There are lots of reasons to work hard in high school: you gain important knowledge and skills, your grades help you get into great universities, and your dedication can even earn you scholarship money for tuition!   

But your hard work can also help you become valedictorian or salutatorian, which are awards given to the top two students in your graduating class. But what does it mean to be a valedictorian vs. a salutatorian?

Don’t worry: you’ve come to the right place! Not only will we explain what a valedictorian and salutatorian is, we’ll also dig into the similarities and differences between the two awards and what they mean for the college admissions process.

If you’ve found yourself waitlisted or deferred from your dream school, you might be worried and frustrated. What does being on the waitlist mean? Do you still have a chance of getting in? What can you do to improve your chances?

While there’s not one singular way of ensuring your eventual admission to your dream school, a letter of continued interest can show your continued dedication to the admissions committee. In this article, we’ll talk about what a continued interest letter is and give a letter of continued interest sample so you know how to write your own if you need to.

College applications are all about showing off to the admissions committee, and what better way to do so than to lead with your most impressive academic awards. What are the best academic honors and awards to put on a college application?

In this guide, we give you 70+ academic honors examples to give you an idea of what types of achievements colleges like to see most on applications. In addition, we explain what counts as an academic honor or award, go over different impressive academic honors and awards examples you can get, and give you useful tips for effectively talking about awards on your application.

This posts contains a Teaching Explanation.

You can buy Calculus by Stewart here.

This posts contains a Teaching Explanation.

You can buy Chemistry: The Central Science here.

Going to college can sometimes feel like a series of tough decisions. Not only do you have to take standardized tests like the ACT or SAT, you also have to decide which colleges to apply to and write (practically) a million applications!

After all of that, picking your major sometimes feels like the easy part. But not so fast! Many schools offer a variety of majoring opportunities, including a degree path referred to as a double major where you concentrate in not one, but two different subjects.

This guide will take the mystery out of what it means to double major! We’ll explore the ins and outs of the degree path, including:

• Defining what a double major is...and what it isn’t,
• Discussing the pros and cons of double majoring, and finally,
• Helping you figure out whether a double major is the right choice for you.

So without further ado...let’s dive in!

Florida State University, or FSU, is a top-100 school and ranked number three in Florida Colleges. With a 25 percent acceptance rating, they’re considered to be a competitive school. That means you’ll need to impress them in your application, and a well-written FSU essay is one great way to go about it!

This guide will walk you through the FSU essay, including whether or not writing one is the right choice for you.

In 2024, major changes were made to the reading and math sections of the SAT. The SAT shifted to a fully digital format, reduced the exam’s total run time, and dropped the question count significantly in both exam sections. 

With these changes also came some necessary changes to how your understanding of certain concepts is assessed on the SAT. That means that some question types that appeared on the 2016 SAT aren’t on the new digital SAT, and some question types that appear on the new SAT weren’t on the 2016 SAT. 

In this article I’ll give you the rundown on how SAT analogy questions have evolved on the 2024 digital version of the SAT, and how they’re different from the 2016, paper-and-pencil SAT.

Every year students fight to get the SAT score they want. For many students, completing all the questions before running out of time is a serious challenge. If you're one of those who struggles to finish the test in time, skipping can be a real asset. But how many questions can you skip for a good score on the SAT?

Are you embarrassed of your SAT score, or think it’s pretty low? Chances are it isn’t even close to the lowest possible SAT score.

In this post, we’ll reveal how rare the lowest possible SAT score is, the lowest scores we have seen, and how to improve on the test, regardless of what your current score is.

What is the range for SAT scores? How do your scores stack up? In this article, I’ll give you a basic rundown of the range of scores you can expect on the SAT and help you put your scores in perspective if you’ve already taken the test.

Feeling pressed for time on any test is extremely frustrating. It’s even worse on tests like the SAT and ACT because they’re so lengthy: if you run out of time on a section, you don't get the relief of "Well, at least I'm done with the test" because you have to move right on to the next section.

Since you can’t stop time (probably?) and, except for some special circumstances, can’t get extra time, you'll need another solution to help you avoid running out of time. So what strategies can you use? I’ll discuss the top misconception students have about running low on time on the SAT Reading section and strategies to avoid running out of time.

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."

Heed the wise words of Dr. Seuss, and get reading! The more you practice reading SAT passages, the better you'll perform on the SAT Reading and Writing section. This article goes over everything on the SAT Reading and Writing section so you know exactly what to expect.

Sure, you've done your paces on single variable equations and now they're no problem, but what do you do when presented with multiple equations and multiple variables at once? These are what we call “systems of equations” and, luckily for us, they are extremely predictable types of problems with multiple methods for solving them. Depending on how you like to work best, you can basically choose your own adventure when it comes to system of equation problems.

But before you choose the method that suits you (or the individual problem) best, let's look at all the various options you have available as well as the types of questions you'll see come test day. These questions will always show up once or twice on any given test, so it's best to understand all the strategies you have at your disposal. 

This will be your complete guide to systems of equations questions—what they are, the many different ways for solving them, and how you'll see them on the SAT.

This posts contains a Teaching Explanation.

You can buy Calculus by Stewart here.