Most people are aware of how important understanding the structure and content of the ACT or SAT is to improving their scores. What many students and families don’t intuitively grasp, however, are the other factors that play into their ability to optimize their ACT or SAT prep. One of the most important of these is program timeline. If you’ve ever wondered, “When should I start studying and preparing for the ACT or SAT,” we’re here to help you answer that question. (And if you haven’t wondered that, now you know that you should. Close this post, go wonder it for a few minutes, and then come back—we’ll wait.) Read on for all the information you need about SAT and ACT prep timelines.
How many times should I take the ACT or SAT?
Before we delve into the question of when you should start studying and preparing for the ACT or SAT, it’s important to start with the fact that most students should be going into the process planning to test more than once.
As a general rule, I recommend that every student plan to test at least twice, for various reasons. The first and most obvious reason is simply that, statistically speaking, you are likely to score better on your second test. According to the ACT’s official guide on testing multiple times, over half of students taking the ACT twice will receive a higher score on the second administration. The College Board provides a similar statistic: 2 out of 3 students will perform better on a second exam. Most colleges also ‘super-score’ both the ACT and the SAT, meaning that they will select your highest section scores from each test sitting and consider those for your admission decision.
Let’s analyze an example student who scored 1200 on two different SAT test dates. On the first date, she scored 700 on her Verbal and 500 on her Math. While preparing for her second test date, she decided to focus on improving in Math; when test day rolled around, she scored 550 on Verbal but brought Math up to a 650. Many colleges—though not all—will then take the 700 Verbal score from her first test date and the 650 Math score from her second test date for an overall composite super-score of 1350, a 150-point improvement on either individual composite score. This does not happen organically, though: in order to benefit from SAT super-scoring, you will need to submit all of your scores to colleges and then they will super-score your tests, not the College Board.
The ACT even goes one better: as of the beginning of 2021, super-scores are now automatically included in students’ official ACT score reports. When you select the test dates from which you want to submit results to colleges, the ACT automatically pulls your highest score for each section out of those dates and displays those four scores at the top of the score report, along with a composite super-score. While colleges are guaranteed to see that super-score, they aren’t obligated to use it for admissions purposes: currently, some schools use the super-score while others still do not, so it’s in your best interest to try to maximize your composite score on each given test date. By taking the ACT more than once, you are able to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses to better maximize your score on your next test: you and your tutor can use that data when you start preparing for your next ACT to target areas of weakness in each section, which leads to stronger composite scores.
It’s also important to note that most colleges that don’t super-score only consider your highest score, so there is no risk in trying again; you won’t get penalized if you submit results from multiple test dates to a school that doesn’t utilize super-scoring. Take the test once; then, if you don’t get the scores you want, don’t hesitate to start studying and preparing for the next SAT or ACT administration as well.
While testing multiple times is almost always to your benefit, we also absolutely need to acknowledge that there is a point of diminishing returns after three or so tests. For one thing, higher-scoring students have smaller margins of error for improvement, so students scoring in the upper ranges often do not benefit from testing more than two or three times. More broadly, there is also the simple fact that test preparation is work, and at some point, students are better off focusing on other parts of their applications if they are hitting a plateau after multiple rounds of testing. Remember, it is not merely your test scores that determine whether you are granted admission to a given college. The application process is a holistic one: admissions officers also weigh your grades, extracurricular activities, and volunteer experience, and those should not be shunted to the side in favor of testing closer and closer to application time. This is particularly true with the growing popularity of test-optional admissions policies, a trend that has only been accelerated by the COVID pandemic.
So to summarize: when creating an SAT/ACT prep timeline and figuring out when you should start studying and preparing for the ACT or SAT, make sure you’re building in enough time to take the test 2-3 times; you’re better off allowing more time than you end up needing than you are hitting college application deadlines with a score that doesn’t meet your goals.
How many months in advance should I start studying and preparing for the ACT or SAT?
So you’ve worked backwards from your college application deadlines and identified a target test date for your first attempt at the ACT or SAT that allows you enough time to test once or twice more if necessary; great. Now you need to decide when to start studying and preparing.
As a general rule, I recommend that students start with the assumption that they’ll want 6-8 weeks of consistent prep before they take the ACT or SAT for the first time. This will allow you to spend a few weeks simply getting the basics down: the timing of each section, the content you should expect to see, the most common question-types and the core strategies to address them, etc.
Once you have a strong foundation of knowledge about the test, you can start to home in on your particular areas of weakness. Are you having trouble with the speed of the ACT Reading section? Do you need to review systems of linear equations in order to be prepared for the SAT’s strange and slightly concerning love affair with them? These things can absolutely be addressed through prep, but you want to make sure you allow yourself enough time to do that.
After you’ve spent some time focusing on your particular areas for improvement, the last couple of weeks before the test should be spent putting it all together. Shift your focus to completing timed practice sections; this will give you additional practice on any content you’ve been struggling with in a real-test context while also providing more reps to ensure you’re acclimated to the speed of each section.
Following this 6-8 week plan will put the average student in a strong position going into their first test date. There are certain factors that may prompt you to allow yourself more time before your first test date, however. If your score goal is very high, for instance, recognize that the amount of work you’ll need to do to achieve that goal is likely to be commensurately high, and you should consider extending your timeline accordingly, Similarly, if you’re somebody who doesn’t have much standardized test experience or knows they’re not a strong test-taker, you may also want to give yourself more of a cushion in order to reduce anxiety. And finally, if you’re beginning your prep during a period when your schedule is busy enough that you may not have the time for consistent practice, allowing yourself a few more weeks before that first test can give you the opportunity to still get in the reps necessary to make a go of it. That last point actually leads us nicely to our next question…
How often should I study for the ACT or SAT?
The answer to this question is important when determining when you should start studying and preparing for the ACT or SAT, and it depends in part on whether you’re working with a tutor or preparing independently. If you’re working with a tutor, they’re likely to have a particular pace or schedule that they use, and they’ll help you figure out a prep plan that fits with the 9,042 other things most high school students have going on these days. If you’re preparing independently, though, it can be harder to get that kind of guidance; to help, I’ll share the schedule that I typically use as a default with my students.
I usually meet with my students once a week, as I find that provides a good balance of consistent reinforcement of concepts and not packing their busy schedules too much. The work that’s done between sessions is just as important as the work that’s done during sessions, however. I typically recommend that students try to do some ACT/SAT prep once every other day if possible, rather than, say, knocking it all out at 11:30pm on Sunday night. The consistent practice allows concepts and techniques to carry over more easily from assignment to assignment, and shorter periods of focused work are often more conducive to attentiveness and engagement, which means that the results will provide a more accurate picture of your current ability level. For the average student, 45 minutes to 1 hour of practice every other day is enough to move scores without being overwhelming—so long as you’re practicing the right things! That point brings us nicely to our next topic once again (man, I’m killing the transitions today).
Where should I start preparing for the ACT or SAT?
A very smart former coworker of mine used to say, “Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent.” In other words, repetition is only useful if the things you’re repeating are helpful—hammering the same ACT Reading strategy over and over again isn’t going to improve your timing unless the strategy itself is a good fit for your particular test-taking “personality.” So where should you go to find the best resources to start studying and preparing for the ACT or SAT?
GoTutor. That’s the answer; everyone can stop reading now.
On a more serious note, even if you’re not prepping using one of our courses, we want to help you prep the right way. When you’re comparing prep options, here are a few main things to consider:
- Use official materials as much as possible. Though there are some decently high quality third-party practice tests and practice questions out there, it’s very difficult to produce material that perfectly replicates the actual test, particularly in sections like Reading. Be sure that whatever course or tutor you use incorporates a heavy dose of official practice sections—and if you’re prepping independently, seek out those official resources on your own—so that you’re fully prepared for what you’ll see on test day.
- Find a balance between strategy and content. Official practice materials are hugely important, but by themselves they’re not enough. Even though many practice tests include answer explanations along with the key, those explanations typically focus on what I call the “front door” method for answering the questions. For example, the answer explanations for a Math section are almost always going to focus exclusively on how to solve the problems by knowing the concepts that are being tested; rarely will they acknowledge the fact that techniques like plugging in answer choices or graphing a function on your calculator can provide viable (and in some cases, even faster) alternative ways to get to the solution. If the ACT and College Board acknowledge that there are ways to answer the questions that don’t require knowledge of the concepts, they are implicitly acknowledging that the test can be “taught”—and that’s just bad for business. When prepping, make sure that you’re seeking out trustworthy sources for strategy and technique in addition to content review.
- Learn from your mistakes. As I mentioned above, simply practicing over and over and over again isn’t enough. When you finish a section or a problem set, build in time to review and analyze your mistakes. Why is your answer wrong, and why is the correct answer better? Are there patterns in the questions you missed that may indicate an underlying content or question-type weakness? What are the main things you should be focusing on in this area of the test moving forward? Don’t just practice for the sake of practice—practice with the goal of learning something from every question you miss and every section you complete that you can take with you and apply moving forward.
How do I get better at the ACT or SAT?
As I said above, we want you to hit your highest possible score whether you’re prepping with us or not; that’s why I just spent so much time making this treasure trove of priceless test knowledge available to you at no charge. If you are interested in courses designed by experienced, expert ACT/SAT tutors that include both self-paced work and 1:1 instruction, though, check out GoTutor’s ACT/SAT prep headquarters. Our squad of ACT/SAT gurus would love nothing more than to help you master the test. Happy prepping!