COllege Admissions News and ACT / SAT Strategy

In a recent guest post for the College Solution, we showed how Indiana University has a simple automatic scholarship system to attract top students that might otherwise choose more highly ranked schools.  This system is based on an assessment of GPA and ACT score.  For certain students, it provides an automatic $11,000 per year scholarship, making IU much more affordable than it otherwise would be.  So, I argued that, even if you already have a high ACT score, it could make sense to hire an ACT tutor and try to squeeze out another point, which would bump you into the $11,000 automatic scholarship range, and may impact which school you choose to attend.

In this post, with the implications of part 1 in mind (i.e., significant reduction in the cost of attending IU) I’ll illustrate the potential decision faced by a high school senior from Illinois considering five schools:

If you're a college senior or junior, then you probably know that many colleges offer an early application option. There are two main types of early options: early action and early decision. The deadlines for these applications are usually in late October or early November, so now if you are a senior in college now is the time to make the move! For juniors or underclassmen, keep this in mind for the future.

College admissions tests are hard! No matter how well you prepared for them the first time, you may not have gotten the score you wanted on your first try. Many people retake the tests at least once in order to learn from their mistakes and improve their scores.

If you just started your junior or senior year of high school, then you have a lot of big decisions coming up in your life! In addition to all your tough classes and rewarding extra curricular activities, you have to juggle the college admissions process. After your high school transcript and personal essays, test scores are the final big piece of the college admissions puzzle. So how can you get the score that will get you into your dream school?

The big decision to make is whether you are going to submit ACT scores, SAT scores, or both. First, check out the requirements of the colleges you will be applying to. Many schools only require that you submit either an ACT or an SAT score, but some are still strict about which one they prefer.

If the choice is yours, then you can consider which test is more suited to your style of thinking and test-taking. Putting some time into deciding which test to take will pay off when you get your highest possible score; there are some big differences between the tests.