Academic Brush Up

If you’ve been out of school for a while, it’s a good idea to brush up on your academic skills or perhaps even learn some new skills. You may want to start a study group with friends who are also applying to college, so you can help each other.

You will need to do a lot of writing and reading for college, starting with the application and placement tests as well as the coursework. You will need to know how to correctly write paragraphs, essays, and research papers. You will need to understand textbooks and exams. Most colleges have a math requirement, so you will also need to use math for placement tests and perhaps courses, depending on your major.

Luckily, the internet has many free resources to help you in the academic areas that you need to work on.

Online Writing Resources

Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL)
Check out links in these sections: The Writing Process, General Academic Writing, and Grammar and Mechanics. If you are an ESOL student, also look at the English as a Second Language section.

St. Cloud State University Literacy Education Online
Scroll down and click on a sentence that describes an area you need to improve.

Online Reading Comprehension Resources

Breaking News English
Click on a story title under “Latest Lesson” or “Recent Lessons,” or click the link under “1,000 + More Lessons” and click on a month to see more titles. On the story page, click to download the document and to listen to the story. Then scroll down and do the exercises. (Some have instructions to do them with another person, but you can do them on your own.) Scroll to the bottom of the page to check your answers. Scroll to the top and click on “Recreate the text” to test yourself.

TV411 Reading
Simply click on a topic and then click on “Begin.”

Online Math Resources

Khan Academy Math
Browse through the different categories and click on the topics.

Free-ed.net Mathematics
Click to choose a topic, and then click to choose a lesson.

What’s Next?
Now that you’ve had a chance to brush up on your academics, let’s look at the possible challenges to learning you may have to work around!