Is your teenager a great student who happens to be bad on big tests?
Is the SAT or ACT giving them a surprisingly hard time?
Is there a big mismatch between their stellar grades and their weak test scores?
Your teenager can turn this challenge into an opportunity for success – not just on the SAT, but for life!
Consider Heather, a former student of ours at Much Smarter.
If you asked any of her teachers, they would tell you that Heather was one of the best students they'd ever met.
She's highly motivated.
Her grades were A+ across the board.
She brings high integrity and quality into everything she does,
putting the effort in to produce an extraordinary result.
But Heather's SAT scores did not look anything like her grades.
And that struck Heather as a problem on several levels.
She had hopes of attending an Ivy League school, and all her credentials were in place -- except this one!
She was frustrated by the gap between her grades and test scores, because she did not understand why the gap even existed. How could this be?
And then, she did what young people so often do: She began to think that the problem had something to do with her.
She knew other students who were outstanding like her, and none of them were having difficulty with the SAT or ACT.
So Heather began to think that she was not as smart as these other students
She began to doubt herself and think, "maybe I'm one of those students who only do well because I work hard."
When she moved past her frustration and self-doubt, here's how she handled her SAT / ACT difficulty.
Heather learned to approach the SAT / ACT as a game.
She learned that her initial challenges with the SAT had nothing to do with how smart she is.
She gave herself time to succeed, allowing herself a year to master her new game.
At the end of the year, she was as good at the SAT / ACT game as she was at getting high grades.
And the accomplishment helped her gain admission -- early decision -- to an Ivy League university.
In the next and final part of this article (part 5), I'll discuss why this accomplishment, while helpful, was actually the smallest part of what Heather gained by mastering her SAT / ACT game.
