Improve your chances of getting into college,

At Crisp Consulting + Coaching, we provide the following strategy for our students in the college application process. Identify the teachers who can write effective letters highlighting your academic contributions, intellectual curiosity and personal strengths. This is not necessarily your favorite teacher or the teacher from the class where you received an A. This could be a teacher of the course where you faced struggle to understand content and achieve a good grade. Often this teacher will accent your work strong work ethic and academic prowess.

Once you have identified the teachers who will highlight your academic and personal strengths, politely ask they are comfortable writing a strong letter that highlights your work in the class. Make the process easier by providing a copy of your activities sheet, your transcript and an envelope addressed to the admission office. During the process, it is acceptable to reconnect with the writer a week prior to the deadline to ensure that the letters have been mailed. Follow up with a handwritten thank-you note.

With lives of teachers and students becoming increasingly busy, it is critical to plan. Failure to plan could jeopardize a needed letter of recommendation. To avoid any surprises, create a calendar noting when your letters of recommendation are due, typically two to three weeks before the application deadlines. Teachers have busy lives and the fall semester often brings extra responsibilities, therefore ask teachers early and include your deadline in your requests. If the teachers are not using an electronic format, providing an envelope addressed to the admission office will assist in expediting the process.

In the arena of sport, speed is often a desired trait. In the arena of college applications and selective college admission, thoughtful approaches are desired. Focusing on strategies and outcomes will be beneficial. Although speed is never suggested, you can streamline the process by identifying the teachers that will write the most effective and positive letters of recommendations. When teachers agree to write your letters, be prepared and have copies of your transcripts and activities sheet for their reference. Creating a calendar with deadlines will also keep the process moving in a timely direction. This process may not be fast, yet it will be effective and assist in realizing your admission goals.

The ACT and SAT are widely accepted at many of the selective colleges across the United States. Although both are accepted, they are extremely different. Your strengths as a student will determine which test provides you with the greatest advantage while demonstrating your abilities to admission officers.

What’s the Diff? The ACT and SAT have both different content and different scoring rubrics. Each test will require its own strategies. Some of the main differences to help you decide should be the following:

She Blinded Me With Science. The ACT includes specific science content and the SAT does not. If you are not comfortable with science and working with scientific information, then the SAT may be a better choice.

Write of Passage. The SAT essay is required and the essay is optional on the ACT. If writing is not a strong suit, the ACT may be an advantageous choice.

Score Card. The SAT deducts 1/4 point for each incorrect answer (except the math grid-ins) and the ACT has no wrong answer penalty. Guess strategies will be different for each test.

To understand if a certain test will provide a particular advantage you should take a practice test for each. Many test preparation companies have assessments that will help you better understand which test is better for your admission goals. Regardless of the ACT, SAT or both, you will need preparation specific to that test.

Like most of life, the key challenge is time. Building speed while maintaining accuracy is critical. Mastering a few simple time-saving techniques and simple practice can significantly increase your test-taking efficiency. Once these tools are in place, test anxiety surrounding the standardized tests can give way to the confidence needed to boost your over all score.

Memorize the directions. Time is money or, in the case of the SAT, time is points. The directions to each section never change. Memorizing the directions frees time that could be spent on actual test taking.

Jump Around. Within each section you are allowed to jump around. Answer the easiest questions first. If you encounter a difficult question, circle it in your test booklet and skip it. Return to the difficult questions once you’ve answer the questions you know first. This keeps your primary as it should be: Acquiring points!

Five at a time. Transfer your answers to the answer sheet after every five questions. You will avoid costly grid mistakes and save time.

Take a dry run. The College Board offers myriad ways to practice questions for the PSAT and SAT. Question of the Day can be sent to you e-mail or as an app for your iPhone. In addition, a full-length practice test can be taken at www.collegeboard.com/practice/

Nothing strikes fear into a human being more than rabid vampires and math. In fact, after typing that sentence I am sure my 9th-grade algebra teacher was a vampire. Blood-letting aside, the SAT polynomials are as harmless as the Twilight vampires. There will be three math components of the SAT. Two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section covering math operations covered through the 9th-grade math curriculum: algebra, data analysis, geometry, numbers and operations, probability, and statistics. As with all questions on the SAT, the first questions will be the most simple and grow in complexity. The fangs of math will quickly retract with a favorite strategy of Crisp Consulting + Coaching:

Words Count. Knowing how the grammar of word problems implies a function will help you save time and find the best-fitting answer:

of = multiply

exceeds by =subtract/add

greater than = subtract/add

more/of = percentage

Knowing the function will assist you in eliminating answers and improving your math score.

Writing the college essay is necessary to gain entrance through the ivy gates. At the moment we are working with high school seniors feverishly writing compositions that highlight their unique attributes and strengths. Crisp Consulting + Coaching would like to offer some clear strategies for crafting personal essays that garnish positive attention from admission committees.

1. Prepare. Transition from thinking about your college essays to writing clearly and effectively with brainstorming. Collecting ideas will assist you in focusing a well-written personal essay.

2. Provoke. Personal essays should provide answers about you to the admission committee. These insights should display your strengths, passions and uniqueness.

3. Personalize. Remember, an effective personal essay is about you. Writing eloquently about a historical figure detailing myriad obstacles and accomplishments is for naught. The admission committee wants to know about the applicant not an icon or event.

As more and more students apply to college, a strong personal essay will gain the attention of an admission officer. Crafting an essay based on your personal strengths and passions is a strategy that will assist you in the college admission process.

Focus on ways you have internalized and personalized academic research and demonstrate how this will enhance the university’s academic community. Writing about hiking the Appalachian Trail or obsessively reading "To Kill A Mocking Bird" is noble but not memorable. Simply recanting facts will not distinguish you from other candidates with equal class rank, grades and test scores. Instead of recounting your admiration of Atticus Finch or the red pine of the Carolinas, enhance your essay with the research you’ve done on forest preservation for ecological and cultural conservation or the means which Harper Lee challenges notions of race and gender and its specific correlation with your own understanding of humanity. Making your scholarly endeavors personal will pique curiosity and demonstrate your potential to contribute to an academic community.