Sleepaway camp, swim meets, and baseball games: while these may form the core of summer memories for many, my leading memory is one of summer workbooks. This is not nearly as unpleasant as it sounds. We had moved to Arlington, Massachusetts when I was seven so my dad could resume his graduate studies at MIT. It was a happy time, especially since my parents were plugged in to the international graduate student community at MIT and Harvard, and my mother would pick up some very useful tips from her friends.
It was thus that my parents learned to order these workbooks that became a daily routine in the long and otherwise uneventful days that marked our childhood summers. I remember them vividly: Wordly Wise was a vocabulary-based study guide, and my brother and I each had to do one chapter a day. The books were calibrated to your grade in school, but at that pace, we flew through chapters and books at warp speed. This is how I learned words like bellicose, ameliorate, aggrandize, and more — at the tender age of nine.
The second book focused on reading comprehension. Again, broken into one-a-day chapters (kind of like a One-a-Day vitamin for your brain), these books presented multiple choice questions based on reading passages. Our last daily dose was a math workbook. Bob and I would sit down together at the dining room table and work through our assignments in companionable silence. We didn’t know to refuse or rebel or demand to be released. This was what was expected of us, and like the good little children that we were, we complied.
Fast forward to our move to New Jersey: Fifth grade at the Normandy Park Elementary School in Morristown for me, third grade for Bob, and the Iowa tests. Both of us aced our first standardized tests, not because we were smarter than our classmates, but because we had been doing practice tests very similar to the Iowa test for the previous three years.
I remember coming home and presenting scores of 99 across the board. Of course, my parents were not pleased that I had not gotten 100 all the way (I kid you not — this reminds me of the Glee episode where one of the Asian characters complains that a B is an Asian F — welcome to my world). I explained to them (as my teacher had explained to me) that 99 was the highest possible score because I constituted the first percentile. I’m still not convinced to this day that my parents bought it.
Fast forward again to junior year of high school. I did not qualify for the National Merit Scholarship with my PSAT score (and my Letter of Commendation did not get me any money). I didn’t do any prep for the PSAT or the SAT and I’m not even sure that any kind of prep programs existed way back then. In March of junior year I took the SAT for the first and only time. I scored a 750 verbal and a 710 math, and once again, though my parents thought I could and should do better, I was happy and I said I would hold with the hand I was dealt.
Please do not think I am revealing my scores to brag. Oh no, not at all. In fact, in today’s hyper-competitive climate, those scores are probably actually fairly mediocre. And consider that I’d had the advantage of all those years of summer workbooks. Against that backdrop, it is fair to say that without perfect 800s, I underachieved.
However, my scores were good enough to get into Yale. But those were ancient times. Today I am one of the myriad graduates of Ivy League schools who shudder at the fierceness of today’s college process and say out loud that with our credentials of yesteryear, we would not get in. “Next!” I can imagine those admissions officers bellowing as they toss my application into the trash.
Fast forward one last time to today. We’ve successfully helped two of our three kids navigate the college admissions process and seen both graduate. We are now on our last and I am ready to be done. Though I had always wanted four kids, this is when I am happy that we stopped at three. I don’t have the energy to do this again.
In a moment of Tiger Mom enthusiasm, I had actually hunted down those same summer workbooks from my childhood and ordered them for Katie and Molly. But there was too much pushback, too much moaning and groaning and complaining that nobody else had to do these stupid workbooks and why did they. I did not have the strength or desire to hold their feet to the fire and the workbook project was ditched. With Will, we didn’t even try.
He is scheduled to take the PSAT for the first time next week. But they’ve pulled a fast one on us. In an incredibly bad stroke of timing, they are changing the format of the SAT once again. They did this when Katie was a junior — switched from a 1600 to 2400 point system by adding the writing section. This was good for my verbally oriented first child.
This time they are removing the writing section — bad for my also verbally oriented third child. AND they are making the SAT more similar to the ACT. The new SAT kicks in for the March, 2016, testing but the new PSAT based on that format starts this month.
How annoying is this? Because the redesigned SAT is so different from the current one, there’s obviously going to be a learning curve and an awkward adjustment period for the test givers and the test takers. This is a boon to the already over-priced tutoring industry that is crowing about this new wrinkle because it gives them a good excuse to pull in more students and jack up the prices, cashing in on the anxiety of parents and students determined to get into the “right” college.
Ugh. We have to remember that it’s only a test and the kids end up where they are supposed to be. Katie and Molly have proven this to be true. But to all the kids out there entering this test-taking phase of their lives: good luck and just do your best. To the parents: breathe. Your kids will be fine and you should be too. I just need to remember to follow my own advice.
