High school students take prep course at OUS

On Thursday and Friday, the Bowman Auditorium at Ohio University Southern was filled with students. Not an uncommon occurrence, but these students were from five local high schools who were there to find out how to do better on their ACT tests so they could get into college.

The all-day event was an ACT boot camp, put on by Next Level Prep, which specializes in giving high school students strategies on how to do better on the ACT test.

The 240 students at Thursday’s session were from Dawson-Bryant, St. Joseph, Rock Hill, South Point and Chesapeake high schools. Students from Ironton High School attended boot camp on Friday.

Jaidyn Miller, a junior at Dawson-Bryant High School, said she was there to boost her ACT score.

“I’m kind of pushing for a 27, that’s what I am really looking for,” she said. She took the test in her freshman year and didn’t do so well because she was just starting out on geometry and didn’t know it well. “So I didn’t get a great score and I’m trying to boost that.”

She said she found the boot camp helpful.

“It really has been,” Miller said. “Especially with the science and things, because I am not very good at reasoning.”

She said that one of the tips she liked most was skipping a question on the test and then coming back to it.

Dylan French, also a junior at Dawson-Bryant High School, was also at the boot camp to get a better score on the ACT test.

“I just want to improve,” he said. “I found going over both the strategies and the subjects the test will cover to be helpful. I think this is going to help a lot.”

Aaron Watson, a math teacher at Dawson-Bryant High School, said this is the third year that students have been through the boot camp.

“It’s grown every single year,” he said, adding that this year, they even had to open up a whole new section in the auditorium because there had about 100 additional students. “The kids want to come here, they feel like it is significant for opening up more opportunities. The higher the ACT score, the more majors that are available to them. There are more scholarship opportunities available to them.”

He said a lot of students go through ACT prep because they need a certain ACT score to take college classes at the high school.

Dave Dobos, one of the Next Level speakers at the ACT boot camp, said the goal is to de-mystify the test.

“We help them understand how the test is structured, what academic content gets covered and we provide them all types of testing and time management strategies to enable them to do their best,” he said.

All the juniors in the State of Ohio will take the ACT test around Feb. 20.