Spring SAT and ACT Prep: Am I Taking the Wrong Test?

That’s a common enough refrain this time of year for any junior not yet fortunate enough to be done with their standardized testing. But this year that refrain has grown into a chorus because of the recent debut of the digital SAT. Students who chose the SAT because it’s shorter and digital might be disappointed to find it harder than they suspected. And those who felt the ACT was the better option are likely thinking the SAT looks shorter than ever. Students should try to put their results into perspective, however, and not overreact to one bad score. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself before you decide to make a change.

Bad Match or Bad Day?

If you’ve only taken the test once and had a thoughtful reason for the test you chose, you should likely stick with it. Don’t confuse the feeling of needing to retest with the feeling of needing a new test. And, if you haven’t already, you should check out the entire blog we wrote on whether or not to retest, a decision that depends on a number of related factors.

• Could you have reasonably worked harder, given your current schedule, to prepare for the test?
• Did anything strange happen the day or week of the test that could explain lower than expected scores?
• Were you more anxious than you expected to be?

If your answers to any of those three questions are “Yes,” then you’ve got valid, rational reasons for why you didn’t reach your goal. Moreover, those reasons also give you prescriptions for the most helpful path forward: Didn’t work hard enough? Work harder. Crazy three days before the test? Plan better. Test administration snafu, sniffling student, or phone-call-taking proctor? Remember that even small interruptions can double error rates. More anxious than you thought? Take more practice tests. But if the answers to all of those questions are “No,” you may be ready to give that SAT or ACT that you passed over another look.

Deciding which test to take is an imperfect science, and even professional tutors can make mistakes about which test is “best” for a given student. We’ve seen students who were very close to their goals on the ACT, who just needed a little work on pace and time management. Well, that can be easier said than done… If you’re already working as fast as you can work and using all the strategies at your disposal to save time but you still consistently run short on all your practice tests and the real thing, you can definitely feel stuck. In the same way, we’ve also seen students who “need another 40 points” on a SAT section but just can’t get there. Maybe it’s math and they’re already using Desmos wisely, have reviewed all the material, but just can’t figure out those tricky ones at the end. We’ve also seen students whose reading scores have reached the ceiling of their reading skills: to make more progress they’d have to improve their reading skills (a long-term proposition), since they are already using the correct strategies for each question type and are making good decisions with the understanding of the passages they do have. If you identify with either of those vignettes, it’s likely worth your time to reexplore the SAT or ACT, respectively.

Some Good News

Whether that last result was the result of a bad day or a bad match, here’s a bit of good news: much of what you learned for the test you’ve already taken translates well to the test you haven’t. So don’t think of it as having “wasted” however many weeks of test preparation but rather as having gained skills that you can use in your new endeavor. That’s especially true for the grammar and math questions: both the SAT and ACT test essentially the same set of grammar rules and most of the same math skills. That means all those little hacks you learned, like picking numbers when you see variables in the answers or eliminating prepositional phrases to help in a subject-verb agreement question, will still help you! And while the reading sections differ greatly, they both prioritize close reading, finding evidence and understanding arguments, and they both reward logical thinking and answer elimination – skills you’ve definitely been practicing.

So don’t be afraid to dive right back in with a full practice test to establish a new “baseline” – you might be surprised where that lands. And if the thought of spending the time to take a full practice test seems like more of an investment than you want to make right now, then you should reconsider how much you want to switch tests!

With any luck, you’ll be closer to your goal than you thought you were and that alone will likely give you the boost you need to push through with the additional preparation you might need for your new test day. Or, it could be the case that a full practice test reminds you just how much you disliked that test to begin with. In that event, you can either decide to reassess your goals, or you can go back to the test you were working on without the niggling doubt that the grass is always greener, also a win.

Now Is The Time

It’s a surprise to no one that the ACT is following the SAT’s lead and unveiling a shorter, digital test of its own this fall. That means the clock is about to expire on the ACT as you know it. At the time of this writing, there are only three more opportunities to take the existing paper ACT: May, June and July. So if there are good reasons for you switch from the SAT to the ACT, you don’t have any time to waste and will want to discover them soon! Conversely, if you’re an ACT student having second thoughts, you’d be better served by exploring those now so that if you do decide to return to the ACT, you’re returning to the ACT you know rather than the ACT you don’t!

Most students won’t be served by “waiting” to try the new digital ACT in the fall. For one, that realistically leaves only two options: the September test and the October test. That’s not much runway to land the plane if you haven’t already done so. Additionally, the new ACT will come with all the vagaries that new tests invariably possess, such as a lack of realistic test prep materials and an uncertain “curve”. One important exception exists for some students, though. Since the new ACT will only average the English, math, and reading sections to form the composite score, ACT students for whom Science is the only chink in their armor might actually benefit from holding off until the new test. If that isn’t you, however, now is the time to act and we wish you the best!

And, if all of this advice has your head spinning with options that make you feel more anxious than excited, give us a call. While you may have taken the ACT or SAT more than once, you likely haven’t made choices about the ACT or SAT more than once. The good news is that we have. We’ve helped thousands of student and their parents make informed decisions that worked for them, and we’d gladly do the same with you.