Philosophy
You don't need to be born with it.
I give every one of my students a free copy of Talent Is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin. Why? Because the title alone, and the evidence in the book, affirm my core belief about the SAT and ACT: your score has almost nothing to do with your innate ability, and almost everything to do with the skills you develop with deliberate practice.
My job as your mentor is to diagnose which skills you need most, help you learn them, and coach you to practice them effectively until they're second nature. That's the whole program, in one sentence. Everything below is why I believe it.
Automaticity
The difference between high scorers and low scorers on the SAT isn't IQ or innate ability. It's automaticity. High scorers have practiced certain skills enough times that they don't have to think about how a question is solved; their brain already knows how to do it, without conscious input. That's why they finish with time to spare, and why they don't make careless mistakes on the easy ones: the easy ones don't cost them any thought at all.
And here's the secret: anyone can develop this kind of automaticity. It isn't a gift. It's the predictable result of the right practice, done the right way, for long enough. The neuroscience behind it (the way repeated, focused practice physically insulates the pathways your brain uses, a process called myelination, which Daniel Coyle explains in The Talent Code) is the same for a violinist, a point guard, an actor learning a role, and a junior learning to see a systems-of-equations problem and reach for the right move before she's finished reading it.
What "deliberate practice" actually means
It's a specific thing, not a synonym for "more homework." Colvin's definition, which comes from decades of research on expert performers, has five parts, and every one of them is built into how I work:
- It's designed to improve performance, usually by a teacher who knows what to work on. That's week one: a diagnostic test, then the two or three skills that are worth the most points, in order.
- It can be repeated a lot. The SAT and ACT are made of a finite set of question types. We drill them, on official questions, until they're boring.
- Feedback is continuously available. Every miss goes in an error log with its cause. You explain it back to me. Explaining a miss is where the learning happens.
- It's mentally demanding. Which is why homework is three hours a week in short sittings, not a six-hour Sunday. Your brain needs the reps to be spaced, with sleep in between.
- It isn't much fun. I'm honest about this with students. What is fun is watching the number move, and it moves.
Why a mentor, and not just a book
A book can teach you the rules. I know, because a book is how I raised my own score as a teenager. What a book can't do is see you. A mentor watches you work a problem, notices that you dropped a negative in your head for the third time this week, and changes what you practice next. A mentor also knows when to push and when to slow down, which is most of coaching. My whole career on stage was built by mentors like that. I try to be one.
A few of the rules I teach
Skills, not tricks. Each of these is a habit we practice until you do it without deciding to.
What this means for you
If you've ever looked at a score and thought "that's not who I am," you're right. It isn't. It's a snapshot of which skills were automatic on that particular morning. We can change which skills are automatic. That's the work, and it's work that anyone willing to practice can do.
Start with a free 20-minute call.
You, your student, and me. I'll ask a lot of questions and tell you honestly what I'd do in your shoes, including which test to take. No decision required on the call.