In previous posts in our series on the skills and habits of successful students, we reviewed the academic skills needed to acquire consistent strong grades without over-working.  Today, we shift from academic skills to mental performance skills and the key executive function skill of planning and reviewing. This post is intended for high school students, a separate post on planning for college students will follow.

Why do teens procrastinate?

The life of a student during the teen years is filled with many external and school-related obligations. Much of the difficulty that teens face flows from the endless stream of readings, tests, papers, and assignments. Schoolwork is like an ever-ringing bell, always playing in the back of one’s mind. Procrastinators do not escape the noise and anxiety of incomplete assignments and tasks, they simply turn down the volume of the ringing bell and raise the volume of distractions like television, videogames, messaging, and social media. Even while playing their favorite videogame or texting with a friend, the procrastinating student ruminates about the work that is being avoided or delayed. There is no pleasure gained in the aversive actions and tasks; instead anxiety casts a dark shadow over the activities that could be fun and relaxing.

Much of this aversive behavior is wasted time that could be spent having satisfying experiences in social or extra-curricular pursuits. At most high schools, preparation, reading, studying for tests, and completion of all assignments can be done in 12 hours per week or less.In the end, time spent on aversion, procrastination, and cheap distractions leads to a doubling or tripling the time spent on “work” and a dramatic reduction in the amount of time spent on truly enjoyable tasks and experiences.

With some minor adjustments, any teen can get good grades and have lots of fun

Most students would find that they have plenty of time for satisfying fun, relaxation, and engaging interests if they would exercise a minimum amount of control and structure in how they use their time outside of classes. Very few high school and college students plan their week in advance. Only a handful of students track deadlines and upcoming test dates on a regularly viewed calendar or whiteboard. Most students have little idea of the actual amount of time needed to complete a particular academic task. How many students ask each week these simple, but critical questions: “What will be fun this week? What are the most important tasks to be completed? What will I do for relaxation?”

Successful students do not behave like the typical American adolescent in their teens and twenties. Successful students understand that the goal in life is to have plenty of fun and to master schoolwork in the least number of hours and most efficient manner possible. In fact, one would find that successful students have more satisfaction and fun in their lives than the average student because they do not waste countless hours avoiding their work. Instead, successful students make and stick to a plan that includes lots of time for fun and relaxation and an allotment of adequate time to efficiently complete all of their obligations and assignments.

Successful student profile #1: Johnny, football player

To put more detail to the above example let’s look at two high school students as examples. Johnny plays football for his school and does not return home until 6pm each school night. He takes 3 AP courses including US History, English, and Pre-Calculus resulting in an average of 10 to 12 hours of reading, homework, and test preparation each week. From Monday to Thursday evenings, he allots 2 sessions of 45 minutes and one session of 30 minutes to schoolwork.

Johnny’s typical schedule upon returning from practice is thus: from 6 to 6:15pm, he has a snack to refill his store of energy after practice. From 6:15 to 7pm, he works on the class assignments due the next day. From 7 to 8pm, he eats dinner with family and watches a bit of television. From 8 to 8:45pm, Johnny completes another focused session of reading, homework, or test preparation. After a 15 minute break, Johnny works from 9 to 9:30pm. From 9:30 to 10pm, Johnny checks his Facebook account, sends some texts to friends and girlfriend, and watches the highlights on ESPN. By 10pm, Johnny is ready for bed and falls right to sleep after a long and taxing day. Johnny sleeps soundly because he knows that 2 hours of work each school night and a couple hours on the weekend is all that is needed to complete his assignments and appropriately prepare for upcoming classes.

Fridays after school between August and Christmas are for football, so Johnny Dos not allot any time for Friday school work. After the game, Johnny showers and heads home. He typically meets up with his girlfriend on Friday nights after the game, but sometimes goes home and relaxes by watching TV and texting teammates about the game before heading off to bed. Johnny realizes that his commitment to football leaves him less time for his social life and other interests during the season, so he makes sure to have some fun and engaging outlets on the weekend.

Every Saturday morning, Johnny gets up by 9am and takes a guitar lesson at 10am. Lunch each Saturday is spent with his girlfriend or a buddy to catch up on the latest happenings. Saturday after lunch, Johnny takes a nap for an hour or two, and gets in a study session from 4 to 4:45pm. From 4:45 to 5pm, Johnny checks the college football scores and snacks. At 5pm Johnny spends an additional 45 minutes on schoolwork. Johnny spends 6-7pm working on his guitar lesson for the week. Saturday nights are for watching college football and pizza with teammates and friends or a dinner date with his girlfriend. Johnny is usually in bed by 1am and rises on Sunday by 10am.

After Sunday breakfast and a shower, Johnny puts in a 45 minute study session from 11 to 11:45am, then eats lunch and watches the Houston Texans game until 3:30pm or so. Some Sunday afternoons, Johnny will go to church with his family, but more often he will meet up with friends for some intensive Madden football games on the PS4. He’s usually back home by 5pm for an hour nap and then eats a snack from 6-6:15pm. He is energized and focused for a 45 minute study session that lasts from 6:15-7pm. At 7, Johnny and his family gather for a routine Sunday dinner. At 8pm, Johnny takes a deep breath and hits the books for another session of school work. By 8:30pm, Johnny is done with his work and has the rest of the evening to do as he pleases. He’ll spend 15 or 20 minutes planning the week ahead and reviewing the previous week’s plan. Usually, he watches the second half of the Sunday night football game, but other times, he’ll call his girlfriend or play some video games to relax.

Johnny does not have the Sunday night blues, because he closes the week with the confidence that he’s well-prepared for the days ahead. He spent 11.5 hours on school work in the previous week and doesn’t feel overburdened by working too much or feeling like he’s deprived of a good social life. Johnny is a happy, healthy, and active young man who keeps an A minus GPA in a challenging curriculum.

Successful student profile #2: Jane, top 10% of her class

Jane is a high school classmate of Johnny’s. She is also in the AP program and typically has 12 to 15 hours of schoolwork each week. Jane is home from school by 4pm each day and spends the first half hour upon returning home sending some texts to friends and eating a snack. At 4:30pm, she goes to her room for a 45 minute session of schoolwork. At 5:15pm on Mondays and Wednesdays, she gathers her Tae Kwon Do gear and heads to the martial arts studio. From 5:30 to 6:30pm on Mondays and Wednesdays, she’s in Tae Kwon Do classes. On Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5:30pm, she goes to Starbucks for a meeting with her fellow microfinance club members. The group is working on a plan to raise $5000 for female entrepreneurs in Pakistan. From 6:30-7pm each day, Jane either showers after Tae Kwon Do or relaxes with an episode of her favorite shows on Netflix. At 7pm, she has dinner with her mom and sister for about an hour. From 8 to 8:45, Jane spends another 45 minutes on school assignments and reading.

At 8:45, Jane takes time to watch another episode of her Netflix show while sending texts and checking Snapchat. From 9:30 to 10pm, Jane has a shorter schoolwork session. At 10pm, Jane gets ready for bed and usually falls asleep by 11pm.

On Fridays after school, Jane completes her usual 4:30-5:15pm session of studying. She usually naps from 5:15 until 6 or so, then watches some Netflix and texts her friends to make a Friday evening plan. A friend’s band is playing an all ages show at Walter’s Downtown, so they meet up at Brazil Cafe in Montrose for some pre-show coffee and dinner. The concert is over by 11pm and the gang disperses. Jane is asleep by midnight on Friday evening.

Saturdays, Jane wakes at 8:30am and works the morning shift as a cashier at Kuhl-Linscomb from 10am-2pm. She loves talking with customers and her supervisor about the chic housewares on offer. Jane hopes to become an interior designer, so the day of work is always satisfying. At 2pm, Jane heads home for lunch and a nap. By 4pm Jane is re-energized and ready for a 45 minute schoolwork session. She has a snack at 4:45pm and then spends 5 to 5:45pm reading the week’s upcoming government chapter. At 6, she hops in the shower and dresses for Cheryl’s birthday party at Ruggles Green. Dinner is at 7 and they hang around for another hour at Ruggles before leaving at 9. Jane and her friends gather at Cheryl’s house to watch a movie and have some birthday cake. By midnight, the gang is out of gas, so Jane drives home and falls asleep by 1am.

Sundays, Jane wakes up at 10am for pancakes with her mom and sister. After breakfast and a shower, Jane heads out for a run in the neighborhood. By noon, Jane has finished her run and is ready for a light lunch. At 1pm, Jane sits down at her desk for 45 minutes of studying. From 1:45 to 3pm Jane checks her Snapchat account and makes a short video to share with her close friends. At 3pm, Jane gets to work on another 45 minute session of studying. She takes a break from 3:45 to 4pm and then spends another 45 minutes on schoolwork. From 4:45 to 6pm, Jane meets with Cheryl for ice cream at Amy’s Ice Cream. At 6, Jane gets home and spends 45 minutes studying prior to dinner. The family gathers at 7 for Sunday dinner and afterward Jane heads to her room for a bit more studying. From 8 to 8:45pm, Jane completes her last schoolwork session for the week and follows up with 15 minutes of planning and reviewing. From 9-11pm, Jane relaxes and watches Netflix shows and YouTube videos. She falls right to sleep when she finally hits the bed at 11:15pm on Sunday night.

For the week, Jane spent 12 hours and 30 minutes on schoolwork and had lots of time for fun and relaxation. She also worked for 4 hours at a job that she finds highly fulfilling. Jane is very skilled at using her time well and does not waste her time with silly distractions. She has lots of close friends and is developing her career with time spent on her entrepreneurship club and on the job. Even with her heavy load of schoolwork, Jane still has time for her favorite shows on Netflix, plenty of exercise with running and Tae Kwon Do, and letting loose at concerts and events each weekend. Jane is an A student, in the top decile of her class, and is one of the most popular gals on campus.

If you or your teenager is not using his or her time to have lots of fun, get strong grades, and have plenty of time for relaxation, then you need our Teen Independence Program. We teach and integrate a system for organization and time-management that any teen can use to build a life that is satisfying and productive.  Every teen can learn how to: plan and review for learning, productivity, and refinement, keep track of deadlines, break long-term projects into small, achievable tasks, and to maintain a productive and positive outlook.

In the previous three posts in our series on what separates successful students from their peers, we covered skills and habits related to reading for meaning, taking notes on texts prior to discussion in class, and bringing notes to class for editing and highlighting to indicate what ideas are most important. In this post we cover an essential habit that is closely related to the prior three: immediately asking for help from teachers, parents, or tutors when an idea or assignment is not fully understood.

In the first post in this series, we noted that note taking prior to discussion is helpful because it allows the student to be familiar with the ideas and terms in the text and thus class lectures can be used for thinking, listening, and clarification. While this shift in habits will dramatically improve retention, there is a second important rationale for note-taking as the first step in the learning process.

Note-taking before class discussion allows you to know what you understand and what you don’t

By taking notes on the text as the primary step, the student can make an inventory of the ideas from the text that he or she has mastery over, and can thus use class discussions and lectures for further clarification and focus on the points that are not fully grasped. If a student has taken notes as a first step, he or she will make sure to focus intently during discussion or lecture on the points that are not clear from the first round of processing that occurred during reading and note-taking. If, after the class discussion an idea or several are still unclear, then the student knows that he or she must ask for additional assistance from the teacher, parents, or a tutor.

By taking notes early in the process, the student can identify exactly which points he or she understands completely and those which are unclear. It is perfectly acceptable for a successful student to not fully grasp every idea that is presented in a text and discussion. No reasonable teacher or adult expects a student to understand everything perfectly on his or her own. If a student does not have mastery at this stage, he or she needs to seek out additional help.

This is where successful students operate differently than their peers. By pinpointing exactly what they know and do not know, successful students can then acquire the specific help that they need for mastery. Further, the successful student identifies knowledge gaps at their first occurrence and does not wait until the day(s) leading up to the test to acquire help. Instead, the successful student seeks immediate clarification and assistance from teachers, parents, or tutors.

The successful student knows what he or she does not understand from early on in the learning process and thus can acquire the assistance needed for mastery. Top students are not always the most natively gifted. Top students achieve their results with honesty, preparation, and a willingness to ask for help when needed. The most successful students acquire support from teachers, parents, and tutors well before the deadline or test day.

Let us contrast this kind of behavior with the typical pattern of most students. Most students do not read and take notes prior to the class discussion of the topics. Thus, they enter the classroom lacking familiarity with the ideas of that day’s discussion. The typical student will not have an inventory of those ideas which need further clarification and will not focus attention on such concepts. He or she will be too busy trying to write, listen, and think to be able to reasonably make sense of which ideas are primary and emphasized by the teacher. All concepts will be treated as equal in importance and notes will be incoherent and not useful for learning or test preparation.

The day before the test is too late to get proper help

Likely, he or she will not read the text until the days before the test and will have no way of knowing if he or she has properly mastered the ideas for the upcoming exam. It is only on the night before the test when such a student figures out which ideas and terms need further clarification, usually by working on a test review packet from the teacher. At that moment, it will be too late to get the help that is needed. This typical student will have little likelihood of achieving a grade on the exam that is equal to his or her native abilities, for their habits have put an artificial limit on the maximum grade they can acquire.

If you or your child wants to learn to be an efficient student and how to read for meaning, take useful notes, properly prepare for exams, and write academic essays, then please take a look at our Learning to Learn study skills and methods program for middle, high school, and college students.

In our last post in our series on the skills and habits of successful students, we gave evidence for why reading and note-taking must be completed prior to the topic being discussed in class by teachers and classmates. Taking notes prior to class discussion jump starts the process of digesting and encoding information in the text for long-term storage and retrieval. Bringing one’s prepared notes to class discussion frees up the mind and attention so that the student may listen intently and process the information and also get clarification about topics that were not clear upon first review. Additionally, notes that are completed prior to class discussion can subsequently be edited and added to if new or different information is given by the teacher.

Highlight notes to indicate what is important and emphasized by the teacher

There is a second rationale for completing notes prior to class discussion which was not covered in the previous post. Notes that are prepared prior to class discussion can be highlighted to indicate the importance of the topics. Teachers will usually cover most of the ideas that will be on upcoming tests during class lectures and discussions. Successful students, possessing notes made prior to class lectures, can mark and highlight their notes to indicate those topics that have been reviewed by the teacher in class. These topics will very likely be on the test.

Further, the most aware students pay close attention to the teacher’s cues and look for gestures and changes in voice pitch to understand the most essential ideas. These points, especially when the teacher emphasizes a point physically or with raised pitch or when the teacher says, “this is important!” will absolutely be covered on the test.

Students who mark in their notes those ideas reviewed by the teacher in class and those points especially emphasized, have a map as to which ideas to focus upon when preparing for the test. With notes that are ordered in terms of teacher emphasis and by their relation to the main ideas in the chapter, a student can avoid the unproductive cramming that most students utilize.

The typical student treats all ideas as equal in importance and wastes time and precious mind-space studying inessential details. He or she will spend hours re-reading and working to memorize key points and terms. By contrast, the successful student will calmly and efficiently review his or her notes in the day(s) prior and arrive on test day with confidence and ease. Real academic confidence comes from knowing that one has mastered every important piece of information to be encountered on the test.

In our prior post on the habits and skills of successful students, we discussed reading for meaning. The ability to breakdown texts and separate important ideas and inessential details is crucial in academic work. Thus, it is priority one amongst the skills and habits of top students. However, efficient reading for meaning on its own is but one-half of the equation for retained understanding. The second half of the process is taking notes on the reading that are succinct, well-organized, and completed before the reading is discussed in class.

Taking notes on reading assignments prior to class discussion is the fastest route to better grades

If I can give one instruction to American middle, high school, and college students in terms of immediately improving their grades and understanding, I strongly urge them to read and take notes on class materials before they are discussed in class. A primary review, which includes reading for meaning and note-taking, will allow the student to be familiar with the important ideas in a chapter when they are discussed by teachers and classmates. This crucial step in preparation will massively increase the student’s retention of information and allows the student to function primarily as a listener and thinker in the classroom.

Why is it so important to be a thinker and listener during class discussion? Just like in skill #1, reading for meaning, we use class for thinking and listening because of the limits of the mind. The human brain is not built for multi-tasking at high levels of attention for more than a few seconds at a time. Current cognitive research shows that multi-tasking significantly deteriorates attention and memory encoding for both primary and secondary tasks. See references on attention and multitasking here: http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/multitasking-confronting-students-with-the-facts/  and here: http://hilt.harvard.edu/files/hilt/files/notetaking_0.pdf for more information.

Class time is for thinking and listening, not note-taking!!!

In a classroom, those who can listen and think about the information being discussed are at a massive advantage over those who will act as stenographers as they write down every detail of the teacher’s words. Students who are writing lots of notes in class are unable to efficiently process the information that they are listening to. The mind is incapable of listening, writing, and thinking at the same time for more than a few seconds. When a student acts as a multi-tasker in class, he or she is wasting precious stores of attention. The students might as well be trying to take notes while out at the mall, riding a skateboard, or playing a videogame. That’s how impaired their attention is when trying to multi-task in class by listening, writing, and thinking at the same time.

Further, when a student enters a class discussion of new material without a baseline familiarity with the ideas and terms discussed, he or she has a much lower likelihood of retention. To say things simply, if a student comes unprepared for a class discussion of moderately complex ideas (like in English or history classes) or one with lots of technical jargon and vocabulary (like science or social science coursework), the student’s mind is working as if he or she were listening to an unfamiliar foreign language.

The student who has read the text for meaning, taken notes that are succinct and capture the thesis, supporting ideas, and key terms and definitions, has begun the process of cognition and encoding into long-term working memory. If he or she comes to class with notes in hand, listens intently to class discussion, and edits and adds to notes as appropriate, then the student will have done nearly all of the work in learning and retaining the important information. The information will now be well-digested and encoded in the memory for easy recall on test day.

Rather than spend hours reviewing the text and review packets, this student will simply review his or her notes for a modest amount of time. A student who has read and taken good notes and brought them to class for clarification and editing will not need to spend hours and hours preparing for tests. Such a student is acting in tune with the limits of the mind and the efficient working of the learning process.

There is even more good news than meets the eye here. There will be times when even the most gifted students are unable to fully grasp all of the important ideas, terms, and definitions in a new chapter. In such cases, note-taking and preparation before class discussion is even more crucial. When a student reads and takes note first, he or she enters the classroom with an inventory of that which is well-understood and that which is unclear. The student can make a note to him or herself to listen especially intently for clarification on the points that are unclear.

If for example, in a chapter on plant life in biology, a student reads and takes notes prior to class and understands ideas about photosynthesis and metabolism, but does not understand hybridization, the student will make a note and listen very closely to the teacher when hybridization is discussed. The existing notes can then be edited to reflect the instruction and clarification. If the student still does not understand hybridization at this point, he or she can turn to the instructor for further clarification. If afterward he or she is still unclear, then the student knows that tutoring or help from a fellow student is required and he or she can then obtain the specific help needed.

Most students don’t know which ideas they don’t understand until it is too late

Contrast this situation with the typical student pattern. Usually, the student has not read and taken notes before the subjects are discussed in class. The student will try to listen, learn, and take notes on the discussion, much of which is disorganized, incoherent, and not useful in the process of learning and recall. The student will likely not read the text until the days leading up to the test and may not ever do so.

The student will not have a good inventory of what he or she knows and does not know until the last minute, if at all. This typical student will likely spend the night prior to test day engaged in counter-productive re-reading of the text and incoherent notes or will inefficiently try to cram the information into the mind through rote memorization. These methods lead to high anxiety, confusion, and poor recall.

How can such a student expect to correctly answer 85% or more of the test questions in such a case? The typical student has used methods that are completely at odds with learning and mastery.

Achieving solid grades is easy if you have the right methods and have the habits that lead to preparation and retained learning. Nearly any student in America can be a consistent B+ student in middle school, high school, and college if he or she knows what to do. Most could easily be A students with some refinement of study methods and time-management.

If you or your child wants to learn the methods of efficient reading, note-taking, test preparation, and essay writing, then you need our Learning to Learn study methods course. Add in our time-management and mental performance skills course (for teens or for college students) and you or your student can rise to the top of the class.

This week, we are covering the top skills and habits of successful students. Today, we tackle reading for meaning. There is no academic skill as powerful as efficient reading for meaning. If a student can quickly pull out the main ideas from texts, understand the hidden structure and organization of academic and fiction works, and connect secondary terms and concepts with the thesis, then he or she will be on the fast track to producing outstanding grades.

Mind-space is reserved only for important ideas

Efficient and skilled readers focus only on important information and do not waste precious mind-space on inessential data. The mind, for all of its miraculous abilities, is quite limited in its ability to recall information from working short-term memory. The only solution to this biological constraint is to avoid overwhelming the mind with unimportant information. Thus, a skilled reader truly digests the main ideas, understands how they are supported with other secondary concepts and terms, and discards the bulk of unnecessary detail that fills up most chapters and texts.

To give a metaphor that may help you understand the problem, you might think of Olympic distance runners. In races such as the 1,500, 5,000, or 10,000 meter run, the most successful runners are the most efficient runners. It is biologically impossible for humans to run at peak effort over 5,000 or 10,000 meters; the body cannot produce enough energy to maintain a sprint over such distance. Instead, medal winners keep a steady, efficient pace through the bulk of the distance and use their max effort only for the final lap. Gold medal winners have strength to close out the race because they have identified the most important portion of the contest and focused their energies on that piece.

Just as it is impossible for the body to maintain max effort over long distances when running, it is also impossible for the mind to hold onto all of the details and information contained in a chapter of a textbook. The mind simply cannot process and retain all of the information in a single chapter from a high school or college textbook or novel, much less all of the details from 5 or more classes at once. There is far too much information! Instead, a successful student knows how to identify the structure and clues from the text that point to the most important information, like the thesis, key terms, and supporting evidence. An inefficient student will treat all information as equal in value, with no thought as to priority. Such a method leads to results below the student’s true capabilities.

A student who reads for meaning and efficiency focuses his or her effort on identifying, breaking down, and processing the most important information. The thesis, connected secondary ideas and key terms are like the final lap of an Olympic distance race. They are the elements that champions focus upon.

Unfortunately, most students have no idea how to do such efficient reading. These skills are not taught in schools, even though they are the backbone of academic performance and understanding. Instead, most students rely on memorization, an unproductive learning technique that is severely limited by the biological constraints on our short-term working memory.

If you or your child wants to learn to be an efficient student and how to read for meaning, take useful notes, prepare for exams, and write academic essays, then please take a look at our Learning to Learn study skills and methods program for middle, high school, and college students.

Successful Students:

(Click text for more information about each skill or habit)

1. Efficiently pull out the thesis and secondary important ideas from academic texts and lectures/discussions across every area of the core curriculum.

2. Take notes on reading assignments that are organized, succinct, and completed prior to the topic being discussed in class.

3. Bring their notes to class so that they can be edited and added to with new ideas covered by the teacher.

4. Ask for assistance from teachers, parents, tutors when the student does not fully understand a topic or assignment, well in advance of due dates.

5. Plan each week so that they can efficiently complete all schoolwork and have plenty of time for play, social activities, and relaxation.

6. Clarify the results they would like to achieve at school and in life and hold themselves to those goals.

7. Break down large goals and projects into small and specific tasks to be completed.

8. Know and maintain the routines, habits, and feelings that keep the student healthy, happy, and productive.

9. Accurately gauge the amount of time needed to complete school and personal tasks.

10. Review the preceding week’s tasks in order to keep track of uncompleted tasks and lessons to be learned from positive and negative results.

11. Make consistent, regular efforts over time rather than working in an all or nothing fashion.

Most high schools and parents operate under the assumption that 9^th and 10^th grade are an appropriate time for their child to adapt to the experiences, academic demands, and social reality of life as a teenager in high school. Conventional wisdom portrays 9^th and 10^th grade as an intermission period where teenagers sow their oats, make some mistakes, and learn what it takes to be successful in high school. College admissions staffs, such conventional wisdom portends, focus much more heavily on the second half of high school, 11^th and 12^th grades. While there is a grain of truth in that perception, further examination makes obvious the folly of such an idea.

One-half of your child’s high school record will be completed by the end of 10^th grade. If you believe that college admissions staffs simply throw out or even downplay 50% of an applicant’s academic and extracurricular portfolio, then you are a tad removed from reality. Let me take you one step further along in the admission process to fully illuminate this misguided thinking.

Your child will likely be sending off college applications in the fall of 12^th grade. Your child’s application will therefore be reviewed in the fall and winter of his or her 12^th grade year. Thus, when your child’s application is reviewed, college admissions staffs will only possess information pertaining to your child’s performance through the first semester of 12^th grade. In most cases, however, admission staffs don’t see any 12^th grade records.

Far more often than not, high schools do not send off 12^th grade, first semester grades in time for receipt and review by college admissions staffs prior to offering acceptances. In fact, during my tenure as an admissions committee member at Northwestern University and the University of Virginia, nearly every admission decision was made without 12^th grade academic reports in hand. If you were to believe conventional wisdom that 9^th and 10^th grade don’t count much, then you would be saying that college admissions decisions are mostly made on the basis of one year of high school performance, 11^th grade. What tomfoolery!?

So, knowing now that 9^th and 10^th grade do in fact count heavily in college admissions decisions, let me reveal the most powerful secret in college admissions. The secret is that 9^th and 10^th grade performance do not make up one-half of your child’s college admissions portfolio, they actually make up two-thirds!

Again, remember that nearly all admissions decisions are made on the basis of performance through the end of 11^th grade. Thus, 9^th and 10^th grade make up two of the three years of performance that college admissions personnel will see when they make a decision on your child’s application. Do you understand now?

Now that the secret is out, your family has a leg up on 99% of the students and families in America. Most will continue to imagine that 9^th and 10^th grade performance is a small factor in college admissions. You know the secret, now what are you going to do with it?

There is but one answer to that question. You must pull your child aside immediately and make a plan for academic and extra-curricular success that begins immediately. You must not waste any time. You must take advantage of the insider information you have and help your child gain admission at the college of his or her dreams.

If your child starts from day one of 9^th grade with a well-developed plan for success (click here to see Dr. Shumsky’s 4-year blueprint for college admission success), then there is no limit to the heights your son or daughter can attain. Admission to any college in America will be within reach. Here’s why: Every family in America believes that 11^th grade counts big time in admissions decisions, so they will do their best to arrange for a stand-out 11^th grade year. Nearly every middle class high school student will wake up to the fact that college is just around the corner from 11^th grade and will work harder than ever to create top grades and activities. By waiting until 11^th grade to get serious about the future, these families have severely restricted their child’s college options. You will not make such a mistake.

You may or may not know that success in college admissions today most often springs from special talents. Those students who are stand-outs intellectually, athletically, and/or artistically have their pick of college choices including the most competitive and prestigious universities in the country.

If your child does not possess elite talents in the arts, sports, or academic disciplines, then he or she needs to get to work immediately on exploring interests, future career paths, and ways to stand out from the crowd by broadening his or her life experiences.

Today’s college admissions staffs do not prize athletics, clubs, arts ensembles, and community service unless your child has elite talent or goes way above and beyond the norm. Instead they look for applicants who push their interests and curiosities as far as possible with depth and consistency over all years of high school.

Do not waste your child’s time with resume padding. Get to work today on helping your child discover what engages and challenges him or her. If your child stands out from the crowd from 9^th grade forward, then he or she will be a highly qualified applicant to every college in America.