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Like it or not, the SATs are a critical opportunity for students to prove themselves to college admissions committees across the country.

If you want to be at the top of your game, you need to develop an effective strategy to prepare. We spoke with sInstaEDUome of the top experts in college admissions to find out more about the best ways to prepare for the SATs.

1. Start Reading

If you have a lot of time to prepare, the first step is get reading. Richard Bernstein, Executive Director of Huntington Learning Center (Cherry Hill, NJ and Turnersville, NJ), says this is crucial. “If you have a year to prepare, read, read, and read some more.”

2. Create a Balanced Study Regimen

Build a study pattern that will get you ready for the test. Students can effectively study in a group, one-on-one sessions, or by themselves. No matter what you do however, make sure you don’t overload and always keep a reasonable study/life balance.

Setting goals is only useful if they are realistic. The best way to be productive during crunch time is to “schedule play activities first into your calendar, then your work.” Piers Steel, a professor at the University of Calgary, says in a . “It makes sure there is a payoff for being productive.”

A student who elects to devote an inordinate amount of time to studying for the

American public schools have made tremendous progress since the Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. Schools throughout the nation are more diverse than ever before as a result of desegregation, immigration of people to this country, and emigration of citizens from one region of the nation to another. Sixty years after the Supreme Court’s decision, schools in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and other southern states where segregation was once so prominent have shown great gains in diversity.

But which states have the most diverse public school campuses? We collected data and analyzed the numbers to develop an original list illustrating how much diversity truly exists in each state’s public schools.

Diversity Scores of Public Schools

To equally compare the diversity of public schools in our country, we mined student population data and calculated diversity scores at the school, town, county and state levels.

While “diversity” commonly refers to the presence of minorities, we were interested in understanding the presence of more than one ethnic group on campus. For example, while theLos Angeles Unified School District has many schools that have 90% or more Hispanic students on campus, this would be considered a homogenous school, rather than a diverse one.

As such, our formula determines the likelihood that any two students are from different ethnic groups. Scores closer to 1 indicate greater diversity, while scores closer to 0 indicate lesser diversity.

When examining the various levels of scoring, school-level scores are

Broward County began the school year with high expectations for their bus service. The district purchased new buses and brought on new drivers in hopes of raising their level of service. Throughout the first few weeks of the previous school year, transportation officials were inundated with complaints from parents about bus delays and children getting dropped off at the wrong location. Unfortunately, a major error on the first day of school cost the county’s bus safety another black eye even before the school year was in full swing.

Kids Left at Wrong Stop, in Wrong City

The reports that seven students between the ages of 10 and 13 were dropped off in the wrong city on the first day at Forest Glen Middle School. Instead of getting dropped off at their Coral Springs stop just a few minutes from the school, the students got off the bus seven miles away in Pompano Beach. The students were left near Broward Health North Hospital in Pompano Beach, according to .

The students involved in the incident told the bus driver he was going the wrong way, but he refused to stop, the Huffington Post reported. One of the students contacted her father by cell phone. The parent asked to talk to the bus driver, but the students said the bus driver refused to take the phone. As one might suspect, many of the parents of the students have called the

This year, Boston Public Schools students will be returning to free lunches when they return to school. The large district recently joined a national program that serves free meals to all students, regardless of income level. This program eliminates the need for families to complete paperwork involving sensitive information like income amounts and ensures every student has access to a hot, nutritious lunch as part of their daily learning experience.

No Paperwork Required

The reports that the district has signed on to a federal initiative designed to simplify the process of offering free or reduced-price lunches to low-income students in a district. In some cases, the process of qualifying for affordable meals in school meant filling out complex paperwork that families might not always understand. For example, families in Boston Public Schools speak as many as 100 different languages, which meant that even forms completed in English might be difficult for some parents to comprehend completely.

This video explains how the Community Eligibility Option works in detail.

In addition, the process of receiving free lunches can create a socio-economic divide in some schools, as some students get free food and others had to pay for it. While many students used identification cards which made the process more discreet, some students still pay for their meals with cash. By allowing every student access to a free meal, needy students