I would greatly appreciate any insight or recommendations parents of current juniors or seniors (or students themselves) could provide on the best approaches to preparing for the SAT and/or ACT. Also, I would be interested in hearing how different BS across the country approach this with their student body. I am looking to summer. There are private tutors, in person and online classes, boot camps, etc. I think DD will take the SAT and ACT in Oct. of this year. It is somewhat overwhelming that we are actually starting to think about this. It seems like we just dropped her off last week! I apologize in advance if I missed a thread pertaining to this topic! Thanks!
The only prep I am aware of for the new SAT is Khan Academy. I would begin there: https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/new-sat
In addition, if your child has taken the PSAT already, I think there is a way to link the results to Khan Academy so that the prep will take into account any areas of deficiency.
I currently have a junior and I can tell you there is not much out there for SAT prep right now - on the NEW test that is coming out after Jan 23, 2016. All we have is the PSAT to look at right now. The recommendation my daughter is receiving is to focus on the ACT this year because the SAT is such an unknown. She is still taking some SAT II exams this year because they are required by some of the schools she is interested in and she may or may not take the SAT.
For whatever it’s worth, I think the recommendations on whether to focus on the SAT or the ACT are all over the map. I’ve seen several people post on this site that the schools their children attend are recommending the ACT given the changes in the SAT. As another data point, my kids’ school is recommending the SAT over the ACT, notwithstanding the changes. Their view is that the changes aren’t actually all that big a deal and that the best preparation for any standardized testing is a good education, so it shouldn’t matter dramatically which route their students go. If your kid took the PSAT this fall and did relatively well, there’s no reason not to then go with the SAT. Our school recommends the Khan Academy preparation, as well as a private test prep provider who the school contracts with to do SAT test prep for all the juniors who want it.