FRIDAY MARCH 7, 2014
Department Contacts:
Alejandra Cashiola,
Administrative Assistant
[email protected]
713.490.8154
Lynn Veazey, Director
[email protected]
713-490-8205
Carol Bailey, Counselor
[email protected]
713.490.8136
Jamy Champenoy, Counselor
[email protected]
713.490.8148
Allison Clifton, Counselor
[email protected]
713.272.4371
Kevin Kehoe, Counselor
[email protected]
713.490.8210
Tom Kulick, Counselor
[email protected]
713.490.8132
James Saltzman, Counselor
[email protected]
713.490.8234
George Wrobel, Counselor
[email protected]
713-490-8114
ATTENTION SENIORS:
Please remember that all college admissions decisions and scholarship offers
must be reported to the Counseling Office. Either see Mrs. Cashiola in the
Counseling Center or email her at [email protected] each time you
receive an admissions decision and/or scholarship offer. When reporting
scholarships, please be sure to include the name and dollar amount of each
scholarship. Thanks in advance for your help and cooperation with this matter.
ATTENTION SOPHOMORES: Information RE: SAT Subject Tests
Consider taking an SAT II Subject Test at the end of the school year if you meet
one or both of the criteria listed below. If you have not yet discussed this matter
with your counselor, please stop by with questions/concerns.


If you are currently enrolled in AP US History, consider taking the US
History SAT Subject Test in May or June.
If you are currently enrolled in AC Chemistry and DO NOT plan on taking
either Chemistry II or AP Chemistry during 11/12 grade, consider taking
the Chemistry SAT Subject Test in May or June.
NOTE: Strake Jesuit is an SAT Reasoning/ SAT Subject Test Site on June 7,
2014.
NOTE: Visit www.collegeboard.org for information about the tests including:



FREE practice questions and resources
Individual test content
Test registration
COLLEGE FUN FACT
ATTENTION JUNIORS: Upcoming College Rep Visits
Do you know which college
is named after a US
Supreme Court Justice?
Marshall University traces its
origin to 1837 when residents of
the community of Guyandotte,
then part of Virginia, and the
farming region nearby turned
their attention to providing better
educational facilities for their
sons and daughters. According
to tradition, they met at the
home of local lawyer John
Laidley, planned their school,
and named it Marshall Academy
in honor of a friend of Laidley’s,
the late Chief Justice of the
United States John Marshall.
Please remember that you must first sign up in the Counseling Office and
obtain teacher permission before attending.
Monday March 24, 2014
12:25 PM: Trinity University
2:05 PM: Iowa State University
Tuesday March 25, 2014
8:15 AM: Kansas State University
Thursday April 3, 2014
2:05 PM: University of Dallas
UPCOMING TEST DATES
Indicates that test offered at Strake Jesuit College Preparatory
ACT Plus Writing
SAT and SAT Subject Test
www.actstudent.org
www.collegeboard.com
TEST DATE
REGISTRATION
DEADLINE
TEST DATE
REGISTRATION
DEADLINE
April 12, 2014
March 7, 2014
(3/21/14 with late fee)
May 3, 2014
April 4, 2014
May 9, 2014
(5/23/14 with late fee)
June 7, 2014
June 14, 2014
(4/18/14 with late fee)
May 9, 2014
(5/23/14 with late fee)
Information from KAPLAN Test Prep
Kaplan Test Prep is offering several free events in March through their Live Online program. These are all
100% free resources, and can be excellent for juniors getting geared up for their official exams this spring. For
a list of practice tests and seminars, visit kaptest.com/hsevents.
Please also know that if you are interested in enrolling your son in one of Kaplan’s prep programs, you are
eligible to take advantage of a 100 discount currently available to our families. Until March 11, Kaplan is
offering $100 off of their SAT or ACT Classroom Course, Unlimited Prep program, and Premier
Tutoring packages. Their most popular choice, Classroom SAT or ACT Prep, is led by top-scoring teachers
and offers comprehensive classes in an On Site or Classroom Anywhere™ course. Students can work with
instructors in class or live over the internet. For more information, please call 1-800-527-8378, or visit
kaptest.com/satprepnow.
SAVE THE DATE
WHO: Rising seniors
WHAT: College essay writing workshop
WHEN: Monday August 4-Friday August 8, 2014
WHERE: Strake Jesuit College Preparatory
The Counseling Department is pleased to offer a college essay writing workshop for members of
the class of 2015. Each section will be led by a teacher with extensive experience in college
essay writing. In this class students will brainstorm, read and discuss sample essays, and
complete at least one application essay. Mark your calendars and keep your eyes and ears
peeled for registration information during the coming weeks.
Testing day for grades 9, 10, 11:
Friday April 25, 2014
The PLAN Test, a practice ACT Test, will be administered to all ninth and tenth graders at
Strake Jesuit on Friday April 25, 2014. While freshmen and sophomores are testing, eleventh
graders will cycle through three, 1 hour Counseling Department presentations dealing with
teacher letters of recommendation, college application essays and activities resumes. Seniors
do not have school on this day.
SUMMER PROGRAM INFORMATION
Now is the perfect time to start discussing summer plans with your son. A list of summer
academic and enrichment programs is on the Counseling page of the school website. It is
important to start looking at possibilities now as many application deadlines are approaching and
very often students will need letters of recommendation in addition to their applications. The list
is being updated, so if you have any questions, please email Mr. Saltzman at
[email protected]
SAT to drop essay requirement and return to top score of
1600 in redesign of admission test
By Nick Anderson
The Washington Times
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
The SAT college admission test will no longer require a timed essay, will dwell less on fancy vocabulary and
will return to the familiar 1600-point scoring scale in a major overhaul intended to open doors to higher
education for students who are now shut out.
The second redesign of the SAT in this century — announced Wednesday and scheduled to go into effect
when today’s high school freshmen take it in 2016 — aims to strip many of the tricks out of a test currently
administered to more than 1.5 million students in every high school graduating class. It also comes with a
College Board pledge to offer new test-preparation tutorials for free online, enabling students to bypass pricey
SAT-prep classes that previously were available mostly to affluent families looking to give their children an
edge.
Out in the redesign will be “SAT words” that have long prompted anxious students to cram with flashcards, as
the test will now focus on vocabulary words that are widely used in college and career. The College Board
hasn’t yet cited examples of words deemed too obscure, but “punctilious,” “phlegmatic” and “occlusion” are
three tough ones in a College Board study guide.
Out, too, will be a much-reviled rule that deducts a quarter point for each wrong answer to multiple-choice
questions, deterring random guesses. Also gone: The 2400-point scale begun nine years ago with the debut of
the required essay. The essay will become optional.
Back will be one of the iconic numbers of 20th-century America: The perfect SAT score, crystalline without a
comma, returns to 1600.
With these and other changes — such as asking students to analyze documents key to the nation’s founding
— College Board officials said they want to make the SAT more accessible, straightforward and grounded in
what is taught in high school. Experts say SAT scores have long been strongly correlated to family income, a
dynamic the College Board hopes to shake up. Its initiative comes as the 88-year-old test in recent years has
slipped behind the rival ACT — a shorter exam with an optional essay — in total student customers.
“The road to college success has always been the practice of excellent work in our classrooms,” David
Coleman, the College Board’s president, said in an advance copy of a speech planned for Wednesday
afternoon in Austin. “It is time for an admissions assessment that makes it clear that the road to success is not
last-minute tricks or cramming, but the challenging learning students do each day.”
At the same time, Coleman fired a broadside at a test-prep industry that sells books, flashcards and courses to
help students raise their scores in the hopes of gaining an edge in competitive college admissions and
scholarships.
Coleman said the New York-based organization will team with the nonprofit Khan Academy, which delivers
free tutorials in math and other subjects via a popular Web site of the same name, to provide free SAT prep for
the world.
“The College Board cannot stand by while some test-prep providers intimidate parents at all levels of income
into the belief that the only way they can secure their child’s success is to pay for costly test preparation and
coaching,” Coleman said. “If we believe that assessment must be a force for equity and excellence, it’s time to
shake things up.”
Coleman also repeated a pledge he made at the White House in January: The College Board will deliver four
college application fee waivers to each test-taker meeting income eligibility requirements, allowing students to
apply to four schools for free.
Coleman, head of the College Board since fall 2012, previously was a key figure in the development of the new
Common Core State Standards. Those standards, which set national expectations for what students should
learn in math and English from kindergarten through 12th grade, have been fully adopted in 45 states and the
District. Coleman’s vision for the new SAT, with emphasis on analysis of texts from a range of disciplines as
well as key math and language concepts, appears to echo the philosophy underlying the Common Core and
could match the test more closely to what students are learning in the classroom.
The redesign follows a challenging decade for a standardized test launched in 1926 that has wielded
enormous influence in American education from the Great Depression through the era of No Child Left Behind.
Advocates say the SAT provides a common yardstick for academic merit; critics call it a tool to protect the
interests of the elite.
Originally the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the SAT shed that name years ago along with the devilish antonym and
analogy questions that were a staple of what was once called the “verbal” section. It underwent a major
change in 2005 that drew mixed reviews.
That year, a writing section, worth a maximum 800 points, was added with multiple-choice questions and a 25minute essay. Critics complained that too little time was given for essay revisions and that writing assignments
did not reflect the level of analysis expected in college. Some college admissions officers also were lukewarm.
“As a predictor of student success, a 25-minute essay isn’t going to tell us a great deal,” said Stephen J.
Handel, associate vice president of undergraduate admissions for the University of California.
And in recent years, more and more students were gravitating toward the rival ACT exam. The SAT has long
been dominant on the West coast, in the Northeast and in the Washington region. The ACT, launched in 1959
and overseen by an organization based in Iowa, attracts more students in the middle of the country and the
South.
The two tests overlap in mission but diverge in style and content, with the ACT traditionally measuring
achievement (including a science section) and the SAT measuring thinking skills. But the ACT has made
inroads on the SAT’s turf, and many students now take both. In 2012, the ACT surpassed the SAT in the
number of reported test-takers.
Both exams also are facing challenges from the growing test-optional movement. The National Center for Fair
and Open Testing lists about 800 colleges and universities that admit a substantial number of undergraduates
without requiring them to submit SAT or ACT scores.
Among them is American University, which started the experiment in 2010. Now 18 percent of its applicants do
not submit SAT or ACT scores.
“It’s rising, and it’s gone up every year,” said Sharon Alston, AU’s vice provost for undergraduate enrollment.
She said the university has not detected “any significant difference” in the performance of students who don’t
submit test scores compared with those who do.
College Board officials, mindful of these developments, say the redesign has a larger purpose.
“We’re not just chasing market share here, I can assure you that,” said Shirley Ort, a top financial aid official at
the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who is vice chair of the College Board’s governing board. “We
want the SAT to be more than just an event that takes place in a test center. We think it can serve as a catalyst
for student engagement.”
The redesign will beef up the essay, giving students who choose to take it 50 minutes to analyze evidence and
explain how an author builds an argument. The rest of the test will be three hours. Currently the SAT takes
three hours and 45 minutes.
The math section will tighten its focus on data analysis, problem solving, algebra and topics leading into
advanced math. Calculators, now permitted throughout the math section, will be barred in some portions to
help gauge math fluency.
The section now called “critical reading” will be merged with multiple-choice writing questions to form a new
section called “evidence-based reading and writing.” Questions known as “sentence completion,” which in part
assess vocabulary, will be dropped. Analysis of passages in science, history and social studies will be
expanded.
And each version of the test will include a passage from documents crucial to the nation’s founding, or core
civic texts from sources such as President Abraham Lincoln or the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
When the test probes student vocabulary, the College Board said, it will focus on “words that are widely used
in college and career.” Coleman cited “synthesis” as an example. “This is not an obscure word, but one
students encounter everywhere,” he said.
Choosing such words could prove difficult. Carol Jago, a past president of the National Council of Teachers of
English, who serves on a College Board advisory panel, said the test revisions would “reward students who
take high school seriously, who are real readers, who write well.” She said she was loath to drop from the
exam a word such as “egalitarian,” which appears in one College Board practice test. But she said: “Maybe we
can live without ‘phlegmatic.’ ”