Biltmore Tutoring

There are many reasons parents choose tutoring for their children – some parents feel unable to help their children with schoolwork. Others may find their children are more receptive to working through school struggles with a person that they see as a mentor.

Tutoring will help strengthen subject comprehension, boost confidence, and build important learning skills.

Tutoring gives students individualized attention that they don’t get in a crowded classroom. This helps children who struggle to keep up, as well as those who aren’t challenged enough.

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After the Covid-19 pandemic made it near impossible to secure a testing site for many students, almost all colleges across the U.S. announced a “test-optional” policy for applicants. For the first time ever, applicants to top-tier schools were not required to submit SAT or ACT scores. Many students, including those who had put off the exams or were struggling to score highly, breathed a sigh of relief. If they would not be at a disadvantage without test scores, as colleges assured them, then they wouldn’t have to spend hours preparing. After all, why would colleges say it if it wasn’t true? 

While we want to believe that schools are going test-optional because they have students’ best interests at heart and want to help even the playing field, we have to keep in mind that even elite universities are businesses. Any move that will strategically increase the number of applications a school receives should be looked at with a healthy dose of skepticism. Furthermore, not only do colleges and universities inaccurately tout the scores as an indicator of how students will perform in their classrooms, but their coveted U.S. News & World Report rankings are still based in some measure on their average SAT or ACT scores for their incoming freshman class. 

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Teachers worried about students turning in essays written by a popular artificial intelligence chatbot now have a new tool of their own.

Edward Tian, a 22-year-old senior at Princeton University, has built an app to detect whether text is written by ChatGPT, the viral chatbot that’s sparked fears over its potential for unethical uses in academia.

Tian, a computer science major who is minoring in journalism, spent part of his winter break creating GPTZero, which he said can “quickly and efficiently” decipher whether a human or ChatGPT authored an essay.

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What’s the best time to take a test prep class? When other students (mistakenly) believe that test scores are completely optional. Get a leg up on your competition today, and be prepared for the fall ACT and SAT exams!

CLASS	DATE	TIME
SAT SUMMER BOOT CAMP	JULY 31 – AUGUST 4, 2023	10:00 AM – 3:00 PM
SAT SUMMER BOOT CAMP	AUGUST 21 – AUGUST 25, 2023	10:00 AM – 3:00 PM

The boot camps are a great place to begin the journey into test prep. Tuition is $1295, and that includes registration fees, books, practice materials, 25 hours of expert instruction and diagnostic tests.

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As we help your high school student through the college admissions process, keep these trends in mind. When we all understand the current college admissions climate, your student’s college admissions strategy can be optimized for success. 

College application numbers remain high.

Without the hurdle of standardized testing requirements, students are applying to many more selective schools than in the years before test-optional policies were adopted. According to the Common App’s January 2023 update, total application volume rose 24% from 2019-20 to 2022-23. Colleges that saw an increase in applications ranged from the nation’s most selective schools to less competitive public colleges.

EFFECT: When more students submit applications to colleges, fewer students get admitted. This trend is most visible at highly selective schools, but it is happening at colleges of every level of selectivity. That said, when college acceptance rates drop, even top students need to reconsider the colleges they may think of as “safeties.” Even the most qualified candidates are never guaranteed an offer of admission.

RECOMMENDATION: Every student, even those who are valedictorians, should apply to colleges with a range of selectivity.

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