My students know this the first day we start sessions. And I repeat this mantra over and over.
The first reason I share this statement with students is to reduce any stress and anxiety they have about the SAT, ACT, PSAT, SSAT or other standardized test. Since stress is the enemy of test performance, it is important for students to understand that their test score does not determine everything about the potential for college acceptance.
The second reason I share this with my students is so that they start to build out the rest of the pie. Admission decisions are based on test scores, GPA, essays, letters of reference, interviews, portfolios and more. Since test scores are only one piece of this, I encourage my students to work on the other pie pieces in conjunction with test scores.
A college counselor friend of mine likes to tell the story of a student who did not have the test scores for UC Berkeley, or so he thought. He helped his client apply to UC Merced in addition to UC Berkeley so that we would have a viable back up option. His test scores indicated that acceptance to UC Merced was highly probable. Turns out the student did not get accepted to UC Merced but got accepted by UC Berkeley. Something happened along the way that had nothing to do with test scores.
Another story worth noting happened recently at Harvard. The school rescinded the admission of ten students after the school learned the students had posted obscene messages on Facebook. These students undoubtedly had excellent test scores but test scores were not enough.
Test scores can matter but a perfect score is not enough. Be sure you work on all aspects of your application, not just the measurable ones.
For more test prep advice, contact CROSSWALK today.
