Christmas is over, the new year is about to launch, and your SAT scores remain the same. Book now so you can have a spot in our February 19-20 POWER SAT Boot Camp with SAT guru Mike Barrett.

As we joyfully watch our students’ early acceptances come in,
those getting into top schools had high standardized test scores! That’s just a given. Then comes the leadership, going above and beyond, etc. Make sure you give yourself options in the admissions journey and open doors with high SAT scores. Mike’s strategies have proven to help raise students’ test scores by up to 100 points with just five hours of tutoring. Now, we’re DOUBLING those hours and giving the you face-to-face, classroom-style learning you’ve been asking for, all with the same individualized attention from this unconventional genius.

We’ll be there to talk about college admissions before you begin your intense two day Boot Camp and crack the SAT code! We hope to see you there. Contact our Managing Director, Lauren Gilfeather, at Lauren@ApplicationBootCamp.com for any questions, or sign up today!

We are THRILLED to announce that our Application Boot Camp® 2010 students and those who have used ABC’s Self Guided Program, Essay Packages, and our one on one clients have the acceptances rolling in!

Over the last few days, we have heard from students who were accepted Early Decision and Early Action at Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Middlebury, Williams, University of Pennsylvania, Duke, University of Chicago, MIT, Georgetown, Boston College, University of Texas, Vanderbilt, NYU: Tisch School, Pomona, Purdue, Emerson, U Michigan and more!

We want to congratulate those of you who have gotten in to your top choice college using the ABC strategy! Here’s what some of you have said:

I got into Wharton today!!!!!! You guys were terrific—I just know that Application Boot Camp made a difference!!!! I don’t know whether it was the Activity Sheet or the fact that I specified my area of academic interest as “classical microeconomic theory” or your recommendation that I disclose an obstacle which I have made strides to overcome, but whatever it was, it worked!! Josh was HUGE as well. Thanks for everything.
– Student, Wharton Class of 2015

I AM IN!!!! I GOT INTO MIDDLEBURY!!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING, YOU MADE THIS POSSIBLE.
– Student, Middlebury Class of 2015

Thank you guys SO MUCH for your help…it’s literally changed my life!
- Student, Cornell Class of 2015

Ladies, you’ve done it again with our second Boot Camp child. J was just accepted early action to Stanford! We are truly grateful for your wisdom and enthusiasm.
–    Parents, Stanford Class of 2015

I just have to share the good news with you. Our son was accepted this week to his first choice school: Carleton College. I want to thank you again for the boost your materials gave to him during the application process. I feel certain he would not have had a shot at acceptance at Carleton without the benefit of your Self Guided Application Boot Camp materials. He used your advice to develop an application that helped the admissions committee look past his 3.3 GPA and lack of hooks while highlighting his awards, achievements, strengths and skills. Thanks for your part in the process.
– Parent, Carleton College Class of 2015

We want to remind current juniors that there are still spots open in Application Boot Camp® 2011 in Cambridge, MA. The above quotes could be similar to what you send us next year at this time! Click above for more information or email Managing Director Lauren Gilfeather at Lauren@ApplicationBootCamp.com.

For current seniors trying to finish their applications for January 1 or 15 deadlines we still have our Self Guided Program available, as well as our Essay Package with Josh Stephens, who has a few spots left for his five-hour package editing last-minute essays.

If you haven’t finished your applications, now is the time to kick it up a notch! If you are a current junior, plan ahead! Early applications were up again this year: for instance, Dartmouth’s early applications were up by nearly 14%; Vanderbilt’s were up by 30%; Bowdoin’s applications were up by 10%; U Penn had an 18% increase and Northwestern reported a 26% increase. This tells us that the regular round will be BRUTAL. Stand out with a well thought out application package!

For more information about these products, please visit us at www.ApplicationBootCamp.com, or email Lauren at Lauren@ApplicationBootCamp.com

Another tip from Application Boot Camp® tutoring guru, Mike
Barrett:

If you’re going to do well on the SAT, you have to realize two things.
First, you have to know that the SAT is a totally objective test, and
that every single question has only one right answer. This is not like
a test you take in high school. Those tests are written by one or two
people, usually with very little review. The SAT, on the other hand,
is written by teams of people. Before a question appears on the SAT,
it’s been reviewed by experts and tested on real test-takers. SAT
questions are basically bullet-proof. No matter how much it might
seem otherwise, every question on the SAT has only one good
answer. You can’t approach it like you approach a high school
multiple-choice test, where anything goes and you’ll get a chance to
argue your point later on.

Once you come to accept that, the second thing you have to realize is
that you—specifically YOU, the person reading this right now—can
find the answer to every SAT question if you learn what to look for.
You can. And with the right practice, you will.

So let’s wrap this whole thing up nice and simple:

1. The only way to do really well on the SAT is to mark the
   correct answer to most of the questions on the test.
2. The only reliable way to mark the correct answer consistently
   is to be able to identify it consistently.
3. Before you can identify the correct answer consistently, you
   have to know and believe that there will always be one correct
   answer for every question—if you’re open to the possibility
   that more than one answer will be correct, you won’t be strict
   about eliminating answers by using the rules and patterns of
   the test.
4. Most students never realize this, and as a result they never
   maximize their performance.  Instead, they treat the SAT like
   a regular high school test, which is a huge mistake for the
   reasons we just discussed.

Now that we’ve established this very important concept, we have to
talk about something that comes up often in testing situations…

What Do You Do When It Looks Like There Might Be Two
Right Answers To a Question?

Even though you know there can only be one answer to every SAT
uestion, there will be times on the test when you think more than
one answer might be correct. It happens to everybody. It happens
to me, and it will happen to you. When it does happen, you must
immediately recognize that you’ve done something wrong—you
missed a key word in the question, you left off a minus sign,
something like that.

There are two ways to fix this situation. One way is to cut your
losses and go on to the next question, planning to return to the
difficult question later on, when your head has cleared. This is my
preferred approach. The second way is to keep working on the
difficult question. Try and figure out what might be causing the
confusion while the question is still fresh in your mind, and resolve
the issue right then and there. I tend to find that my subconscious
keeps working on the problem after I’ve moved on, and when I
come back to it things are clearer. However, some people find that
moving on without answering a question just means they have to
familiarize themselves with it allover again when they come back,
and they prefer to stay focused on a particular question until they
either find the right answer or decide to give up on it for good.

To see which type of person you are, just do what comes naturally, and
experiment a little bit with both approaches.

Conclusion:

The main thing to remember is that for every question there is only
one correct answer. If you think you see more than one possible
answer to a question, you’re wrong.  That’s it—no discussion.

To become successful on the SAT, you MUST realize that every
multiple-choice question on the SAT has exactly one correct answer,
and you must train yourself to find the correct answer every time.
This isn’t a regular high school test. Don’t treat it like one.

Finally, a college president who comes on record to say what we already know! We’ve been advocates of early decision for years. We were horrified when Harvard and Princeton and UVA got rid of early under the pretense of “not being fair” to poor kids (and UVA just announced that they are putting back EA next year). The truth is, they could have KEPT ED/EA but simply marketed the correct facts to all students including that they typically get MORE financial aid, not LESS in early. We’ve told kids for years that once they take you in the early round, they will make the financial aid work or they will let you out of the agreement. The way of the future for college admissions is to have more early options at more colleges. The early round not only has a higher acceptance rate, but it also gives the student a chance to express a clear first choice/commitment, and we think that’s important both for the colleges AND for the students!

Read the The New York Times article here

Unfortunately, many students start their standardized testing
during their junior year and have not taken any SAT Subject
tests. The last thing you want to do is wait until spring of
junior year and then take three Subject Tests on the same test
date! Taking three tests in one day almost always results in
getting lower scores on all three tests than if you took them on
separate dates. Try to take at least one or two SAT Subject Tests
freshman or sophomore year so the burden does not fall on
junior and senior year. If you’re a junior, take advantage of
midyear test dates like the upcoming January test. If you plan
to take the SAT in January of your junior year and again in
March, by the May test date you’ll be ready to spread your SAT
Subject Tests into two distinct test dates: May and June. If you
are an international student, however, there is no March test
date for the SAT. Don’t underestimate the importance of
Subject Tests—colleges sometimes count them even more than
SAT’s since they provide an idea of what grading is like at your
high school.

A quick tip about the essay on the SAT writing section: The
longer your essay, the higher your score. All the high-scoring
sample essays included in The Official SAT Study Guide for
The New SAT are fairly long and well-developed, while the
low-scoring sample essays are much shorter. But be careful—even
though an essay score often correlates with their length, that
doesn’t mean that writing garbage just to fill up space is a good
idea. Rather, it means is that if you’ve written a short essay,
your chances of scoring high are slim. So if you think you’ve
finished your essay and you still have a few minutes left, add
another paragraph or two and you’ll probably earn an extra point
or two!