My parents and I thought that a high GPA at a great high school meant I was prepared to thrive amidst the demands and opportunities that awaited me at UCB. We were wrong.

Today, this assumption has become even more risky: college has become more competitive (there are just as many Stanfords and Harvards, but many more students who want to get in), and high school has become easier (the increase in competition for selective colleges has fueled high school grade inflation). These colleges understand that an applicants 4.0 could be hiding one of two alternative stories.

It may ultimately tell a story about high school classes that did not actually prepare the student for college. To let that student in would be to set them up to fail.

Or it may turn out to be a story about a student who has to work so hard in high school that they have only been able thus far to survive, not thrive. To accept that student would be to set them up to, yet again, merely survive in college rather than thrive. (This was my story.)

In other words, there are skills required to flourish in higher education that are not required to earn great grades in high school.

This is why universities look for evidence of these skills (often called “life skills,” or “leadership skills,” or “executive function skills”) anywhere they can find them. Extracurricular activities can demonstrate these skills, and so can competitive scores on college entrance exams.

I became a test prep coach partly to redeem my own story, but I have remained a test prep coach for 25 years because I have learned that the most effective test prep—the job for which families hire me—must build the very skills and capacities that will continue to support students long after they take the test.

My responsibility as a test prep coach to “follow the points” has led me to this: those of my students who achieve the highest test scores are those who focus on test prep primarily as a means of building important skills and capacities, not of increasing their scores. Test prep has become my passion because the more I make my curriculum educational, the faster my students reach their goals.