Hard to believe it’s been a year since I first launched ePrep.com. The time certainly flew. Together with colleagues and guest experts, we’ve developed quite an online following from students, parents and educators. Thank you for your continued interest and voice in the discussion.

As I posted weeks ago, I’ve been working with a great team for the past year to develop what we believe will be the most effective SAT study program on the market. You can get a tiny sliver of the experience from our online demo (it’s just the tip of the iceberg!). We’re in alpha testing mode right now and expect to launch the service very soon. Rest assured, this ePrep blog will continue to serve up engaging (and free) test prep, (more…)

Performance based contracts are nothing new in the field of business, but with the explosive cost of college tuition, such contracts increasingly popular between parents and their children. Let me explain through a personal story.

A few years ago, I received a panicked phone call from my father. It seems my little brother, who had just finished the fall semester of his freshman year at the University of Richmond, had received a couple “D’s” on his report card. My father was threatening to pull him out of Richmond – for which my father was paying nearly $35,000 per year – and to make him attend the local community college. My father’s logic made sense. Why should he pay so much for college if his son (my brother) was not applying himself? (more…)

1. I saw ePrep Guest Expert Seamus Malin on TV yesterday. Seamus was part of ESPN’s presentation of the Champions League final between AC Milan and Liverpool. I saw him during the halftime show. (Seamus, in addition to being a former administrator at Harvard University, is a world-famous soccer commentator.) Great job, Seamus.

2. Bob Bradley, my old soccer coach at Princeton University, was recently named Head Coach of the United States Men’s National Team. The team will attempt to qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Good luck, Bob.

3. The movie “Gracie” will be out in theaters across the United States starting on June 1. I actually play the referee in the movie, which has a sports/soccer theme. The movie was directed by Oscar-winning director, Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”). You can check out the trailer at www.graciemovie.com. Good luck to my friend, Andrew Shue, who produced the movie, which happens to be inspired by his family’s real life events.

Enough about soccer, back to the SAT.

Today is May 6, which means the May 5th SAT is over! We wanted to share this hilarious YouTube video, entitled “I Hate the SAT”, which perhaps summarizes how most high school students feel about the SAT. You should also check out all the video responses and comments by other student who concur.

Be sure to congratulate yourself for all the hours of hard work you’ve poured into your SAT preparation. You can now take a deep breath and relax. Regardless of how you think you scored, please remember it’s just (more…)

According to an article appearing on the website examiner.com, some students in San Francisco have found a creative way to deal with college rejection letters; its called “Class Rejection Therapy.” Students brought their rejections letters to class where prizes were awarded in categories that included: The student who received the highest number of rejection letters and the college that distributed the most insincere rejection letter (Harvard). Students also reviewed rejection letters for the least number of words before the recipient knew that he/she was getting rejected. Sounds like the therapy session was a lot of fun.

While I’m pretty handy around the house and enjoy home improvement projects, I occasionally get myself in over my head. It is at such times that I call upon Kevin, a local handyman, to help me out. I have known Kevin for a couple of years now. He is a great guy and a talented craftsman.

What separates Kevin from other handymen, however, is that he is currently earning a masters degree in education. Yes, at the ripe old age of fifty, Kevin has decided to change careers. (more…)

Gone are the days when you used to run out and tackle the mailman and squint to see if your college admissions envelope was fat or thin, hoping for a college acceptance letter. In a few weeks, most college applicants will be heading online to login and hit the “refresh” button on their PCs to find out whether they are “accepted”, “waitlisted”, or “rejected”. In commemoration of this annual right of passage, we thought we’d repost a notorious, actual essay that landed applicant Hugh Gallagher a college acceptance letter at NYU.

ESSAY: IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I’m bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge. (more…)

One of the students I tutored yesterday afternoon is a football player who will be attending an Ivy League school next year. He told me about an Ivy League football movie in the making and about a trailer for the movie. I did a little digging and found the trailer on ivysport.com. I am a little annoyed with fellow blogger, Eric Barnes, (just joking) who founded ivysport.com several years ago and neglected to tell me about the movie and the trailer. Anyway, you can access the trailer at www.ivysport.com by clicking on the image of the football-player gargoyle. Below is some additional information about the movie that I obtained from Eric.
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It seems that two teenagers from Fresno, California, seriously messed up their changes of being admitted by their colleges of choice. The article written by Andy Boogaard of The Fresno Bee describes how one of the teens impersonated the other at a recent administration of the SAT. The article also details how they got busted.

That’s right…the shower. While we strongly advise “early and often” test prep, the SAT test has been know to transpose normal people to compulsive zealots, and rest assured there’s a company making a product to serve the need. Take for example these SAT test prep shower curtains by The Intuitive Learning Company. Now young students can bathe in privacy and study up for next week’s SAT test. After you’ve mastered Intuitive’s 500 SAT vocabulary list curtain, switch it out for a review of SAT math concepts! This reminds of me of the classic Seinfeld episode where Kramer decides to prepare his food in the shower to save time and ultimately installs a disposal in the shower.