As is athletics or the performing arts, outstanding achievement on the SAT/ACT depends on maintenance of powerfully sharp, energetic, mindful concentration and “winning focus.”
In athletics, the problem is the opposing team. In the performing arts, it’s stage fright. In test taking, your adversaries are the test questions. Test takers, like athletes and stage performers, need to confront and conquer pressure, stress, fatigue, distractions, and other challenges with sustained enthusiasm, relentless drive, and full commitment to success.
An intense, aggressive, yet controlled state of concentration is critical to performing at one’s best in any competitive activity. “Winning Focus” is so important, in fact, that without it, almost nothing else matters.
By definition, intensity always involves some amount of tension. Undisciplined, raw intensity can lead to varying degrees of frustration, anxiety, and even exhaustion. Athletes, performers, and test takers must learn to thread the needle between two extremes, remaining fully responsive and focused on winning without getting rattled or falling victim to tenseness, tiredness, or negative emotion.
When intelligence is inhibited by inattention, distraction, tiredness, or emotional upset, reduced cognitive bandwidth causes a mental traffic jam, disrupting the efficient flow of ideas.
On the other hand, Winning Focus lights up the brain like a Christmas tree. All kinds of connections, insights, and creative solutions come to mind that would otherwise go unnoticed. Most important of all, careless mistakes are minimized.
Fully half the errors on a typical student's SAT/ACT math test are due to carelessness. If these careless errors were reduced by half, a student scoring 650 on an SAT math section would instead score 720, and one scoring 27 on the ACT would score 31!
These dramatic improvements require neither new math smarts, nor improved testing acumen, nor additional practice – just a 50% cutback in careless mistakes. In fact, math test prep could be restricted entirely to development of Winning Focus, and most students would be well served.
The vast majority of test coaches pay no significant attention to the mental game of test taking. In my work, Winning Focus takes center stage. Using proprietary methods and materials, a natural knack for inspiring and igniting motivation, and a unique ability to train all aspects of effective test prep that only 45+ years in business can bring, I teach my students to track errors, avoid unnecessary mistakes, and generate and sustain powerful, energetic, productive concentration.
The best way to train Winning Focus is to build strength and endurance through gradual exposure to practice tests of increasing length and difficulty, bolstered by professional performance critiquing, feedback, error analysis, and personal support. It boils down to habituating a determined, enthusiastic, mindful concentration on test questions, and training higher levels of focus for longer and longer periods.
Fortunately, most high-performing students already know how to do this. Such students are typically athletes, actors, dancers, and/or musicians, and already know how to generate the state of mind necessary to excel at competitive activities. It’s just a matter of transferring this well-developed ability to the domain of test taking. Although the particulars are more complex, it’s really that simple.
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Copyright © 2006-present: Christopher R. Borland. All rights reserved.
