SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips

Do you want to start a club at your high school? If your school doesn’t offer a particular club or group that you’re interested in, starting your own is a great way to meet new people and spend time doing something you enjoy. You'll also get leadership experience that can help strengthen your resume and college applications.

Read on to get step-by-step instructions on how to start a high school club.

While you may have seen examples of really impressive recommendation letters, what about the really bad ones? What exactly do bad letters look like, and what makes them so subpar?

Bad recommendation letters can be hard to put a finger on, because they aren't necessarily critical or disparaging about a student. Instead, they might leave a poor impression because they come off as unenthusiastic, unspecific, or simply too short. The examples below represent letters that would do very little to help a student's college application and, worst case scenario, could even hurt it.

By knowing what weakens a letter or leaves a negative impression in the minds of admissions officers, you can make sure your letters don't contain any of these features. First up...

Are you a student-athlete hoping to play for an Ivy League school? Then you’re probably curious about the recruiting process. How do Ivy League schools recruit student-athletes? And how can you increase your odds of getting into an Ivy League school as a student-athlete?

Read on to learn what the general college recruiting process looks like and how it differs from Ivy League recruiting. After, we'll go over the basic academic requisites you must have to get into the Ivy League, and show you what the typical Ivy League recruiting timeline looks like.

Are you thinking about becoming a nurse practitioner? It can be a great way to make more money and have more responsibility at your job. But what options are there for nurse practitioner schooling? How long does it take to become a nurse practitioner? How do you apply, and what do you do once you begin a nurse practitioner program?

In this guide, we answer those questions and give you all the information you need to know about nurse practitioner school.

Looking to learn more about the Open Door Policy? The Open Door Policy was an important policy that affected Asian, European, and US trade for decades and even contributed to the Japanese/American conflict in WWII.

What was the Open Door Policy definition? Why and when was the Open Door Policy created? What are the impacts of it? We answer all those questions and more in these open door notes.

There are multiple SAT test dates a year, and choosing the best one can be tricky. If you choose a test date too early, you may not be fully prepared, but if you choose one too late, your scores may not arrive in time for college application deadlines.

You also need to take your own schedule into account as well. Will there be certain times of the year when you’re extra busy with a sport or club, or times when you’ll be too busy studying for your classes? The SAT is already difficult enough, and you don’t want to make things harder on yourself by choosing a test date that doesn’t fit your schedule.

Fortunately, we’re here to help you choose the best SAT test date for you. This guide covers all the SAT test dates for the 2018/2019 testing year, and we offer specific advice on each test date for sophomore, juniors, and seniors, so you’ll be able to decide exactly when to take the SAT.

In every science class, you must know how to use and interpret the Celsius temperature scale. But this can be difficult for students who are used to using Fahrenheit instead. How do you convert Celsius to Fahrenheit? What about Fahrenheit to Celsius?

We answer these questions below, giving you the mathematical formulas for converting between these two temperature units, a handy conversion chart, and a quick conversion trick you can use without having to grab a calculator.

Do you need to know the different types of clouds for school, or are you just interested in what’s up there in the sky? At first glance, all clouds can look pretty much the same, but with a bit of knowledge and practice you can soon learn how to tell exactly which kind of cloud you’re looking at.

In this guide, we show you all the steps to becoming a cloud-identifying expert. We’ll go over the ten main types of clouds and give you the info you need to identify each cloud type, including cloud names, their shape, height in the sky, color, and the weather you can expect them to bring.

We’ll end with some additional tips for identifying clouds, including easy tricks to differentiate similar-looking cloud types.

This guide collects the best ACT English prep material on the internet. We've created everything here from scratch, and we think it's the best guide available anywhere.

In writing it, we pored over real ACTs, consulted the best existing books, and thought deeply about what you'll need to excel on ACT English. Our subject guides closely reflect what you’ll see on the actual test and our strategies have all been used successfully by our past students. We’ve covered everything you need to know about ACT English.

This post is a table of contents, designed to lead you through the different articles you’ll want to study in a logical order and explain how to get the most out of them. It starts with the big-picture, high-level ideas that will get you thinking about the best way to approach ACT English. Then it moves on to our coverage of the skills and concepts you’ll see on the test. The last section includes a variety of ACT English tips and strategies that can help you create a study plan and learn to attack the test in the most efficient way.

Figuring out the best ACT test date for you isn’t always easy, especially if you’re stuck debating between two or more upcoming ACTs. Before you choose a date, ask yourself: which date will work best with your schedule? Will you have any obligations or extracurriculars around that time? When are your college application deadlines?

This guide introduces all upcoming ACT test dates for the 2018-19 testing year and also offers specific advice on the best possible dates for sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

If you're heading to Japan or thinking of studying Japanese, you’ll definitely want a firm grasp of the basic greetings and phrases. What’s "good morning" in Japanese? What's "good afternoon" in Japanese?

In this article, I will teach you 10 common Japanese greetings, from how to say good morning in Japanese to how to introduce yourself properly. I’ll then give you my top tips for using these greetings both appropriately and effectively.

This is a question a lot of students think about during the college admissions process. If my parents could afford to donate $1 million, would I get in? Do donations affect your admissions chances? If so, by how much? In this article, I'll answer all of these questions.

Many high schools record your academic performance using unweighted GPA. But what does your unweighted GPA mean in the eyes of colleges? And how can you calculate it yourself? In this article, I’ll tell you what an unweighted GPA is, how to interpret it, and how to calculate it based on your letter grades.

College is a huge investment - you spend a lot of time, energy, and money to earn a degree. Graduating from school means making financial sacrifices, but it also means reaping significant educational and professional rewards.

But what if the whole money problem wasn’t an issue? What if you could go to school without worrying about tuition expenses or accruing interest? With a full ride scholarship, all your college costs are taken care of. Instead of thinking about paying your bills, you could focus on the important things: studying for that big exam or getting your term paper in on time. Here, I’ll lay out everything you need to know about how to get a full ride scholarship: what exactly it is, who can get one, and where you can find them.

A substantial bribe. Just kidding. You should give your teacher recommenders something much more valuable for writing effective letters of recommendation: your input.

Sharing your ideas will assist your teacher in writing you an insightful and specific letter. This guide will discuss what materials you should produce, and why your "recommender's packet" can go a long way toward making your final letter outstanding.

To start, let’s review why recommendations are important to your application. If you understand what admissions officers look for, then you can make sure that your materials are useful and relevant. With this in mind, let's consider what purpose rec letters serve in the admission process.