Ok. I am twenty-one years and I graduated from high school (I was homeschooled from grades 10-12) and I plan on taking the ACT and SAT before I apply to colleges in the Fall of this year or in the Fall of next year. I graduated with a 3.8 GPA. I understand you don’t have to take both tests but I would like to. With all that being said, I have some questions about preparing for the tests. Despite graduating with a 3.8 GPA, I just feel like an average student despite being told all my life by family that I am very smart. How can I prepare to get a high score on the ACT & SAT? I’m talking about 1400-1600 on the SAT and 31-36 on the ACT. Can I use Khan Academy? What books should I buy? Erica Meltzer? Steve Meltzer? CollegePanda? What other books? I’ve already bought Princeton Review’s Cracking The SAT 2020 Premium Edition. I’ve even considered talking SAT prep and ACT prep classes for adults on the weekends but I’m not sure yet. How long should would take for me to get a high score on one of the tests like I mentioned above? I’ve been told I should take a practice test first and I thought about doing that before posting this but decided against it. Would it take three months of preparation? Six months? I’m willing to put in a great amount of time preparing so I can get a high score on the tests.
Khan Academy is pretty popular among students to prepare for exams. I am considering it for myself but I still doubt it. Now I use CollegePanda 2d edition and find it pretty useful. Also I take online tests https://academy.bsu.edu/counseling/sat-act-prep/ . You can try for free to see how far you can go. Maybe you don’t need all that hard preparation.
@SpectacularChamp we recently covered this topic in a College Confidential article, which you can find here:https://insights.collegeconfidential.com/common-test-prep-faqs