Since the competition includes staying up late, sleeping in, and the beach, it is no wonder the looming ACT and SAT doesn’t spring to the top of your mind. Still, summertime can be a great time to prep, if you’re sufficiently advanced enough in your courses and skills. Otherwise, there is no problem waiting until winter or spring of your Junior year. Do keep in mind though that December or January of your Senior year is the drop-dead date, and at that point you don’t want to find yourself stressing over how to raise substandard scores.
One advantage to starting this summer is the same advantage you’ll always have when you get a jump on a task: less stress and more time to adjust. Admit it, once school starts in the fall, your days will be sucked into a vexing vortex of priorities: homework from multiple tough classes, competitive sports, a demanding job. By comparison, your summer schedule is a cakewalk. Those leisurely weeks added to the first budding school days when activities are only beginning to ramp up the intensity afford you the most time in your yearly cycle to study.
Not only is your prep for a fall test less stressful, but you also have plenty of time to improve. Treat fall as your dress rehearsal for the real performance in the spring. While your peers will just be gearing up under all that school pressure for their first taste of ACT goodness, you’ll already have recovered from the anxiety of your first SAT, identified your weak points, and will instead be focusing on sharpening those skills. Then, towards the end when you’ve reached your score goal, all your mental energy will be available for those other nerve-racking college application tasks like school visits, choosing your perfect match, and the mythical essay.
There is a cost to harvesting all those benefits of summer prep though. You need to have already planted the seeds by taking advanced classes, and be fairly sharp in your skills. Math, for example, includes fundamentals such as algebra and geometry, but also comprises higher-level topics such as trigonometry, statistics, and logarithms sufficiently enough to matter to your score. Likewise, the Reading passages are college-level with its attendant vocabulary and rhetoric. If your math or reading curriculum lags others’, if you haven’t been exposed to physics or chemistry, if you can’t identify a subject, predicate, or thesis, don’t feel rushed into that fall test.
So, can there be an advantage to NOT getting an early start on an epic milestone in your academic career? How about one more year of math, one more year of reading, one more year of thinking, growing, maturing? A slightly wiser you will take a spring test than the one testing in fall. Let’s call it a “wisdom bump”, as one of my recent parents so eloquently coined it. Her oldest daughter increased her SAT Reading/Writing score by 50 points between Junior and Senior year, and had only studied Math over that summer! Even if you wait until spring to kick-start your test prep, your fall will not be purely a vacation because the PSAT is a great –and free– practice run.
One final thought before you decide. A great question to ask is how much prep do I need? Your unique answer will depend on what level you are at today, what score makes you competitive at your top school choices, and how much time, effort, and money you want to invest. The first question can only be answered with an honest baseline practice test, or PSAT results will suffice. The second is illuminated by Admissions web sites or guidance counselors. And only your family can figure out the third. To start though, consider this guideline. Begin three full months before your first test. Remember, you have three to four sections to review, plus perhaps an essay. During those twelve weeks, get a little something done each day: not a lot, not every section, just something. Target four hours a week, the equivalent of a full-length test. More is better, but less is better than nothing. You do still have to live your life after all!