Why There Are No Guarantees (you can trust)

Today we’re talking about guarantees. Everybody wants one, but there are no guarantees in life. A college’s graduation rate is no guarantee your student will graduate on time or at all. Their average six-months-out-of-college employment rate is no guarantee your student will be employed six months out of college or working in their field if they are. A college’s average starting salary is no guarantee your student will be earning that many dollars in their first job out of college.

These things are obvious, just like you wouldn’t ask a coach on the first day of practice how many points your student will score, how many games the team will win, by how many seconds they’ll reduce their best time by the end of the season. Or like you wouldn’t ask an AP or an IB teacher at back-to-school night what score your student will get on the exam in May. Obviously.

And yet so many parents, when they call and ask about SAT or ACT prep, they’re looking for guarantees: a guaranteed score improvement or a guaranteed score of a student that we haven’t even met, let alone worked with. And any guarantee somebody gives you is going to have a million asterisks and loopholes they can worm their way out of. Some people will give you guarantees. I’ll give you the truth.

That any average you’re looking at is going to include students starting at an 800 and students starting at a 1400. It’s going to include students who came to all the classes and didn’t, did all their homework and didn’t, took all their practice tests and didn’t. So those averages are not going to be a guarantee.

Mark Twain said, “There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics.” So anybody offering you, “Oh, this is the average this, this is the average that,” they’re presenting the numbers they want to show you that you have no way of verifying. You just have to trust that they’re not lying.

And so anybody telling you that your student is definitely going to get into a particular college or so many of the colleges on their list, or definitely going to get a scholarship or financial aid: run! Run as fast as you can. Because there are no guarantees.

So just worry about who your student works best with and what works best for your family and your budget. If you have questions, reach out to us at 732-556-8220. We are here to help.