What do we mean by BEAT THE TEST. It's our slogan but what does that really mean?
What is DUKE TIP and who is it for?
The Right and Wrong way to prepare for college tests
BEAT THE TEST is our slogan and it is exactly what we teach your student to do. The ACT® and SAT® tests are not academic in nature! Therefore they do not measure what students know about Math, Reading, Writing, or Science.
What do the ACT/SAT Tests Really Do?
* They provide a first impression of the student to the colleges.
* They level grades from different schools.
* Colleges award scholarships based on the student's score.
It is beneficial to score high even if your student’s grades are not great.
They test the student’s ability to Analyze and Solve Problems under pressure. Smart students can bomb the test because they don’t take this into consideration and treat the test accordingly. The ability to think critically, analyze problems and use reasoning methods to “figure it out” quickly are more important than subject matter
Our goal is to provide Test Prep courses and access to the best College Advice available. Our test prep doesn’t reteach high school. Instead, we focus on teaching students how to BEAT THE TEST! These classes are designed to prepare your student for the different types of problems that are thrown at them so that they know how to handle them – and in some cases arrive at the answer logically without having to do complex calculations or using the calculator with some long formula.
To be clear, we are NOT saying that academic knowledge is not needed to do well on the tests. Your student must have a good educational background to be able to identify which tactic and techniques to use in a particular question. We have included Grammar and Math Supplements to help some of the concepts they will see.
Students who have used this program have increased their test scores by up to 300 points on the SAT and 10 points on the ACT within ONE test to the next. They have earned over $90 million in scholarships and grants since 2011. We teach students how to avoid the traps set by the test makers and how to use inductive and deductive reasoning to figure out how to get the correct answers. We use questions from the real tests to put our techniques into practice.
We call it BEAT THE TEST for a reason – and this may be shocking… The SAT® and ACT® tests measure how well students take the test. So if they can BEAT THE TEST – then they are well on their way to college success.
For more information – please click SOLUTIONS in the top menu or click here.
Duke TIP is a program started in the 1980s to identify talented young students, to recognize them and to offer them access to amazing opportunities.
The program consists of two rounds—a qualifying round and the competition. Students qualify for Duke TIP by performing well on a standardized or IQ test. If they score high (>95% on a standardized test or >125 on IQ test), then they are eligible for the competition. The competition consists of taking a real SAT or ACT and scoring high enough for State Recognition or Grand Recognition. State recognition equates to scoring at about the 50th percentile rank for college-bound high school seniors, while grand recognition equates to approximately the 90 percentile. See chart on this page for qualifying scores.
Many parents are very proud to hear that their student has qualified for Duke TIP, but then do not know what to do next.
After all, how do you train a student who hasn’t had trigonometry to do well on a test that contains it? Luckily, our program is designed for 7th graders and up. We teach them how to BEAT the tests! Most of these kids have not had high school courses, so we teach them how to reason and use logic to figure out the correct answers. For example, by using the answers and process of elimination, we teach students to eliminate the wrong answers. We have specific tactics for each section of the test. For English/Writing, we use a Brain Technique. For math, we teach about 15 rules that they can apply to any question on the test.
So if you have a talented rising 7th grader who has qualified for Duke TIP, let us know. We would love to help train him or her how to BEAT the test!
Did you know that they are not academic tests? They are not math, English, reading, writing or science tests. In fact, there is no Biology, Chemistry or Physics on the science portion of the ACT.
They test your student’s ability to solve problems under pressure, and many students–because they fail to recognize this fact–will bomb the tests because they are treating them as academic tests. Many students run out of time on the tests because they are taking them as they would a test in one of their high school classes.
Unfortunately, many prep courses train students as if they were taking an academic test. They will reteach high school. They go over grammar rules, math formulas and science concepts. Knowledge is good and helpful. But many “A” students won’t score as high as they expected because they don’t know how to do 60 math problems in 60 minutes.
Other prep courses present a few tips and tricks in an hour-long class to the masses. Realistically, how much can you possibly get out of a short one-hour class?
A final wrong way to prep for college tests is to hand students the SAT or ACT book of tests and ask them to “study hard.” Do you realize that those books are often bigger than a Physics textbook? Also if students don’t know how to approach the test properly, then they may be “studying” hard in the wrong way. I like what Vince Lombardi said, “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.”
When students prep for college tests, they should train like an athlete, not like a school!
Here is our advice to students:
So how about it? Is your student on the right road to scoring higher on his or her next college entrance test? If not, learn how to prep for college tests the right way and sign him or her up for one of our upcoming BEAT the tests courses.
The importance of using official tests and not some random test prep guide.
Making use of summer time.
How to prepare for your first test
Why? The test creators have a specific way of creating wrong answers. If you make a minor mistake, you can be sure that that answer will be one of your choices. We call this the bonehead answer. There are 3 other types of wrong answers that we teach in our Foundations course.
If you use questions from other test prep companies, those wrong answers will not be there. So students who use these materials are not really practicing the skills needed to learn how to beat the tests.
* Free ACT Practice Test
* ACT Question of the Day (sign up at act.org)
* The Offical ACT Prep Guide
* SAT Question of the Day
* The Official SAT Study Guide
* 10 Full SAT Practice Tests (see link just below)
Summer college prep is vital to successful college-bound students. Wise students will use their extra free time from the rigors and schedules of the regular academic year to get ahead of the competition. Think of elite athletes! These athletes will rigorously train year round. They do not take breaks to pig out and sit by the pool all day, or if they do, they pay for it later.
Smart students are like elite athletes competing for scholarships! Their competition is the other students who want to get into the school they want to get into and those that are competing for the same scholarships. Believe me, the competition is not going to just sit around and do nothing just because your student chooses not to.
The key point is to make sure that your student doesn’t fritter his or her summer away. Louis Pasteur famously said, “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” So get in the mindset of helping your student to prepare for college!
If you have a 7th grader, see our article on Duke TIP.
If your student hasn’t taken our BEAT the Test course, why wait? Taking it in the summer will put them ahead of the game.
You know this is an important test because it could determine if they will get into the college of their dreams or earn needed scholarship money. But you are not sure where to start. So how should your student prepare for his or her first college test?
If you have a younger student, it would be great to get a baseline score before they begin to prep for their first college test. But if you are in the fall of your senior year, you will not have time for such.
We recommend having your student view our free Orientation Course. This course will give them valuable information such as, What is on it? How long is the test? I also recommend having them go through the College Board and ACT websites thoroughly to get a good understanding of the tests.
Practicing the wrong way will not yield the results you are after. So, make sure to get your student in a proven test prep course–one that will not reteach high school, but instead teaches them how to BEAT the Tests. Then, have them put the skills they learn into practice! Students won’t do better on the test if they don’t work at it. You can download from the internet or purchase practice tests, but we recommend only using practice tests from the real sources.–real SAT and real ACT tests.
Students should not cram the week before the test! Instead, they should use their time wisely to review the material and take a practice tests over several days.
The night before the test, they should make sure that they have all of their paperwork and materials for the test set out! Students should eat healthy meals for dinner on Friday and breakfast on Saturday morning! We also recommend getting up early the morning of the test so that their brain is fully awake when the test begins.
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