Hello fellow students, I’m in 8th grade, almost a freshman taking 3 highschool credit classes. I’m a little bit confused on when to start studying for the SAT and ACT, when should I?
@coffeepanda Most students don’t take the SAT or ACT until sometime in their junior or senior years. You’d be better off simply doing well in your classes (particularly math and reading/literature) so that you can minimize the amount of SAT/ACT preparation needed.
For me, I first took the SAT the June after junior year, and started preparing about a month or so beforehand (mostly on reading/writing).
After you have completed Algebra II and Geometry.
The best way to study for the SAT now, as a middle school student is to read read read. Read books by authors known for their good writing. When you get to the critical reading section of the SAT, there will be only so much studying you can do, but if you have been an avid reader growing up, that will translate to a higher score.
As for math, do well in your classes so that you learn the concepts you need to do well on the tests.
My son took his first SAT 2 as a 10th grader, math 2, and he was half way through pre-calc at that time. He took his first SAT in Jan of his Jr year. He did exceptionally well. But in 8th grade the SAT was not even on his radar. Neither was getting into college.
Exactly what Lknomad said. Read a lot and try to read a variety of well written things. Make sure you understand math you learn in school and do not become addicted to your calculator. If your school has a math club or team that helps your problem solving and ability to do mental math.
There’s no need to extend the stress of these tests into middle school. If you would like to prep a lot, I suggest starting the summer after your freshman year. But plenty of kids don’t start until after sophomore year.
I began prepping for the SAT since grade 9… Never serious until a few weeks ago.
There are two answers to this question.
When should I start obtaining relevant math, reading, and writing skills to succeed not only for the SAT’s but later on in life?
As early as possible. One should try to cultivate a lifelong reading habit, quantitative skills, and rhetoric that are transferrable to far beyond the scope of the SAT’s.
When should I officially start prepping for the SAT’s specifically?
Probably no more than 6 months, if you did (1) correctly. If your math is calculus-level or beyond, the know-how to pass the SAT’s should be cake. If you read college-level textbooks easily, then the reading comprehension on the SAT’s should come along with enough practice. By the time you start hitting diminishing returns on your study time, you’ll wish you had spent more time on cultivating lifelong skills.
Resding a lot and getting solid algebra & geometry skills in school are your best prep steps now. Start some prep summer before junior year for the PSAT in the fall. Your school might have you try the PSAT in soph year as well, but it is meaningless (not considered for national merit status, and no meaning in admissions), so don’t bother until prior to the junior year PSAT.
The moment you hit high school.
According to the most recent research on testing, pre-testing is enormously useful as a method to gauge what capabilities are missing and help direct effort towards compensating for your weaknesses. If you can afford it, take the tests immediately, find a good (and honest, since a dishonest tutor either won’t admit their incompetence or will deliberately sabotage their instruction so they can extend the duration, and hence the remuneration, of their service) tutor who can help explain what skills and capabilities you’re lacking in, and begin working on developing such skills immediately with an eye to getting the SAT and/or ACT out of the way so that you can focus on other parts of your education and/or college application.
Other than if for the fact that if everyone were committed to breaking the SAT, no one would break the SAT, there is no reason that a reasonably prepared, committed, and well-informed student of above average intelligence can’t score at or above the 99th percentile. You sound like one of those, so get cracking.
I started preparing intensely for the SAT just three weeks before the test. But honestly, to properly prepare for it (and also develop lifelong skills) without compromising your time, you should just be doing your best in school (i.e. reading a lot of QUALITY literature, getting solid math and logic skills, write passionately and frequently about some topic that you truly find interesting.
Remember: doing well on the SAT depends less on actual preparation than it does on skills that take years to develop – such as critical reading, logic, quantitative skills, rhetoric and ability to synthesize and connect distinct ideas. Those are lifelong skills they are testing on the SAT, not some mythical skills you should master exclusively for it and in a matter of months.
You should, however, start dedicating some quality time to officially prepare for the SAT around four months before the date you plan to take it. And by “official preparation” I mean taking practice tests and doing a couple of questions every day, but if you have already developed the skills I mentioned above, this part of your prep will be a piece of cake.
A week before. In all seriousness, if you have payed attention in your previous Math and English classes, you have already done a decent amount of “studying”. If not, you have double the work, as people who have already learned it just need to refresh and maintain the info.
I don’t see any point in prepping for a test so many years in advance. Most middle school students haven’t completed the math being tested. Just learn it in class. There is no reason to rush into hiring pricey tutors to learn material you are going to get over the next two years in school. I think it would be discouraging and confusing to try to learn a year or more of math you have never seen before in a test prep context. Once you have learned it in school you can practice your areas of weakness with a better overall understanding. And if you learn it in middle school, you would still have to review it.
@Cbluedreams is wrong. There are plenty of kids who prep seriously for these tests and don’t score in the 99 percentile.
My case: studied for three weeks (AS AN INTERNATIONAL STUDENT whose primary language is not English!!!) and scored 2200+.
Friend from the US: hired super-duper-expensive tutor for an year. Scored 1990.
So yes, as @RoastPlex mentioned, a week is enough if you did your “studying” through your regular coursework.
I agree with your observation; for instance, I was at a restaurant the other day and seated at the bar. A lady to my right mentioned that her daughter, despite taking AP classes and having taken the SAT almost 8 times and the family having paid almost $10,000, was stuck below 2000.
On the other hand, I put out 4 qualifiers, of which the last is least important: reasonably prepared, committed, well-informed, and having above-average intelligence.
The girl in the example case was definitely of above-average intelligence, given her workload, and well-committed, given how much money her family spent, but if we’re talking reasonably-prepared and well-informed, I have my doubts.
When I say reasonably prepared, for instance, I’m not talking about just dragging out an SAT book and going through the practice tests. From my experience preparing for the SAT, especially if you have more than one skill-set missing, I estimate you will need at least 18 months, possibly choosing to work on section by section instead of working on the whole SAT at once, and especially if you are heavily scheduled with regards to other things.
Well-informed means that you are aware of two facts, first, the SAT is merely a college matriculation exam. Anyone who has obtained an undergraduate degree in a sufficiently rigorous curriculum, and has had time to do some minimal preparation for the idiosyncracies of the test format (which is different from the preparation needed for high school students, since they will start without the skills needed to do well on the SAT), should be able to perform at least at the 99th percentile, which is 2200. The SAT, given its more skills-oriented focus since the 2005 change, is no longer much of an intelligence test.
Second, many people working in the SAT prep industry are either not well-informed or not extremely honest. Consider the Barrons’ and Kaplan textbooks, many people buy them, but they’re acknowledged to be of considerably worse quality than the College Board’s Big Blue. My own experience had me being tutored by someone who hadn’t quite achieved a 2400 himself, who, within 2 sessions, had made it obvious he had nothing to teach me.
In the case of the girl, I think what probably happened to her is that their family wasted money on incompetents. I would also suspect that they didn’t approach the test with the proper attitude, given that they seemed to have been a highly-intelligent family so that they would be more prone to essentialist logic (“you can’t do well because you’re not smart”) than process-and-progress logic (“you aren’t doing well because you haven’t learned the requisite skills, and with enough time and effort you can master them”), with the latter being shown to be highly-associated with performance. If they had started earlier, screened the tutors better, she should have been able to get at least a 2200.
We arent talking about college graduates. We are talking about middle and high school students, and I think there are many who aren’t going to score in the top 1%. We hear stories of kids starting test prep school or tutoring as young as 3rd grade and I doubt these kids are all scoring that high. A large tutoring company in Georgia is boasting that they prepped 20% of the NMSF in their area. That works out to just under 3 NMSF per tutor they employ. What to make of all the other clients who didn’t score in the top 1%?
I agree the test prep books leave something to be desired but a Barrons book worked well enough for me and for my kids. Actually second one mostly used the Khan material, which wasn’t very good.
I agree with what you’ve said, but one of my points is that there is a lot of fraud going on in the test preparation industry. You’ve got to remember, the SAT is primarily a test concerned with percentiles. If a test prep company could efficiently put everyone at 2400 or above 2300, the grading curve would be wrecked. Instead, the test prep industry sells you marginal improvement; customers are happy if they do 100 points better, even if they could have obtained above 2200 or 2300.
In the case of the OP; potentially, if she’s dedicated enough, efficient enough with her preparation (which could be a result either of natural intelligence or access to good tutors), and starts early enough, she can reasonably expect a score at or above 2200, even to the point of 2350 or 2400, or what’ll now be closer to 1480 and 1580 with the test restructuring.
IMO, the difference between the best performers and the merely excellent performers is in large part a matter of attitude. The former constantly thinks “I can”, and when it turns out that she can’t, she doesn’t think “I can’t”, she thinks instead “what can I do to go from can’t to can?”. At a certain point, of course, this will break down as people begin reaching the limits of their own talent, but they are dealing with the limits of their own talent instead of their own perceptions.
My D2 self-prepped. Started about two months before the PSAT, got a 224. Two attempts at the SAT, 2380 superscore. You do NOT need to start prep in freshman or sophomore year, except reading a lot and doing well in math classes with an eye toward retaining the math knowledge.
8th grade is way, way too early to think about test prep. As others have said, the best way to prepare for standardized tests at this point is for you to read, read, read, and then read some more.
That said, if you want to take the SAT and/or the ACT for practice or in order to qualify for a summer enrichment programs that require them (e.g., Hopkins CTY, Duke TIP, Davidson Institute’s THINK program), or if you want to take them to get a sense as to which test you prefer (although the differences are probably lees great now than they used to be before the SAT changed its format), 8th grade is an ideal time to do it, as your 8th grade scores will NOT count and will be expunged from your record.
As far as the real thing goes, the longer you wait, the better prepared you will be. Even though you may get through Algebra II by your freshman or sophomore year of high school, you are almost always better waiting until your junior year to begin testing.
I wouldn’t think about test prep until the summer before 11th grade. If you are self motivated, save the money and just do practice tests.
I agree with all the above posts, but would like to add that it can’t hurt to get some practice with the test format the years prior. College Board is rolling out the PSAT 8/9 and PSAT 10. I took the ACT EXPLORE and ACT PLAN (offered in some school districts to 8th-10th graders) and think some familiarity with the format and timing helps a little. I wouldn’t study for these types of preparatory tests though.
@CBluedreams, I think there are a fair number of high-achieving students who do prep to the limit of their talent. It’s not so easy to answer so many questions so quickly with 100% accuracy. I don’t think it’s about perceptions.
I’m not convinced an 8th grader is better off in any way spending time doing dedicated test prep than they are spending that time reading quality books and news. Read a lot, learn some things and explore your interests. It’s easy to think of a high test score as a goal but it’s really just a means to an education. You’ll be a lot better prepared to take advantage of that if you’ve been reading something other than test prep.