Akil admissions, Admissions Tests, college admissions

Should You Take the SAT/ACT in 2025?

Slide the handle to see the second image.

Four years ago, I first answered this question, but since 2021 might as well be the Age of the Pharaohs an update is due. This question still looms large and seems particularly confusing given that more than 85% of colleges remain test optional but news outlets obsessed with certain highly rejective colleges, test prep companies with revenue goals, economists at Dartmouth trying to justify their president’s wishes, and far too many educational consultants keep screaming that “testing is coming back.” So let me step once more into the void and venture to give some guidance on whether (and when) to prepare for and take the SAT or ACT.

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Akil admissions, college admissions, education

What is a good college?

We need to have a serious discussion about what we call a “good college.” Having recently gone through the college application process with my oldest child—and now starting it again with my youngest—I’ve been thinking a lot about choosing a college and what makes a good college. We need to reconsider the better define what and who gets to define a best, top, good, or (god-forbid) elite colleges. Who can we trust to tell us which colleges are best? How should a family define what makes a college “best”? Is it the educational experience, rankings, social life, brand/reputation, cost, or something else entirely?

Let’s explore this …

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Akil college admissions, media

HBCU vs HRC: The value of culture

This past week I was talking to a family about college admission and we had a brief venture into the never-ending PWI (predominantly white institution) vs HBCU (historically black colleges and universities) debate. I wanted to bring a few thoughts (really one particular comparison point) about that to the blog . . . so here we are. Let’s go . . .

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Akil admissions, Admissions Tests, college admissions

The P in PSAT doesn’t stand for practice

Recently almost 4 million students around the country received their scores back from the PSAT. I have a child in 11th grade and I tutor the SAT (which is the same as the PSAT for all intensive purposes ) and other bubble tests, so I talk to students and parents almost daily about testing and what it means. So I’ve been talking to a lot of parents in the past few weeks about the PSAT. Thus this blog. . .

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Akil admissions, college admissions, Cutting room floor

Something cool happened!

I was pleasantly surprised this week to get text from my friend John Ambrose of Michigan State University. He had recently read my article The Hidden Factors in College Admission and said it was “spot on”.

Oh hell yes!! I was psyched! It’s always good to know that your work is appreciated and that you get something right.

But it got better.

He’d shared it in his office and one of his colleagues (thanks Ashley!) created a graphic to capture the article. As they say a picture is worth a 1000 words!

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Akil admissions, college admissions, Cutting room floor

Cutting Room Floor: The Hidden Factors Influencing College Admissions Decisions

I’ll post a few more images on IG (follow me there!)

I recently wrote an article published in Word In Black about the different ways colleges go about the business of evaluating applications and even though it was long as hell, I couldn’t get in everything I wanted. So let me highlight a few bits that got left out. This is, obviously, part of my periodic series on this blog called Cutting Room Floor (the first one is here).

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Akil admissions, college admissions

The NY Times Doesn’t Cover College

What’s Kanye wearing? What’s El*n driving? What’s Besos buying?

If you believe the answers to these questions are relevant to your life then the New York Times might be the best paper for you to learn about the college process. If you pattern your life choices after what a billionaire or celebrity does, if you think that brand is all that matters in college admission, the NYT is for you. If not, then you should probably never bother to read it about college admission or at least read it with a careful and critical eye. This is because I’ve been forced to conclude that the NYT doesn’t write about college, it writes about a few highly rejective colleges. Yes, I said that intentionally…a few.

But let me rant less and demonstrate more.

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Akil admissions, Admissions Tests, college admissions

Merit: Myths and Money

Many people believe that merit aid means aid awarded for students who are the smartest and most accomplished, but that’s not true. I just spent months reviewing state-funded “merit” scholarship policies and school-funded “merit” scholarships rules at flagship universities and what I found WILL SHOCK YOU!

All dramatics aside, my report found a few important, and somewhat surprising to me, things:

1. Metrics not merit.
Merit means nothing. There is no formal definition of merit. There is no formal determiner of who is meritorious and who isn’t. So getting a “merit” scholarship just means you met whatever criteria was set.

Many “merit” scholarships are given on the basis of random criteria, for example this one:

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Akil admissions, college admissions

My Favorite College Search Things

It’s easy to hard to find information on colleges, its hard to sort out what’s good info from what’s bad. I am constantly sending emails to people about tools to support college search and learning about what tools are good and which aren’t. So I’m going to try to compile my favorite things in this post.

This will include all the things I think you should read and use to help you understand the higher education landscape and related industries. This is essentially the listicle form of this post with additional things added in each section. I’ll update it as I remember.

Enjoy.

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Akil admissions, Admissions Tests, college admissions

Should You Take the SAT/ACT or Not?

For parents of 10th, 11th and 12th graders, the question of testing looms large (especially this fall as the test optional movement has really taken hold), so let me try to help you out and give you the lowdown to help you make decisions. I’m not going to do a detailed discussion of testing policy, overuse, misuse, or the like (that’s my day job and this is my side gig), rather I want parents to come away with the tools to make the 3 binary testing decisions on the road to college application:

  1. to prep for tests or not to prep
  2. to test or not to test
  3. to submit scores or not to submit

Also I might update this post like I do my College Admissions Resources post, so check back periodically.

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