SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips

If you're currently scoring low on the ACT, you should make sure that you tailor your prep methods to your current needs and ability. Low ACT scorers and high scorers should prepare differently for the test and use different methods to get the best possible results.

In this article, I'll go over why students with low ACT scores should prepare differently and which strategies will be the most helpful for you.

If your scores on the SAT are on the lower side, you will benefit more from prep strategies that are targeted towards your specific situation. High and low scorers usually have different struggles and goals on the SAT, so the methods that work best for each of them will differ significantly.

In this article, I'll cover the reasons why high and low SAT scorers should prepare differently and which strategies SAT low scorers should and shouldn't use to have the best chances of improving their scores.  

ACT practice tests can be a great tool in preparing yourself for the real exam. In order for these tests to be worth your time, however, you’ll need to learn to evaluate your mistakes effectively. In this article, I’ll show you the most productive ways to reflect on ACT practice tests so that you can use them to your best advantage.

Choosing the best way to practice for the SAT can be difficult; there are a lot of study options out there, but not all of them may give you an accurate indicator of how well you’ll do on test day. Taking SAT practice tests under realistic testing conditions is a great way to practice for the SAT and get an estimate what your score will be on the real test. 

There are many free SAT practice tests available that you can take in your own home, however; it can be challenging to simulate real test-taking conditions. The closer the conditions of your practice test are to the real SAT, the more useful and accurate your results will be. Read on to learn how you can recreate realistic testing conditions at home in order to get the most accurate results from SAT practice tests.

Have you been significantly involved in community service or volunteer work? Will you be applying to college soon? Good news! You can use your community service experiences as a way to help pay for college or to fund future volunteer projects. 

Read on to learn what community scholarships are, how you can find one, and how you can increase your chances of winning one.

By now you probably know that one thing colleges want to learn about you is how you spend your free time. Did you spend high school sitting around playing video games? Or did you get out, actively involve yourself in an activity and your community, and make a difference?

One way of doing just that has become increasingly popular over the past several years: volunteering abroad.

Read on for more on why students volunteer abroad, tips for choosing a volunteer abroad program, and our pick of some of the best volunteer abroad programs out there.

You took the ACT and got your score, but you don’t know how to interpret your ACT score. What does your ACT score measure? Is your score high or low? Will your score be enough to get you into your target schools?

In this article, I'll answer all of these questions and more, so you can go toward understanding ACT scores.

You got your SAT score back, and you're not sure what to think of it. What does your SAT score mean? What does your SAT score measure? Is your SAT score high? Is it low? Will it get you into the college you hope to attend?

I'll answer all of these questions below so you can start understanding SAT scores.

If you took the SAT after February 2016, your test is significantly different from the old SAT. What're the main differences between the old and new SAT? How do you convert between the two tests? How do these changes affect you as the test taker?

Every year nearly 2 million students take the SAT, but what's it out of? I'll answer this question and more in this article.

On average, you’ll need to use an SAT math formula once every four to five questions. This accounts for approximately 20-25% of the combined math sections, which means it is crucial that you understand how and when to employ your formulas on the SAT.

We’ve put together the list of your need-to-know SAT formulas (prioritized in the order from greatest to least that you’ll see them on the SAT) as well as how to best use them for test-day.

Taking an SAT practice test is one thing, and using the results to actually improve your scores in the future is another. If you’re spending five hours on a practice test, you should make sure that you’re getting the most out of it and not sweeping your mistakes under the rug. In this article, I’ll give you some different strategies for making your practice test sessions count.

 You can’t study effectively for the ACT if you don’t know what score to aim for, and you won’t know what score to aim for if you don’t know how the ACT is scored!

In this post, I’ll start off with some important background info on the ACT before getting to the good stuff — the ACT score range and what you should know about it. For example, what do these scores mean? What counts as a good ACT score? Read on to find out!

The first step in preparing for the SAT is learning basic info about the test. If you’ve decided to take the SAT, or even if you’re still choosing between the SAT and ACT, it’s important to understand how the test is scored.

I’ll give you a crash course in the SAT and its score ranges before talking in more detail about what these scores actually mean—what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s average.

When it comes to your college applications, you probably aren’t too worried about your ACT scores— unless, that is, you think your scores will be too low.

Don’t panic just yet! Like most things in life, ACT scores are all relative — there’s no such thing as a bad ACT score in a vacuum.  In this post, I’ll talk about what it means to have a “bad” score in relation to the entire US, your general peer group, your prospective colleges, and (maybe most importantly) yourself.