Our son, a junior at Seaholm High School, will spend the year focusing on the college admissions process. Because our daughter, a freshman at Michigan State, was a solid standardized test taker, we didn’t think it was all that important to push ACT prep “classes” on her if she wasn’t receptive. But after going through the process of calculating grades, plus ACT scores, plus starting a food co-op in Sub-Saharan Africa, which equals varying probabilities of getting into this-that-or-the-other college, we may take them more seriously the second time around.

The preparation for college wasn’t so complicated back in prehistoric times, the 1970s. When we took the ACT, we walked in with a pair of No. 2 pencils, and walked out hoping we performed decently enough to get into our college-of-choice, of which there was usually only one. And it certainly merited little, if any, discussion within the family. Your score was your score and that was that. No taking the test three, four, five times hoping to increase your result by a few points like many kids do now. And really, no prep other than the PSAT. (That I can remember, anyway.)

Today, there’s this big orchestration that leads up to the test junior year. Postcards arrive in the mail as early as freshman year of high school, promising better test results if only you enroll your student in some flavor-of-the-month program that lasts weeks or months, and costs more than a monthly car payment or two.  

I’ve gotten calls from software companies trying to sell the benefits of extensive online ACT prep (if they make it compatible with Xbox 360, we’re in!). I have e-mails from the Princeton Review exhorting the benefits of preparation in June, July and August. And I recently witnessed a one-on-one tutoring session at Starbucks with the “coach” assuring his student that next time she took the test, “You’ll get better than a 30.” Wow. Where do I sign up?

I suppose if either of our kids had indicated the slightest bit of interest, I might have tried harder to send them to “ACT Summer Camp.” But I didn’t see the point in spending all that time and money to prepare for a test that, in my time (when dinosaurs roamed the earth), most kids took as blithely as celery and dip. Plus, I found it hard to believe someone’s entire future rested on a single test score.

But then, instead of mastering the grand skill of test-taking, I’ve learned through daydreaming and fiddling around with ideas ‘til they made sense. When I’ve felt stymied by a problem, sometimes a good old-fashioned detour or distraction provided the answer. And other times, procrastination meant I hadn’t thought something through thoroughly enough; not that I was completely clueless and would never reach a conclusion. All of which go against of the grain of things that can be seen and are measurable.  

If I ruled the world, evidence of inventive, “outside-the-box”-type thinking might have more weight than a standardized test result in the college admissions process. But I don’t, and that means, yes, grudgingly, test-taking skills do matter especially when colleges receive more applications than there are spots available (or so it seems). Until the system can accommodate less generic criteria, they prefer concrete evidence that a student will succeed.

So maybe an ACT workshop or two to get exposure to the test doesn’t hurt. After all, practice makes perfect. Or at least it builds confidence, and confidence often results in better performance, especially for kids who struggle with test-taking.

When I suggested to our son that he take a workshop to help him prepare, surprisingly, he took the bait. Didn’t get too fancy, though. The one he’s signed up for only lasts a day.