2015-07-29 College Prep: admissions tests

Greg Malivuk
[email protected] (email me for the link to this Google document)
http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk
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Homework: Read the rest of the “Tips for International Students” article and make a list of the main things you would need to work on if you were applying to an American university program.
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get an SAT score
find the right school to apply to (because some have limits on international students)
do more extracurricular activities (any activities that you have done outside of school classes, such as sports, volunteer work, photography, a musical instrument, martial arts, artistic things)

“Colleges look for well-rounded students and grades are not enough.” = they want students who are good at and interested in many different things
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SAT (for undergraduate programs): https://sat.collegeboard.org/practice/sat-practice-questions
GRE (for general graduate programs): http://www.majortests.com/gre/gre-information.php
GMAT (for business programs): http://www.majortests.com/gmat/gmat-information.php

You would probably want to focus mainly on vocabulary or wordlists for these tests (even when the program you want is not language-focused)
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Dangling modifiers / dangling participles

While I was watching TV, I fell asleep.
-> Watching TV, I fell asleep.

While I was watching TV, the telephone rang.
*-> Watching TV, the telephone rang. (We say “watching TV” is “dangling”, because it doesn’t attach to anything in the main clause of this sentence. I was watching TV, but the telephone rang.)
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Sometimes it’s not incorrect, it’s just a little bit unclear:

I saw the man with the binoculars. / I saw the man using the binoculars.
Who had the binoculars?

I used the binoculars and saw the man.
I saw the man who had the binoculars.
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A stolen painting was found by a tree. (The tree found it or someone found it near the tree?)
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Homework: try to find or write a list of interesting ambiguous sentences