NFL Hall of Fame Wide Receiver Jerry Rice once said: “Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t.”
During his playing days, Rice’s off-season conditioning regimen was legendary. He worked out incessantly in preparation for the grueling NFL season.
I have said many times that the “game” is often won in practice. What will you do with your free time this summer?
How does this quote apply to your studying?
A student of mine just improved her SAT score 200 points and scored a 10 on her essay. Impressive, but this is not the whole story. Six years ago she was not even living in the United States and did not speak English. This fall she will be attending the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Co.
Her mother called to thank me. I told her mother, “Don’t thank me, it’s your daughter that put in the work and took the test.” Moral of the story–Everyone should own their effort. A tutor is only a conduit of knowledge and test taking advice. How the student uses this knowledge will ultimately determine success or failure.
Moral of the story–you can achieve any goal which you deem important enough to put in the appropriate time and effort.
Vocabulary is an essential component of the SAT. Sure, mastery of definitions is important for sentence completions. However, a great vocabulary is also an asset for success on the entire test. For example, many times there will be a keyword in the sentence itself. How can we complete a sentence we don’t fully understand?
Often, difficult words will show up as the answers to passage based reading questions. At other times, difficult words will be in the passage itself. I have even noticed that such words like “respectively” will sometimes show up in a long winded math word problem. Of course, almost immediately, my students will ask me, “What does respectively mean?”
Even in the writing section, a sentence error might contain the improper use of a word
