<p>The PLAN is as much for districts and schools to assess how they are preparing their students as it is for students assessing how they will do on the ACT. At act.org if you click on ordering the PLAN the two choices are district order and school order. Normally there is no charge to the student. There aren’t dates or locations other than when the school or district administers it. </p>
<p>You could talk to someone at your school and see if they would order it for you and administer it. You’d likely have to pay for it which you seem willing to do. The only reason I can see doing this is because you plan on applying to college(s) where the ACT is the predominate test taken by prospective students. My personal, somewhat informed opinion is that there really isn’t an advantage to taking the PLAN over taking the PSAT as a sophomore. You can also take the ACT as a sophomore and retake it ‘for real’ in the spring of junior year. And all colleges truly will take the SAT.</p>
<p>If you are concerned about the differences between the SAT and ACT, imo taking the PSAT as a sophomore and junior and then getting an ACT prep book and taking some practice tests before the junior year ACT would be enough.</p>
<p>Here’s an old cc thread about taking the ACT as a sophomore:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/act-preparation/397097-act-sophomore.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/act-preparation/397097-act-sophomore.html</a></p>