<p>My daughter is currently a sophomore. I'm thinking it might be better for her to take an SAT prep course over the summer, when she's not super busy with school and extracurriculars. She can't do the SAT prep offered at her school because it's only offered during 0 period and she has an elective class then.</p>
<p>Her sophomore year PSAT scores (taken with no prep or studying) were 70 CR, 61 math, 63 writing.</p>
<p>Your daughter received a 1940/2400 in regular SAT terms. This is considered good, but especially if she has not prepared or studied yet. I do not see anything wrong with taking prep courses during the summer, unless money is an issue. However, if she does end up taking the courses, I would personally recommend that she take her SAT soon after the inception of the year. This is because the courses will be fresh in her mind by the time of the examination. In any case, prep course or not, she should still spend time studying on her own from the blue book and focusing on math and writing.</p>
<p>My sophomore score for the PSAT was an 183. I got a tutor and I started the July going into my junior year. That raised to a 197 and was a score based on some practice PSATs that the tutoring agency frequently uses. Then, I started studying and utilizing my resources and started taking practice SATs sponsored through the same agency. My superscore is a 2190 and I’m done. </p>
<p>I’d go with the tutoring route personally. If you’re going to spend the high rates on a professional tutor, go for the 1 on 1 route and not a summer class. I have a friend that attends these classes and he says he gets little/no personalized help and benefits very little. I began to tutor him and he said it has helped tremendously (despite the fact that I am in no way a professional or ‘master’ of the SAT). However, personalized mediocre help seems to correlate to higher scores than a broad class.</p>
<p>Although this is merely my opinion, both me and my friend could definitely vouch for personalized tutoring (preferably with an established agency that utilizes practice tests). I went up 360 points from my first test and I’m incredibly happy with the end result. Good luck and I hope this helped.</p>
<p>If she is going to take a prep class, the best time is to take it the summer before Junior. There are some package that includes unlimited retake of classes. For that, you may sign up even earlier.</p>