Hot Tip on Critical Reading: Quickly Cracking The Central Idea of a Passage
How to assess the Central Idea using a quantitative perspective
Note to Parents: Get 2023 off to a good start for your teen and give them every opportunity to thrive in the new era of competitive college admissions. Get as high of a SAT/ACT score and STEM (Math/Science) grades as possible in school.
Secure your edge in admissions by planning ahead with a dedicated roadmap session on how academic coaching, SATs, and college consulting can help you. If you have any quick questions, feel free to text our Program Officer Jasmine at 781-510-0738. Serious inquiries only.
Tigerway Parents and Students,
Statistically speaking on the SAT, the Reading section gives test takers the most difficulty.
Why is this? Based on our years’ long observations of student performance, it comes down to the following:
Feeling time constrained when it comes to the reading section
Not fully comprehending the main idea when reading in a time-restricted environment
Experiencing a large tradeoff between reading comprehension and speed (The faster you read, the less you are able to retain)
Not knowing the vocabulary presented in the passage, making contextual understanding more difficult
In this public email, we will go through one question on the SAT Reading Comprehension question section and explain the thought process required to be successful on these questions.
Forward this email along to parents or teens who struggle with the SAT Reading section and have them join our email list here (completely free).
The Passage: Focus on the Main Idea
Summary: There are concrete benefits to students getting more sleep as that improves their overall well being, so a study was conducted on what the impact on students would be if school times were pushed to a later start.
The passage explores the study’s conclusions and goes onto discuss the findings of the experiment as tie progresses. At the end of the passage, there is an opinion being made on what to do with school starting times.
The Question
The way to think about this question:
Whenever you see the phrase main idea or central claim, you are essentially looking for the core message of the passage. Mathematically, if over 50% of your message is about X, then X is in fact your central claim.
Here, there are 94 lines in this passage. If a certain message is being conveyed in more than 47 lines of the passage, that is your main idea.
There is evidence that the Author makes a strong stance on later school start times being beneficial for student performance and well-being. The passage ends with the statements that further research by saying that the study should be replicated across other countries.
Paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 directly talk about the benefits of later school start times.
The last paragraph discusses the need to do further research.
D is objectively the best choice.
Why Coaching is helpful in elite college admissions
At Tigerway, we believe that many times a student can materially grow their progress on the SAT and in school coursework outcomes if they have the right guidance.
We don’t believe the after-school resources that most public schools offer is sufficient for building a very strong foundation for elite college admissions.
Even if the high school offers after-school resources, many students typically get external help to boost SAT scores and Grades at school.
Given how competitive the process is, the final outcome in admissions could end up being determined by whether the student got a B+ versus an A in an important Math/English/Science class. Or a 1300 versus a 1400 on the SAT.
Our goal is to help students get into the best colleges in the U.S.
In regards to Colleges that have extremely high acceptance rates, that’s not the game we play.
We aim to create winners in the process of Top 50 U.S. college admissions results.
About Tigerway
We have a lot of new email subscribers to our Tigerway email list, so we wanted to say welcome to everyone.
Tigerway is Boston’s leading SAT Exam and Academic Coaching Program. The program is founded by Larry Cheung, CFA (feel free to connect on Linkedin). Along side serving as one of Boston’s market leaders for educational providers, Larry is passionate about helping his Global Online Community navigate critical issues such as the economy and powerful financial upward mobility as a Key Opinion Leader (KOL).
Tigerway’s No. 2 in Command is Jasmine Ngo. She is a successful Tigerway Alumni and serves as our Program Officer. She has thoughtful strategy roadmap discussions to onboard parents into our Program.
Our coaches are hand-picked by Larry and Jasmine. Our coaches have top scores and grades, but even more importantly, they have demonstrated an intense passion to help others get to the next level.
We are selectively hiring new Coaches for SATs, Academic Coaching, and College Consulting. If you are interested in these roles, please send your resume to Jasmine@tigerwayprep.com.
Tigerway is a proud Founding Member of the National Test Prep Association (NTPA) where the NTPA consistently communicates with the College Board and ACT Exam to understand the future of academics and standardized testing.
