Test day is right around the corner.

What should you be doing in the final week leading up to the big day to maximize your preparation and ensure that you have the best possible result on your exam? We break it down for you day-by-day in episode 27 of The Dominate Test Prep Podcast, laying out for you exactly what you should be prioritizing each day starting "7 days out" to finish strong.

Listen to it HERE:

Download the accompanying "7 Days Out" checklist HERE:

If you have a week or less before test day, these last-minute tips will help you know where to focus and ensure that you've covered all your bases heading in to the exam. Even if you still have a while, much of what we discuss will help you with your preparation in general -- and then you can revisit it as your final week gets closer.

The end is in sight... finish strong!

A DOSE OF MOTIVATION

"If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail." -- Benjamin Franklin

As always, be sure to subscribe to the podcast...

Conventional wisdom tells us that if we study hard, high test scores will inevitably follow.

But what if we are unmotivated to study or hampered by fear of failure?

Or what happens if when we do study, we are plagued by feeling nervous and anxious, and we are not able to perform to our potential?

It's no surprise that if you enter your test feeling anything but focused and calm, you risk a subpar performance. But how does one easily get there?  

We answer those questions -- and more -- in this episode of The Dominate Test Prep Podcast as we are joined by Bara Sapir, CEO/Founder of City Test Prep, who shares proven techniques to help students master the "Inner Game" of test preparation. 

Specifically, we discuss:

• What test anxiety is, and how you can know if you have it;
• Anxiety-management tips for the months, weeks, and days leading up to your exam;
• The "backwards spin" technique to help you reverse anxiety if it presents itself during the exam itself;
• ...

By: Michael Noltemeyer, North Star Editing

Writing an application is like being trapped in a choose-your-own-adventure story that someone else is reading: your fate lies in the hands of your audience.

Problem is, most applicants don’t understand what their audience wants.

I don’t make that claim lightly. Over the last ten years, I’ve read literally thousands of personal statements and statements of purpose and everything in between.

That’s why I’m confident when I say you’re probably making at least one of these three mistakes I see on almost every essay that comes my way.

1. Thinking Your Essays Don’t Matter

Consider these figures from 2017:

Competition for Ivy League spots is so fierce that Harvard, Yale, and Stanford could each rescind their offers of admission to every student they have already accepted, choose another freshman class of the same size, and suffer no statistical drop-off.

In fact, they could probably do that...

In this very first episode of The Dominate Test Prep Podcast, we share with you the top three things we've seen from 14+ years in the industry that will empower you to have the best possible experience preparing for whichever standardized test you're studying for.

Listen to these top 3 tips here:

These principles are universal, so whether you're just diving in or have been preparing for a while and need that little extra something to get you over the hump, we're confident you'll see an improved score on test day if you take these tips to heart.

In the "From the Mailbag" segment, we also tackle the question of why your standardized test is necessary in the first place, so be sure to listen all the way to the end for that.

Study hard and we'll talk with you on the next episode. Until then, I'll leave you with the quote we opened this episode with:

"If you want to be great, you must embrace the boredom of consistency." -- Justin Su'a

As always, be sure to subscribe to...

If you're like a lot of students when they first come to me, you're unsure of exactly how to prepare for the SAT to maximize your results. Perhaps you've already been studying on your own, working practice problems and taking practice tests, but you're not seeing the kind of improvement you need. You know there has to be a way to prepare more effectively, but you don't know what it is.

My question to you is: How do you get better at anything in life?

Whether you're learning a musical instrument, honing your skills at a sport, perfecting your painting abilities, or yes, learning to dominate the SAT, it really boils down to an interplay between three core components -- what I call the "SAT Success Triad."

They are:

1. Content Knowledge. This is the WHAT of a particular endeavor. On the SAT, it's the mathematical, reading, and writing concepts you need to know.
2. Strategy. This is the HOW of getting more efficient and effective at implementing the various content knowledge. On the SAT,...

By now you've no doubt read all about the college admissions scandal that has rocked higher education and cast doubt on the fairness of the process that students go through to get admitted to the top U.S. universities.

And, like most people, you're probably outraged by it. You can't believe the depths that people will go to to cheat the system. And if you're in the middle of the admissions process yourself, you're wondering if the deck is stacked against you to the point where you even have a legitimate chance at competing for a spot at your dream school.

Those are perfectly normal reactions, and I get it. Believe me, my inbox has been full these past few days from students asking what it means for them, and whether they should be concerned that the same thing may be happening at the graduate level as well. 

(To that last point, Operation Varsity Blues only focused on uncovering schemes perpetrated at the undergraduate level. It's certainly possible that similar things could...

Earlier this week we hosted a free webinar on Time Management, Speed Reading, and Anxiety Relief with special guest trainer Bara Sapir of City Test Prep. If you missed it, the recording is above.

We are pleased to announce that we have worked out and exclusive deal with Bara to offer anyone affiliated with Dominate Test Prep a $50 discount on any one of her upcoming online MindFlow Speed Reading clinics!

To learn more and take advantage of this special offer, visit https://citytestprep.com/product/mindflow-workshop/ and enter the following coupon code at checkout: 50discount.

For the past 13 years, Bara has taught MindFlow, a game-changer workshop that teaches participants to read up to 5x faster -- without compromising comprehension. Increased speed and accuracy translates to test-takers gaining more time to answer questions and consistently score higher on the GMAT, GRE, LSAT, SAT, ACT, and MCAT. In fact, Bar's techniques lead to a 13% average score increase in your...

Would you agree that if you could increase your reading speed, it would help you immensely on whichever standardized test you're taking?

Of course it would. 

Reading faster will help you on reading comprehension questions, obviously. It will also help you with your overall time management. Timing issues are one of the top concerns my students have when they first come to me, and reading faster is one of the strategies for improving that.

And even after test day, think about how useful it would be in graduate school to be able to get through the countless pages of text you're expect to read in less time -- and still understand what you're reading!

Fortunately, there are a handful of easy-to-learn techniques that will enable you to increase your reading speed without losing comprehension -- and we're going to teach them to you in a free webinar we're hosting on Tuesday, February 5th, at 1:00pm Eastern Time U.S. (10am PST).

Lock in your spot NOW so that you...

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

You've been studying like crazy for your standardized test (whether SAT, ACT, GMAT, or GRE), and you feel like you've brushed up on all of the key concepts that are supposedly tested. But then you go to take your first practice test (or worse, the real thing) and, uh-oh!, you encounter some questions that you simply haven't seen before.

Panic sets in, and you wonder whether all that preparation was for naught.

Now you're confused. What did I miss? Did my tutor / prep course steer me wrong? Do I need to seek out new books that may have some of these "missing" practice questions in them? Will I ever be able to get the score I need?

Truth be told, you probably haven't missed anything. I'm sure your prep course or tutor didn't overlook any major topics, and that book you've been studying from almost certainly includes all of the major content areas you can expect to see on test day.

So what went wrong?

More likely than not, you simply haven't...

You've no doubt heard the adage that "practice makes perfect." But that's not necessarily true. I prefer the legendary American football coach Vince Lombardi's variation that goes, "Perfect practice makes perfect."

You see, how you practice and prepare for your exam matters. I want to shed some light on that for you so that you're able to maximize your study time. In fact, if you internalize and take action on the three tips I'm going to share with you, you'll be able to get more right answers on test day without having to put in a lot of extra hours. Time is valuable, so why spend more of it preparing for your exam than absolutely necessary?

Okay, let's dive in.

A Tale of Two Candidates

Consider the following two hypothetical students studying for their respective exams.

Candidate A: Studies for 100 hours.

Candidate B: Studies for 80 hours.

Which student do you think is likely to get a higher score?

It's a trick question. On the surface, it seems like Candidate A is the obvious...