Hello. I am encouraging S to self study for the SAT, PSAT and ACT over the summer, and I want to help him set up a schedule. He hasn’t done any prep yet, nor has he done any testing other that the PSAT 10. He will not be taking any sort of test prep classes or tutoring, and if he doesn’t study this summer it probably will never happen. I would like input on study methods and hours that should be devoted to make real progress. Thanks.
Everyone is different, so I can’t say how long or what material your son should study. However, things he should definitely work on include:
- Problem solving approaches to ALL SAT Sections
- Time management on ALL Sections
- Little more effort and time in the section he has trouble with the most throughout his studying (usually, he can ascertain what section he is the best and worst at by taking a diagnostic SAT, grading himself and working from there; the PSAT score can also be a good indicator of this, assuming the PSAT format is the same as the new SAT format)
I’d say mastering #1 will save him loads of hours that he can use for #3. If your son is, say, acing the Math Section and mastered problem taking techniques for it, then he has more time for the Reading section and can improve there. In some cases, taking testprep classes can help immensely if that is an option you want to consider.
My daughter used Khan academy to study. They partnered with College Board to develop a course that is free. It communicates with CB so it will have his PSAT results. My daughter was pretty impressed when she signed in and it showed her what problems she missed and suggested what to spend more time studying accordingly.
I can’t say how much time he should spend but if he does the Khan course, he and you will be able to track his progress.
I am impressed with the Khan academy courses also. My D is taking the SAT tomorrow and has been using Khan all week to study. It is a very intelligent program and adapts to what she needs to work on.
I think it’s great your son is studying for the PSAT. I think the National Merit Scholarship based on PSAT scores may be the largest merit aid available nationally to students. There are schools that will provide full tuition, room, board, study abroad, laptops, etc. for high scoring students. For studying, I definitely think a little a day is more effective than cramming at the end. Is an hour/day too much… maybe I was a slave-driver dad? You shouldn’t do only questions…reading books, short stories, magazines, etc. will also benefit your son and would be more fun.
About 40 hours over six weeks should help - JMHO. Best of luck!
Shouldn’t the amount of time needed to study depend on academic skills and knowledge?
@zannah I suppose so…we come from an area where kids don’t prep for these tests, they just go and take them and get what they get, so I really don’t know what is “normal” prep.
I don’t think there is any right or wrong answer. It depends on what your child’s motivation and goals are, and it depends on how disciplined he can be. Your plan should also keep in mind his particular attention span and what other activities / commitments he has going on this summer.
Motivated self-study is far more effective (and way less expensive) than taking an SAT prep class. I think it’s a worthwhile investment of time, as the payoff can be tremendous.
We had a speaker come to our school during my D’s sophomore year. He recommended that students study in the summer before their junior year and treat it as a part time summer job. That’s exactly what we did.
My D worked about 3 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 3 weeks. (You could easily change that to 1 1/2 hours per day for 6 weeks, for example.) I gave her a daily assignment each day, designed to take 2-3 hours. If she finished it early, good for her. If she didn’t finish it in 3 hours, she was allowed to stop. I paid her $2 each day that she was sitting at the dining table by 10:00 am, starting her work, without any prodding. I paid her an additional $8 each day that she completed her assignment at some point during the day. That gave her a possibility of $180 in vacation spending money (which really helped in her motivation on some days). We marked progress on a calendar and I paid her at the end of the 3 weeks.
My D is a strong student and a naturally good test-taker, so her results are not likely typical, but the payoff for her was tremendous. She started the summer with a 2100 score on a practice SAT. After 3 weeks of study, she was testing at about 2350 on practice SATs. She took the actual SAT is October and scored a 2300. She took it 2 more times (but did no more studying), and got a perfect 2400 on her third attempt.
There were several other significant benefits we realized. (1) She scored an amazing score on the PSAT that fall (even though it was based on the new SAT and she didn’t study for the new SAT); she is assured NMSF based on her scores. I attribute that to the fact that she was then used to the process of taking a long exam and she was fresh with the general subject matter, if not the specifics and make-up of the particular test. (2) She and I were both offered jobs as SAT tutors based on our success. (3) She is THRILLED that she was done with the SAT I by January of her junior year and was able to focus on AP exams and a couple SAT II subject tests in the spring, and now she is DONE with standardized testing (other than AP exams at the end of her senior year).
I’m not suggesting your son could or should aim for a 2400. It depends on his skills and motivation. But I do believe everyone can achieve great improvements. If he has a good sense of what his goals are, he can work 1 or 2 or 3 hours per day until his timed practice tests are around his goal score.
I agree that Khan Academy is a great resource. It is one of the numerous resources we used. The actual sample tests are the other crucial resource. Unfortunately, for the new SAT there are only 4 official practice exams available, so be sure to use them wisely. For the ACT, there are many more official practice exams available (up to 13, I believe). We were fortunate in preparing for the old SAT where there were more than 20 official tests available. The advice I’ve heard is to focus on one exam; don’t try to master two different tests. The essential method is to take a timed practice test and then (this is extremely important) study the wrong answers and the unsure answers IN DEPTH. Record each missed question and unsure question in a notebook and write out the best way to solve it. Underline every unfamiliar vocab word in a practice test and then write down the definition in your notebook. Look at each topic that was missed (say for example, exponents) and then study exponents until your son understands them well. In the beginning, this will go very slowly, because your son will likely make many errors. Don’t rush it. Whatever time your son spends on taking a practice test, he should plan on spending about 2-3X that time reviewing answers and writing them in his notebook … and then even more time (lots more time) mastering the concepts he missed. I can’t overstate the importance of this. Many kids think that if they take a practice test and score it, that counts as test prep. After they score it they’ll take off, do something else, and then come back later and do another practice test. This is not learning anything!! 90% of the value of study comes from reviewing errors and unsures in depth; not just taking a practice test. Our goal was to treat each error as a gem – turn every weakness into a strength. If she made an error relating to slope, for example, she studied slope so much that she thoroughly understood it and could then smile if she got another slope question, knowing that she could kill that question. Although this approach is methodical and intensive, it is very effective. The second practice test will likely have fewer errors to study, and the third even fewer. Make sure your son reviews his notebook of problems / topics on a weekly basis and once more before each practice test. This is a short synopsis of my recommended method for studying, but you will find some exceptional threads here on CC going in much more detail on how to best study. Look for the Xiggi method, in particular.
Good luck!
@SoccerMomGenie Thank you so much for your in depth answer! And congrats you your D(and you!) 3 hours a day is way too intense for my S but since he has all summer we can break it up into more manageable chunks.
Math seems fairly straight forward and it will be easy enough to do practice questions, identify weaknesses, and study those areas, But what about reading and writing? Is it more of a matter of test taking techniques?
For example I was looking over his PSAT 10 and saw several reading passage questions where they first asked a question, and then there was a follow up question that asked which sentence supported the previous answer. With those types of questions I would encourage S to skim the questions, locate such pairs and then attack them in tandem. First underline the 4 sentence choices from question 2, then go back to question 1 and find the answer within one of the 4 sentences rather than searching the whole passage. Once he finds the answer to Q1, then Q2 has also been answered.
I am sure there are other test taking methods like that which will help with reading/writing, but if the reading comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar are not there, they are not there. Am I correct? Are there any specific sources that identify test taking “strategies” such as the example I gave? How did your daughter approach her reading/writing study?
Thanks for your help!
I asked my first kid to spend an hour a day over the summer. She missed days when we were traveling or there were other large activities going on. I’d say she averaged 5 hours/week. I’d ask them to do whatever you think you can convince them to do. I think most kids reach a point where they aren’t improving much anymore and more prep isn’t going to help that much. It should be evident if they get to that point and then you can re-evaluate whether more prep for vastly diminishing returns is a worthwhile use of time.
Last summer:
I bugged D to study and prep. She was super busy with work and travel. She might have taken one SAT practice test. She attended a prep class, did get a little bit out of it but did none of the prep work behind the class. Did well on the PSAT but didn’t hit commended.
THIS year and this summer:
D finally on board with the thousands of dollars at stake. Starting this spring she would do 2-4 practice sections per week. The important part is she did them under timed conditions BUT…then went back and studied what she missed in detail. THEN she found the types of questions she was missing, self-studied those math concepts, did agazillion problems on the ACT online prep package (from the ACT test company) and then would hit another section test.
Learning what you are missing and focusing on those types of questions is KEY.
Is your S on board with self-studying or will you have to nag him?
@planner03 , I’m sorry I don’t have experience (yet) tutoring the new SAT. So feel free to take my advice for what it’s worth…
My inkling with respect to the reading section would be to look at each question on its own. A strategy that worked very well with the old SAT and I suspect it would work just as well on the new SAT is to try to identify why answer choices might not work / could be wrong (instead of why an answer choice might be right). Many students get caught up in the thought that "A COULD be right if you look at it this way … " That’s dangerous thinking. The much better approach is “A could be wrong because … it’s too extreme (or whatever).” It’s often a lot easier to eliminate wrong answers.
If you get to the right answer and you’re confident in it, you’ll be most or all the way there toward answering the “how did you know” secondary question. If you’re not positive about the answer to the first question, the second question might give you some clues. My D told me that this technique saved her a couple times on the PSAT. She recommends answering the questions in tandem only after giving the first question an independent attempt and eliminating as many answer choices as possible.
The new SAT does not test vocabulary directly, but it tests it indirectly, by including some tough words in the answer choices. I recommend that every time he does a practice SAT section, he underline every word that he does not thoroughly understand. Then, after he’s finished with the exam, go back to those words, look up the definition, and write the word and definition in his SAT notebook.
I researched and found some fantastic resources for the old SAT. I really don’t know yet what the best resources are or will be for the new SAT. Clearly, Khan Academy will be a key resource (but especially for math). My daughter really responded well to the SAT Prep Black Book for its critical reading section. Although it’s geared to the old SAT, I think a lot of it is still relevant to the new. The key for my D was to get over her own ego and accept the truth that there is one and only one correct answer. It’s extremely tempting, but very wrong, to get indignant and say, "But I still think that answer B is better, if you look at it this way … " The student has to buy in to the concept that the answers to the reading part of the test are as black and white right and wrong as the answers to the math section. The grammar resources and writing resources my D used are now irrelevant to the new SAT.
Frankly, this lack of established resources for the new SAT was one of the key reasons why we chose to quickly focus on the old SAT while we could. Have you considered having your S study for the ACT instead? The benefit of studying for the ACT is that there are many more practice tests available and many more established resources. The SAT and ACT are now more similar than ever. I understand that the ACT covers everything tested by the SAT except vocabulary (SAT has tougher words); so there is some logic that says that if you prep for the ACT you’ll also be sufficiently prepped for the PSAT. If my D didn’t have the option to do the old SAT we would probably have opted to have her take the ACT.
One remaining benefit of the SAT is the super scoring. But even that distinction is weakening. With only 2 sections, not 3, SAT super scoring is not as beneficial as it was before (but still very helpful). Most colleges still do not super score the ACT, but I understand that more and more schools are starting to.
Also, btw … because I’m recently retired and I had a lot of time on my hands, I helped my D a lot by doing some of the research and scoring, i.e., some of the busy work elements that didn’t directly help in her learning.
For example, I’m the one who researched the best resources and strategies and developed a study plan. I set up materials for her (i.e., I put the practice exam and bubble sheet out for her on the dining room table each night so it would be there in the morning). After she did a practice test, I scored it for her. I looked at her incorrect answers and determined what topics they were. She also separately reviewed each of her errors and put them in a notebook, but in the meantime I was researching the best resource for explaining that topic. Sometimes I thought the best explanations were in Barron’s, or a different book we owned, and sometimes I thought the best explanations were in Khan Academy, or elsewhere. I made a homework assignment for her to read the relevant pages or watch a relevant youtube video. For every 3 hours she spent studying, I might have put another hour (or more) into support work.
Too much hand-holding? Arguably. Could she have done it all on her own. Yes, in theory. In reality, I strongly doubt she would have. Was it “fair” to all those students who don’t have a parent who is willing and able to put that kind of effort in? Arguably no, but there’s nothing about standardized tests that’s “fair.” Other people have money they can use to pay for tutors. I was able to help and support my D and so I did. For us, it worked. As we were going through the process, she appreciated me about as much as she resented me. In truth, it noticeably strengthened our relationship. After her 3 weeks were over, she appreciated me but also teased me for becoming an SAT geek. Then after she got her scores on the PSAT and the SAT, she still sometimes gently teases me, but really appreciates that I pushed her and helped her.
Oh … and another important note … it all depends on the interest and motivation and capabilities of the student. This approach worked for my driven and motivated D. She has an older brother who is interested in taking the LSATs in a couple years and who hopes to begin to study now. I’m a lawyer who did fairly well on the LSATs so I figured I’d try to help him in the same way I helped my D. I researched the best books and bought them for him. I started him with a plan. He worked for about 45 minutes and then his brain would not allow him to focus a minute more. He was the same (only a bit worse) with SAT prep. He’d be able to focus for 20-30 minutes before he’d get antsy and then just need to stop. My advice is to figure out what your child’s goals are and motivations are. If your child has particular colleges in mind, it’s helpful to focus on the scores needed for those schools. My S’s best improvements in SAT studying came when he realized he needed to reach certain scores in order to be accepted at a college that was recruiting him for soccer. Bribery is also helpful, but it has to be a bribe that is attractive to the kid, and you have to bribe them to do something that they’re very capable of. My D was very capable of doing 2-3 (or more) hours of focused work per day. It would not have worked if I tried to bribe my son to do studying for more than 30-45 minutes per day.
The site I’ve been using for SAT prep says 80 hours of prep should improve your score by about 200 points. Of course it’s different for everyone though.
It would be best to start with a diagnostic test to see where he’s at.
And as to resources … Erica Meltzer is highly regarded as the best SAT test prep expert for critical reading and grammar. Her old SAT books were excellent and more thorough than any other resource. I see that she has updated materials for the new SAT. She’s got to be your best bet for the reading, writing and language sections.
Speaking as a student who scored a 2400 on SAT on his first try, 36 on ACT on his first try, and 1520/1520 on the newly formatted PSAT, I strongly suggest you take as many practice tests as you can find. I know the new SAT has very few resources, and because of that, I concur with the above comments to use Khan Academy, which seems to be the institution with the greatest access to new SAT practice materials. However, don’t rely on any single prep website as a crux, because none are custom-tailored to suit you. Take tests and analyze your mistakes, your gaps in knowledge, then review from prep books or online. Here was my practice routine over the summer for about six weeks (it’s actually pretty simple):
Morning: full length practice test every other day (I had a lot of practice tests, if you don’t have as many then maybe do one or two every week or something, just make sure you’re routinely retesting to gauge for improvement)
Afternoon: review answers, analyzing trends and looking up information in prep books (I bought SAT 2400 from Barrons and PR, along with the Writing and Reading Bibles, which I used frequently)
This worked really well for me. The improvement really showed because the test scores went like this: 2200, 2280, 2350, 2400, 2380, 2400, 2400 …
NOTE: Before I began my test-prep, I was scoring around 2200, so I focused a lot on practice and only half of my time on analysis and review. If you’re starting out at a lower score you may want to focus more on review and (as I said above) take tests once or twice a week instead of every other day. Another thing was that this all happened as a rising junior, so I hadn’t taken AP Lang at the time, which I’ve heard is a great way to prep for the writing and reading sections.
Lastly, I’d like to say that my parents were very supportive of my routines by giving me space and letting me control what I studied, at what times, etc. Don’t turn into a dictator just because your child is being slightly uncooperative. Remember, a focused and self-motivated child, even if he/she is operating at a slightly inefficient rate, performs better and remembers more from studying than an overworked, distracted child. Don’t be a tiger parent.
Good luck, and I hope this helps!
@SoccerMomGenie, thank you for such a thoughtful reply! I am filling that for future use for D21 a we are merit money chasers in Texas!