Ace any standardized admissions test, with top-tier academic coaching and effective tools to manage anxiety [Show summary]

Bara Sapir has been providing test prep for over 20 years and is a pioneer in mindful test taking, implementing a holistic approach to the test prep process. She shares her best tips along with her comprehensive approach for success on any test.

Approaching test prep with mindfulness [Show notes]

Welcome to the 427th episode of Admissions Straight Talk, thanks for joining me. Before I introduce our guest for today, I'd like to invite you to take advantage of Accepted’s price rollback. Last year in the midst of the pandemic, Accepted experimented with a price rollback and it was so popular that we are doing it again. Today and tomorrow you can purchase Accepted's outstanding admissions advising and editing at 2017 prices. Just go to accepted.com/services, choose the service that's right for you and save. The rollback prices will only display in the shopping cart, not on the website page, but hurry this special ends at midnight July 21st Pacific time. Then it's back to contemporary times and 2021 pricing.

Our guest today, Bara Sapir, is an internationally recognized expert in high performance coaching and personal empowerment and is a pioneer in mindful test taking and transformative test preparation. She has a BFA from the University of Michigan, a MA in education from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a MA from the University of Michigan in art history, gender and holocaust studies. Well-resourced and experienced, she has had a 20+ year career in the test prep field with expertise in eliminating test anxiety, managing stress, building confidence and improving each student's journey through the academic terrain. She founded City Test Prep, a hybrid test preparation company providing academic mastery, test taking strategy and techniques in holistic and mindful test taking. 

Given your background in the arts and history, how on earth did you get involved in test prep? [2:26]

It started when I was at University of Michigan. I was in the Fine Arts program and felt that I wanted to stay on to really take advantage of the university. I could have either gotten a double major or I could have stayed on to get a Master's degree and be in the PhD program and thought, "Let me apply to PhD programs," but to do that I needed to take a test prep course in order to take the GRE. And I did, I took the Princeton Review and felt like, "Oh, this is really interesting. This is really fun. I can do this too." So I started working for Princeton Review and I saw once I started teaching how the work that I did as an artist, which is so much about being in the zone and being present and really allowing yourself to be just so fully immersed in the now so that you can produce what it is that you're trying to express, was really relevant to students who were learning a lot of the material. So I started to bridge these worlds between the fine arts and being in the zone, and the students I was teaching in test prep.

How do you define mindfulness? What role does mindfulness play in effective test prep? [3:42]