The old school
Historically, throughout Britain and the world, achieving a university place was synonymous with wealth, status, and success. Although there were occasional exceptions to this rule, in the past, a university degree was usually reserved for the privileged few. Today, whilst there still remains a culture of elitism within Britain’s top-tier universities – with Oxford and Cambridge both criticised for ‘over recruiting’ students from select, private schools – the tide does appear to be turning, and further education no longer depends on the wealth of the student.
Bridging the gap
Today, with the advent of the internet there are numerous online services that allow students from any background to receive a higher level of education than ever before. This culture of online learning really began to take effect in 2002, when MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) launched its OpenCourseWare Project, which offered free lectures to anyone with internet access. Since then, online learning platforms have been hugely successful in enabling thousands of students to achieve new academic heights that were previously unattainable. Success in academia today is largely centred around a student’s ACT and SAT scores, which are standardised tests that are administered across the UK and US respectively. The results of these tests provide the candidate with an overall score, with the SAT results ranging from 400-1600, and the ACT results ranging from 1-36..
About SAT & ACT
The results of these tests help prospective universities choose the most viable candidates. In 2018, the average SAT score for graduating seniors in the US was 1060. The ACT test is largely similar to the SAT in regard to content and marking criteria. Moreover, both standardised tests consist of multiple choice questions, meaning the results are clear and unambiguous with no room for bias on behalf of the marker.
Minor differences aside, the significance of these tests and their impact on the future of a student’s academic career cannot be underestimated. Due to the incredible importance and significance of achieving a high grade in these tests, there has been a massive rise in recent years of online SAT and ACT courses in London.
Online assistance
A-list Education, and similar sites are online training and educational platforms (set up by former Ivy league graduates) to help users optimise their SAT and ACT scores. These sites offer online courses in London, and – through online tuition – their results can lead to an average increase of 5 points on most ACT results, with the top 25% of students averaging a phenomenal 7 point increase. Similar results are also seen in SAT scores.
