<p>“I also strongly suggest to have the final SAT/ACT score by the end of junior year. That would make the senior year a lot less stressful.”</p>
<p>I have a different view. </p>
<p>Having a use-able score by end of junior year sounds good. But that means that junior spring semester (the single most important semester for grades and AP exams for early college apps) is MORE stressful. Much LESS stressful to do the test prep over the summer rather than trying to do that during the school year. You take one, and only one, test right when the fall semester starts. You’ll have the scores back (especially on the ACT) in time for early apps. Also, the studies show that test scores (even without prep) improve over time. So later can be a little better.</p>
<p>I also had my kids take both tests for real to get a solid baseline. Did not report any of those scores. Our state gives a free ACT in school as part of no child left behind. So the cost and time was just for the SAT. Even though your kid can improve the score over the summer, there are limits. With two real tests in hand by the end of junior year you know (plus or minus a bit) what level your kid is going to be at admissions wise. Maybe you can SWAG that without a full test, but the cost and time of the test (while doing no prep) is no big deal. </p>
<p>Both my kids significantly improved their ACT scores over the summer. I figure it saved me about $200k due to the merit scholarships they got. So what I spent on app fees, score reports, test fees and test prep was the best ROI I’ve ever gotten on any investment. By far. You don’t need to pay for a prep class if your kid will actually do the practice tests on his own. But that’s a big IF. I paid for the test prep mostly so I would not have to be the monitors on that and to make sure it happened. </p>
<p>That is extremely POOR advice on several accounts. </p>
<ol>
<li>There are NO reasonable reasons to take either unprepared. Ever ever! Waste of time and money! </li>
<li>One prepares for the tests in the SUMMER BEFORE the junior year.<br></li>
<li>One targets the PSAT and SAT October tests with the same preparation.<br></li>
<li>If needed, the SAT Subject Tests are best handled around similar AP tests. </li>
<li>Last chances for prep is the summer before senior year, but it is best to have the entire senior year free of SAT or ACT. </li>
</ol>
<p>There are no SAT tests in August or September. </p>
<p>My experience is that spring of junior year (or earlier) is the time to take your SAT subject tests so that they synch up with when the kid takes the related AP tests.</p>
<p>The first ACT of senior year is in September. First SAT is first week of October. Since you’ve done your prep work over the summer, the only burden on senior year is the one Saturday that you actually take the test. Both of those are timely for the fall application rodeo.</p>
<p>The SAT costs 49 bucks. ACT is $38 (although my kids got it free at their high school). College costs up to $250k.</p>
<p>I guess there are some kids who do test prep during the soph-junior summer and take the test in the fall of junior year. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of anyone doing that though. Every kid I saw at the test prep was a rising senior. Seems like that timetable would be sub-optimal since an extra year of school, growth and maturity would improve anyone’s test scores. </p>
<p>If you can prep for the spring of junior year tests, great. But that means you have to fit in the prepping with everything else the kid has going on during the school year.</p>
<p>Worked very well for my two kids and I will do the same for #3. YMMV. </p>
<p>I don’t see in Xiggi’s advice how you would figure out which test to focus on? All schools take both, but kids tend to do better on one vs the other. That’s an important part of the puzzle if you are trying to max out the test scores and the corresponding merit aid and admissibility.</p>
<p>There are blatantly OBVIOUS elements I did not list. I mentioned both tests as they have become interchangeable for most students. The PLAN can be taken in 9th grade if needed. As far as figuring out the ACT versus SAT, there are dozens of released tests to ascertain the differences. Again, such stuff is really basic. </p>
<p>What do you mean by “professional colleges”?</p>
<p>If your budget is $10k per year (likely well-below your EFC), then your child will need at least a full tuition scholarship. That will limit her choices.</p>
<p>Technically she can borrow $5500 for frosh year, but if she wants to go to med school then she shouldn’t borrow anything or very little for undergrad. </p>
<p>Med school is very expensive, and often involves borrowing $200k or more…so borrowing the least for undergrad is important.</p>
<p>The good thing is that med schools don’t care about where you went to undergrad. </p>
<p>You can chalk that to the abysmal state of advice generally given to sophomores and juniors. In a way, THAT state of advice also explains the averages of US students in the past decade, and the lack of improvement. OTOH people who jumped in earlier enjoyed the dividends. </p>
<p>“As far as figuring out the ACT versus SAT, there are dozens of released tests to ascertain the differences. Again, such stuff is really basic.” </p>
<p>That’s one way to do it. Assuming you can make your teenager do it on their own time.</p>
<p>For about $87 ($49 in my case) I got two actual test results obtained under full actual test conditions. And all I had to do was drop the kid off on two Saturday (in my case one) mornings.</p>
<p>I tend to agree with Xiggi on this. I would not advise taking actual tests for practice. Plenty of free/cheap on-line practice and books of 10-12 tests for less than half the cost of one test. You can approximate test conditions at kid’s desk or kitchen table for months of Saturdays for that price. All you need is a quiet room and a clock. If a teenager is willing to be driven to the test center, he/she should be able to sit down at home with a parent proctoring the test.
Prepping hard during the summer before junior year is what NM hopefuls will be doing. After that I would advise prepping a little more during Xmas break and taking a January junior -year SAT. Then switch gears and prep for spring ACT if you want.
No set number of colleges to apply to. If you have specific criteria and do your research, a short list can work very well. Why dream about a dozen colleges when kid can only attend one? Be realistic. A pre-med kid should go to the college where he/she is likely to get the best grades. GPA and mcat scores are what matter, not what college the kid went to. </p>
<p>You can spend $49 for a real test experience and result. Or do a bunch of things to approximate a real test to save that amount. If you can afford the $49, I say take the real test. If you can’t or don’t want to, take a sample test instead. Or just rely on the PSAT and PACT. </p>
<p>I would not recommend making your kid prep for both tests. Prepping for one is hard enough. Cheaper and more efficient and less stressful to figure out which test suits you first. Then prep for just that one preferred test.</p>
<p>Best to do the prep over the summer if possible to avoid conflicts with school, school activities, AP exams, etc. JR/SR summer works fine. So does SO/JR summer instead. But the statistical data says kids do better on tests when they are older.</p>
<p>The reason to apply to a dozen colleges is this. It is the only way you can find out where you might get in and (more importantly) where you might get a deal on financial or merit aid. If you apply to a large number of schools, make sure most of them are matches and safeties. You’ll get in and that’s where you will find the money. If a school is a reach on admission, it will be a reach financially unless you are very rich or very poor (and thus qualify for a lot of need based FA). </p>
<p>With the Common App, there’s not much incremental brain damage involved with doing one more app. Especially at the match/safety type schools where there will be less school-specific essays and app requirements. The incremental cost is usually $50 bucks. It is an ROI decision on how much you can and wish to spend.</p>
<p>For one of my kids, the $50 spent on app #12 was the BOMB!!! That’s where my kid got the best deal and where the kid enrolled. That $50 got me many tens of thousands in merit aid. </p>
<p>You should not spend several hundred bucks on this stuff if that you don’t have it. If you do have it, it can be money extremely well spent. </p>
<p>I am afraid your understanding of the availability of real tests is quite approximate. There is no need to spend a morning and the money to figure out both tests. And there is NO need to establish that early bar with an official sitting without preparation. It serves no purpose. </p>
<p>I want to come back on this difference of opinions. Obviously, there is not a size fits all for every student. For some students, the SAT or ACT are mere afterthoughts. Many of us have heard of the kids who took it once after reading the free pamphlet and aced the test. Others have spent years practicing with little to no improvement. </p>
<p>My own perception if biased by the fact that I have yet to hear about someone who complained for having started too … early. On the other hand, the refrain of running out of time, missing one last opportunity, or being overwhelmed by the demands in the final months of the junior year and Fall of senior years are heard very often. </p>
<p>I think it is fair to assume that most students tend to procrastinate and like to follow the advice of GC when it does amount to … delaying the effort. Yet, the work that will be needed to prepare for selective admissions (pretty much the focus of this forum) is often underestimated. Simply stated, the more one does before the senior year, the better he or she will be. </p>
<p>When one looks at the HS curriculum, it appears that the last “free” time is that summer before the junior year. It appears that it is the perfect to time to evaluate all what will be needed in terms of admissions and curriculum. Not every student has to focus on standardized tests, and for most the effort will be minimal. However, that is hardly the case for kids who have ambitions to attend a highly ranked school, or have parents who hope for solid merit aid. </p>
<p>In terms of SAT or ACT, there is little new that will be acquired in the junior year. Most subjects that have relevance to the tests have been covered – or never will be in high school. A slow and dedicated preparation will always be better than a fast sprint. The issue is to make it as simple as possible. Hence the early start that allows for periods of quiet time about standardized tests when the focus is on different issues. </p>
<p>I agree that the testing should be done before the end of the junior year. As far as testing in a real testing environment, Princeton Review and Kaplan have free testing events few times a year.</p>
<p>Xiggi – my sense is that you reflect more of the experience with superstars. They don’t procrastinate. They can do their test prep during the junior school year at the same time as doing well in class, smoking their AP tests, captaining their sports teams and volunteering at the local orhpange. They do the test prep on their own with no outside help or pestering. They ace the test on the first try in the spring of junior year and are done. They get admitted to Harvard early action. Consider yourself lucky if this is your kid. You don’t have to spend much or do much and the kid excels.</p>
<p>My kids are mere mortals. They procrastinate. They’re not going to prep on their own. If they do test prep during the school year, other things will suffer. They will not ace the test the first time. Boosting their test scores doesn’t get them into Harvard. Instead it results in them having greater admissibility at less elite schools and/or some scholarship money. </p>
<p>For my kids, the focus for junior year was putting as many As in the bank as possible and doing as well on their AP tests as possible. The JR/SR summer was very spent prepping for the fall test and writing college essays. If you get that done over that summer, there’s really not that much you have to do come the fall of senior year. More than half of SAT test takers take the test more than once. Most do better taking it a second time. If you are going to take it twice, junior spring and senior fall makes a lot of sense.</p>
<p>My experience also reflects the fact that I live in a state where HS juniors take a full ACT test in the spring at school during school hours for No Child Left Behind compliance. Given that, the time/expense to get two full tests as a baseline is reduced.</p>
<p>NW, my experience is really not restricted to superstars or students who “get it done” without much interference from parents. It ranges from the kids who need 1000 on the MW to get into a school that has offered an athletic scholarship to kids who dream of HYPS. </p>
<p>If you really scratch the surface of our differences, they are more overlaps than you might think. I also look at the summers as the best times to work on essays, applications, and test prep. I guess our largest difference inures from my “objective” to target the Fall of 11th grade for tests such as the PSAT and the ACT/SAT. My biggest pet peeve is about the theory that the PSAT should be your yardstick and that the preparation should start after getting the official scores around Xmas. I believe that this is a mistake as most students might benefit from a “bit” of preparation for the 11th grade SAT. </p>
<p>I also believe that the school year present series of issues in terms of time. That is when the students are busy with school work, sports, music, name it. And tend to suffer from lack of sleep and free time. Hence, my “theory” of starting earlier and use parts of the summer when a couple of hours a week could be used for such pedestrian and annoying tasks. Fwiw, part of my theory is also to “pay” for such study time as it were a chore. The reality is that it does not end costing much at all considering the usual “Got a few bucks” line from teenagers. It is merely putting lipstick on a pig! </p>
<p>As far as the summer of JR/SR, I also think it is a perfect time to work on the application process, even for the easy state ones. One example to follow is the Questbridge requirement of an application due by the end of September. I happen to think that the biggest value of the program comes from the early focus on what is important. </p>
<p>I understand that the dynamics are different in the ACT states. </p>
<p>If you do plan ahead of time and carefully, junior year would not be too stressful even with all the standardized test. Here is my experience with D. She started preparing for ACT and SAT in the summer after sophomore year. By Fall, she had already reached a solid score near plateau and ready for PSAT. In December, she took her first SAT then retook it in March. She took the ACT in March which the state pays for it. After that, she was done with SAT1/ACT. Then she focused on AP in May and took SAT2 in June (for Chem after AP Chem and Math2). In summer, she visited colleges, matched schools with her scores/GPA, and start working on the essays. Submit application in Fall of senior year and apply for scholarships in winter/spring. Of course, there were more AP in May of senior year.</p>
<p>If you do not have your final score by the end of junior, then you need to struggle between retaking test and college application in the first semester of senior that would be much more stressful. </p>
<p>In general, I do not think that planning to take the ACT or SAT at the beginning of Junior year and being done with it is a good strategy for most students.</p>
<p>I do think it is a great strategy if you have a superstar who can knock out a 2300+ SAT at the beginning of Junior Year.</p>
<p>I think there are certain advantages to taking the standardized test junior year, especially if you’re an advanced student. Both the ACT and SAT cover subject matter covered through Algebra 2 and the main science courses (in the case of the ACT). A good student will be most familiar with those subjects soon after they’ve taken them. By senior year, for many good students, it will have been three to four years since they’ve taken basic geometry. While you can brush up on those subjects, if your a top student your typically pretty busy just keeping up with what you’re studying your senior year. The subjects might be somewhat fresher to a beginning junior than a beginning senior. Plus if you do have a deficiency you have time to correct it. </p>
<p>Don’t forget that having the final test scores by the end of junior would allow the student to match schools early and well prepared for EA/ED application. Those who are waiting for September/October scores would be working in the dark if applying EA/ED.</p>
<p>In addition, there is no new knowledge to be gained at the first month of senior that would help the test anyway. The improvement in test performance with age is mainly due to the school curriculum prior to junior. All the student needs is to get it well prepared and finish the test by the end of junior as they have already acquired the knowledge.</p>
<p>Finally, not everyone can get 2300+, but everyone can practice to reach their plateau score early and be ready for the real test.</p>
<p>I think spring of Junior year is the ideal time to take these tests for the reasons outlined above. In addition, if the scores are not as good as you need, then you can retake them in early fall and still be in time for ED/EA. My son got great to good scores by end of junior year so he only retook the good scores to try to get them better in early October (SAT 2 subject tests).</p>