<p>So I'm a junior and I took the PSAT. I want to take the SAT and ACT soon, but I literally haven't "studied" for it, like with a prep book or anything. Without being too boring:
-3.987 cumulative GPA
-very good at writing (I'm not even sure how they score the essay)
-always tested high in English/reading
- for my state's standardized test taken soph. year: 97th percentile on English, 98th on social studies, 90th for science, and 85th (or something close to that) for math
-in top 10% of my class (although it's only like 280)
-class rank #15</p>
<p>I'm mostly nervous for math...I can figure out a lot of the problems on these types of tests, but there still are several where I read them and have no idea how to even begin. I'm not in a super advanced math class either...Alg II as a junior...seems like the kids who get a 30+ are in calc II already by my age...in physics right now, taken bio and chem, but I'm still worried about the science portion.
My goal is a 30/31+. I'm not expecting a perfect score at all. Brutally honest, anyone have an idea of maybe what I would get--right now, without doing a lot of prep, and then with a lot of prep--based on your personal experiences with the SAT/ACT?
THANK YOU</p>
<p>So I didn’t study at all for the ACT, meaning I walked in on test day and took it without doing a single practice problem beforehand. In my experiences, the ACT is a lot easier to do that for as its more intuition and critical thinking based. I had fairly similar stats to you: 4.0 GPA, top 10% of my class, ect, although I was in pre-calc instead of alegbra for math. Anyways, I got a composite score of 35, so you would probably be about the same, probably 30-35 range.
Don’t worry at all for the science portion, you don’t need to have any scientific background to complete the questions; all of them are about how to design experiments to test a particular variable or how to interpret data and graphs. Like I said, its all critical thinking.
SAT is a little harder to judge. I would recommend doing a few practice tests to familiarize yourself with the types of questions asked, and see how well you do on those (your score on test day could vary by 100 points, but at least you would have a baseline estimate of how well you’ll do). I’d say you could get 2000+ on SAT though, given what you’ve said.</p>
<p>All that being said:
it’s incredible hard to judge these things. I know someone who literally did not know the months of the year (not kidding, he thought Thanksgiving was in August) and he got a 1960. And I know plenty of people who are much more intelligent, but do not test well, and have gotten much worse scores.</p>
<p>Personal experiences are irrelevant. Because we are not you nor is it easy to extrapolate a standardized test score from the information you have given us. But, onto my second point, would it matter? Like Ctesiphon mentioned, you gotta do practice tests (preferably through the official study guides) to have any indication at all about how you might do on those tests. The amount of prep needed will differ by student and there is no magic predictor of your ability to do well on standardized tests through only your academic performance</p>
<p>I find practice tests to be very accurate. Before I took the SAT for the 1st time, I got an 1880 on my last practice test. That’s exactly what I got on the actual test. Before I took it a second time, I scored consistently in the region of 1980-2050. I got a 2030 on the actual one. So whatever you score on your practice tests, the actual score would be pretty close to that. </p>