<p>People usually say to take the ACT/SAT the spring of your Junior year at the earliest. This might be a really stupid question </p>
<p>I took my first high school SAT freshman year and I think it helped me score better later because I knew what to expect. My score wasn’t so resoundingly awful that that the later one couldn’t make up for it. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t say that there is ever a time where it’s too early (at least in high school). </p>
<p>I took it first semester junior year. Best decision of my life. Now as all my peers fret over studying for the SAT/ACT and getting their results back, I get to recline in a comfy chair and laugh in their faces… jk, but seriously, it’s so much better not having to worry about it second semester junior year, one of the busiest times in high school.</p>
<p>I took the SAT in nov, and jan. of my junior year. And as the poster above me said, it’s better to take it earlier because there’s so much more left.</p>
<p>I took the PSAT and practice ACT both in first semester of this (sophomore) year. I will be taking the official tests spring 2015, and then if I am unsatisfied will take them fall 2015.</p>
<p>Practicing is great, but it rarely increases your score more than 20 points in each section, statistically, at least.</p>
<p>I don’t think you should try to “get it over with” entirely before junior year unless you’re already getting perfect scores or close (maybe 2300 or something, when you’re at the point where you could have gotten a perfect score if it weren’t for a couple of silly mistakes you couldn’t have prevented). </p>
<p>I practiced a lot for the ACT sophomore year and scored relatively high (so I wasn’t stressed out about it anymore), but I took it again junior year without any additional intentional practice and I still scored higher because of what I learned in school. The ACT has pre-calculus stuff and the SAT has Algebra II stuff, so you’re likely to do better in the math sections after you’ve taken those classes. </p>
<p>I took them both for the first time right before eighth grade ended so that they would not count. It was good practice, and I didn’t get as terrible scores as I was expecting. I didn’t really practice that much until sophomore year though. I took the SAT in October and March of junior year, with scores that were ~400 points higher than in 8th grade. </p>
<p>@halcyonheather
I’m in Pre-Calculus right now and my class has been doing Trig for the past 2 months. This was somewhat another reason why I started this thread to see if it was better to have taken some certain classes to help me on the tests in a way. Idk.</p>
<p>
You could take a math practice test and see if there are any questions where you don’t understand the math involved. There’s nothing more advanced than trigonometry on the ACT as far as I can remember, and it’s mostly just right-triangle/unit circle stuff. (I think the lack of math knowledge probably affected me more than other people on here because I was in the regular math track at the beginning of high school…I took the PSAT sophomore year and got all tripped out because there was some question involving an equation for a circle. But if you’ve had Algebra II you’re probably fine.)</p>
<p>I took it in May of my sophomore year for the first time, and I think that gave me a good idea of what to expect when I actually prepped and took it in Nov of junior year.
A bunch of my friends took it last Saturday, and watching them stress out made me grateful I had gotten it over with early. I really think taking it early was one of the best decisions I have ever made :P</p>
<p>I took the SAT once in 7th grade, twice in 8th grade, the PSAT last semester, and I’m planning to take the SAT again in spring of sophomore year, fall/spring of Junior year, once again if I have to, and then the ACT. lol.</p>
<p>Plus two more PSATs, one in soph, one in junior</p>
<p>That’s a lot…</p>
<p>@Yakisoba I hardly doubt taking a test with different questions several times is going to yield different results.</p>
<p>It sounds like you are just doing this to track your progress through high school. </p>