I had, in my bedroom, a box full of colorful college brochures from places as far flung as New England, New York, and California. And I thank God for that box of mail, because it broadened my perspective on college admissions most considerably. Indeed, when it finally came time for me to start applying to college, two Massachusetts schools made it onto my master list: Harvard, my reach school, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a little engineering school (enrollment roughly 2000) in central Massachusetts that I had visited with my mother and adored.

I was rejected by Harvard, which I had expected, and admitted to WPI. And ultimately, I decided to enroll at WPI. There was much about WPI’s program that appealed to me. First, the class sizes were manageable. Second, the professors were accessible. Third, the curriculum was project based; in fact, all WPI students were, at the time, required to complete three research projects in order to earn a bachelor’s degree. Bottom line, WPI, like many smaller schools, was more equipped to cater especially to undergraduates and more able to provide a curriculum outside of the standard.

When I told people at school where I was going, the response was usually the same: “Where the heck is that?” I suppose that even in the dinosaur age, Virginia students were staying in Virginia. But I don’t regret the choice I made back then, even though I ultimately changed my major and transferred to William and Mary to complete my BS. The student culture at WPI is something I will always remember fondly – and thanks to the individual attention I received during my first two years of college, I believe my science and math education in particular is world class.

Because of the positive experience I had at a small school, I try to inform my students of those out-of-the-way opportunities that seem to escape the average young Virginian’s imagination. Just the other day, actually, I encouraged one student to consider Sweet Briar College, a private school for women that, yes, is located in Virginia. And that moment got me thinking: now that I have a platform – i.e., this blog – on which I can share my thoughts about education and college admissions, why not take advantage of it?

Thus, in the future, I will be featuring small area schools like Sweet Briar on this blog in the hopes that Virginia students like mine will expand their college search. Consider that a sort of mission statement

Filed Under: College Search

Rational Expressions – Fractions in Algebra

May 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

At the end of last week’s lesson on fractions, I left our readers with a challenge problem to solve:

X2 + 3X + 2
X2 + 4X + 4

Simplify.

This week, we will discuss in detail how to solve this and other problems involving the simplification of rational expressions. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Math

C2 Education

May 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

C2 is the smart choice for students who want to do better. We offer customized curricula, personalized attention and a wide variety of enrichment services for students from kindergarten through high school. Be smarter. Choose C2.

Filed Under: Slideshow
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