Students and parents often wonder whether to take the SAT and ACT with or without any test preparation the first time. There is not a simple answer to this, so I will offer you some things to consider when making your decision:
1. How close to applying to college are you? If you are in the spring of your junior year or the fall of your senior year and are going to take the ACT or SAT for the first time, I would highly recommend doing some test preparation prior to taking the test. Because you don’t have much time left you want your first time taking the test to be a solid experience, so do some test preparation beforehand. If you are in the fall of your junior year or earlier, you may decide to take the ACT or SAT once as a run-through just to see where you stand. You can then do more targeted test preparation based on the areas of weakness that you find in your test results.
2. Do you have significant anxiety about testing? For many students who are quite anxious about testing, having a bad experience the first time around on the SAT or ACT can give them baggage and hang-ups the next time they take the test. For students like this, it usually makes sense to do some test preparation ahead of time so that the test goes smoothly the first go-round. However, I want you to consider that once in a while, I see students take the SAT or ACT without any prep and, because the students expect so little of themselves, they are able to truly relax and let their intellect shine through. For example – I had a young lady who took the ACT after doing some preparation and scored a 27. Then, she took the SAT thinking that it didn’t matter, did zero prep for it, and scored the equivalent of a 30 on it! I have found that this may be the case for students who are very bright and pretty anxious.
3. What is your personal schedule like? Some students have significant extracurricular commitments during part of the year; they have no time to do any test preparation during those months. However, they may need to take the SAT or ACT during those times. If this applies to you, you may want to do your test preparation the summer before school starts so that you have the opportunity to give it your full attention. If your schedule permits you to do test preparation leading up to a test date, that can be quite beneficial as all the strategies and concepts will be fresh.
I hope that you found this discussion helpful. If so, I would invite you to share it with your friends. Thanks, Brian Stewart