Enriching Education: SAT/ACT Tips

The New Year brings a shocking reality to millions of parents and their teenagers – college is right around the corner. The second semester of the school year for high school students, especially sophomores and juniors, is the time to start prepping or taking their final SAT/ACT tests.

Andrea Catsicas, Founder of Mindworks Prep  (www.mindworksprep.com) a renowned SAT/ACT prep company, says few high school students look forward to the important tests and it is not much fun for parents either.  “In many cases you get a sense the parent in understandably more nervous than the teen about the SAT/ACT process as it plays a key role in their child’s future” she says. 

Catsicas has tips parents should keep in mind to help guide their teens through the SAT/ACT testing process.

·        Distraction Action - It's harder and harder for children to study for college prep tests in the digital age, with all of the added distractions.  There's nothing wrong with taking their phone away and having them study out of an SAT book for an hour, in a place where you can visually monitor that your child is not allowing distractions to take over

 

·        Read to Succeed - The redesigned SAT is more focused on reading comprehension than ever before.  Now, more than ever, pleasure reading is a way to study for the SAT. 

 

·        Review and Improve – For the January, May and October tests, you can order a copy of the actual test your child took; for other tests, you will receive stats on how your child did, but not copies of the specific questions that were missed. These copies are great tools to help your teen improve.

 

·        Pick the Schools Before the Test - Find out which test, SAT or ACT is preferred by your child's dream school(s) ACT or SAT.  If you're prepping for one test and the school prefers the other, you might be wasting time, energy and money.

 

·        Correct Calculator - Verify that your child has a calculator that's on the approved list of calculators for the SAT.  Also, remind your student to use his/her actual calculator each time he/she does SAT practice. 

 

·        Debunking Misconceptions

-          The ACT and the new SAT are similar: they're more similar, but their essays are totally different, and their math content covers entirely different classes (the ACT delves into pre-calculus a great deal more).

-          It isn’t easy to study for the SAT's during the school year: juggling school and test prep work is extremely challenging.  Starting your student with a test prep program as early in their education process as possible is one of the best ways around this challenge.”