Rising Stars Series
What is the Rising Stars Series?
The Rising Stars Series is a collection of classic novels that are annotated with chapter descriptions and word definitions to the challenging but useful words therein. Thus each Rising Stars book is an all-in-one combination of Novel, Cliff's Notes, and Thesaurus.
The Rising Stars Series is one of the most effective ways to increase students’ vocabulary AND absorb great literature for school or for pleasure. Each novel is annotated with succinct definitions to every challenging word that appears on the SAT. The annotations are right there– on the same page as the highlighted word – no flipping back and forth to indexes.
The series improves every year, not only with new annotated novels, but with additions to existing novels' databank as the SAT invokes new words into its tested lexicon. The SAT publishes four tests each year. Rising Stars takes the words for every test, and adds them to its vocabulary data bank. Thus, the Rising Stars Series will help the serious student throughout his or her academic career via software purchases or downloaded upgrades.
Every registered Rising Stars purchaser has access to the Rising Stars vocabulary data bank. Rising Stars is affiliated with Ivy Bound Test Prep, a private company that tracks all the published words on the SAT and helps its clients study for the Math, Reading, and Writing portions of the SAT. Your registered purchase of this book allows you to access this database for the upcoming academic year at no extra charge.
The rewards for academic excellence are higher than ever, but so too are the pressures for high school and university students to be among the top performers.
First Rising Stars Annotated Novels:
The first annotated novels in the Rising Stars Series are
- Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland
- Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
- Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime & Punishment
- Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
- Jack London's Call of the Wild
- Thomas More's Utopia
The Importance of the SAT
The SAT has become for most four-year colleges almost as important as grades. At many of the elite colleges, an SAT score is equal in importance to grade point average. While a student’s GPA represents three years’ worth of effort, the SAT is a single test that students will prep for assiduously over one, two, or perhaps three semesters. Students usually take the SAT multiple times, as colleges credit the best scores earned on the SAT, and many students are learning the value of prepping EARLY and taking the SAT often.
The SAT is very influential in Scholarship awards. Colleges over the last 15 years have seen the wisdom in awarding MERIT-BASED SCHOLARSHIPS to attract the best academic talent. The best indicator of “talent” to these colleges is not GPA, but SAT, because it is a nationwide standard.
The SAT influences athletic recruitment. College coaches have a limited number of places for talented athletes whose GPA might fall below the college’s standard. Coaches who can present recruits who tote above-average SAT scores can thus open up more places on their squads for talented athletes.
The SAT even has an impact on some professional hiring. (Several New York and Los Angeles investment banks have been demanding SAT scores from seasoned professionals who are changing positions).