Tips to prepare for the SAT and ACT
The fall testing season will come to a close next month for both the ACT and SAT. Seniors hoping to top their previous scores and juniors planning to get a test in before the start of the spring semester are the students most likely to take advantage of the December test dates. For the SAT, the December test is significant for another reason: It’s the last time the current test will be administered.
Come spring 2024, the College Board will launch an all-new, computer-based SAT that tests the same concepts but clocks in at about two hours instead of three.
There’s still time to sign your child up for both the Dec. 8 ACT or the Dec. 2 SAT, although you may have to pay a late-registration fee. And students still have time to prepare, but with less than a month to go, they need to be strategic.
If your child has yet to take either test, know this: While most students perform equally well on both exams, some have strengths and challenges that might dictate focusing on one test over another.
For example, students who are slow readers will probably find the ACT reading section – which gives students only 35 minutes to read four texts and answer 40 questions – a challenge. In contrast, the SAT allows students 65 minutes to read five passages and respond to 52 questions. For such students, the SAT might be a better fit.
As for the math section, the SAT has some questions that are no-calculator-allowed as well as some that require students to solve a problem on the page. On the other hand, the ACT math section has only multiple-choice questions, and calculators are allowed for all of them. So students who like the predictability of multiple-choice questions might prefer the ACT for this reason.
Here are some tips to help your teen prepare for both the SAT and the ACT
- Get a study guide. The ACT’s officially sanctioned study guide is published by Wiley. The College Board publishes its own study guide, but it’s pointless to buy the current one since it will be obsolete after Dec. 2, 2023. Instead, check out this free pdf
- Regardless of what test you take, review grammar and punctuation rules. Both tests include grammar and punctuation questions; they appear in the ACT English section and the SAT Writing and Language section. The most commonly tested rules include those for commas, pronouns, subject-verb agreement and idioms. Check out a free website called grammarbytes.com for a variety of interactive and printable worksheets.
- Get points on the board by doing the easy questions first.
- Circle answers in the booklet as you go, then transfer them to the bubble sheet one passage or section at a time. This method is less disruptive than going back and forth between the test booklet and answer sheet.
- Wear a watch as long as it’s not a “smart” one. Given how little time students get, it’s important that they keep a close eye on the time, down to the second.
- For the ACT reading section, students who are much stronger in STEM than in reading/English might consider doing the reading section passages out-of-order. This would mean doing the final passage, which is always science-related, first, and the first passage - which is always an excerpt from a short story or novel - last.
- For the SAT reading section, be on the lookout for the two-part question. The second question of the pair asks students to identify the sentence(s) that contain the best “evidence” to support the previous question. It’s often necessary to do the two questions together, or even address the second one first. Since there are a minimum of 10 such questions, getting one or both of them wrong can significantly impact a student’s score.
- Never leave blank answers. There are no deductions for wrong answers on either the SAT or ACT
