SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips

If you’re a sophomore or junior in high school, it's about time to start exercising your standardized testing muscles. This is especially true if you're hoping to get into very selective colleges or improve significantly from your PSAT scores.

Read on for advice on how to create an effective study plan for the SAT or ACT starting in sophomore and junior year.

You don't want to walk in the morning of the ACT only to find you have to take the test on a super-tiny desk.

If you're preparing for the ACT, you've probably spent a lot of time studying and getting ready for the test. But you probably haven't given that much thought to the physical location of your test (especially if you're taking it as a part of your state’s mandatory testing).

However, the place you take the ACT could definitely affect your performance. Read our guide to choosing the best possible ACT test location so you can knock it out of the park.

While you're doing a lot to prepare for the SAT, you probably haven't given that much thought to the physical location of your test. However, that location could definitely affect your performance.

Think about it – have you ever had to take a test in a cramped classroom or in room without air conditioning? It probably didn’t exactly help your performance. So why would you take the SAT in sub-optimal conditions?

Read our guide to choosing the best possible test location so you can do as well as possible.

Image via College Board.

The SAT was revamped in March 2016 in an effort to make it more modern and accessible. If you’re a current high school student, you’ve probably heard about this change.

If you’re a current senior (Class of 2017) or junior (Class of 2018) this raises some questions. What if you took the SAT before it changed last spring? Will colleges still accept scores from the "old" SAT? Or will they require you to take the new SAT? This has big implications for how you prep, when you take the tests, and possibly even whether you should switch to the ACT.

In this exclusive, first of its kind breakdown, we personally spoke to admissions counselors from dozens of colleges to get some real answers on how they will handle the transition. 

Are you an 8th grader curious about the SAT and ACT? You might be surprised that you already have a lot of the skills you'll need to do well on these tests, and you're capable of picking up many more.

Whether you're prepping to get a headstart for high school or taking the SAT/ACT to qualify for talent competitions, read on for some compelling reasons why you would benefit from prepping in 8th grade. First, why would you take these tests in the first place?

Subject-Verb Agreement may be the most tested grammatical rule on the SAT. Therefore, just by mastering this rule and its applications, you will be well on your way toward achieving a ridiculously good score on the SAT Reading and Writing.

While the rule itself is relatively simple, the questions related to it can be challenging and a bit tricky. In this article, we’ll teach you how to become a master of all things subject-verb agreement on the SAT.

The ACT Science section is basically the white and gold dress of the ACT. It's blue and black or white and gold. It's either really hard or really easy, depending on the viewer. In this article, I'm going to help you find a strategy that makes the ACT Science really easy always.

As I mentioned in a previous article, the ACT Science section is more reading than science. Therefore, to do well on the ACT Science, you need to have a good reading strategy. Counterintuitive, I know.

While using one strategy for the whole ACT Science section would be ideal, there is no single technique that works to read all of the ACT Science Passages. Your approach to reading the ACT Science Passages should vary based on the type of passage. If you're unfamiliar with the 3 types of ACT Science Passages, I recommend reading our other article first.

In this article, I'll outline all of the ACT Science reading techniques that I've personally tried and taught to students. I'll rank the techniques from best to worst. I offer all of the strategies (instead of just one) because my favorite strategy may not work for you.

The ACT English can be overwhelming. There are so many questions! And they're mostly just underlined text: what are they even asking? Of course, that confusion is the whole point: it's what makes this part of the test hard. 

What does that mean for you? Because the ACT test writers rely on your confusion about the format to confuse you, the questions themselves usually aren't that difficult. 

Because the ACT is designed to be taken by every high school student in the country, it can only test math concepts that every student has experience with. The way the creators of the test make it hard is by giving you questions on a wide range of subjects and sub-topics, presenting them in strange ways, and by putting you on a strict time crunch. 

Maybe you’ve taken the ACT before--whether practice or real--and found yourself only half way or three quarters of the way through the math section before your time was up. Maybe you just think it would be downright impossible to finish so many questions on time. Rest assured--you are not alone. And it is not impossible.

In this guide, I'll walk you through the timing of the test and teach you how to beat the clock and maximize your time on the ACT.

There are 3 types of SAT reading passages that you, as the test taker, need to be familiar with. The 3 types of passages mainly differ in length, but also somewhat in content. Therefore, the strategies for tackling them need to be different.

Below, we'll go over the different types of reading passages on the SAT and what you can expect from the questions that follow them. 

NOTE: This article was written about the old SAT Critical Reading section. For more information about passages on the current SAT Reading, we recommend instead reading this article.

One of the nice things about the ACT is that it doesn't change all that much from test to test. This is especially true for the Reading section: Reading is always the third section of the ACT, there will always be passages on four subject areas, and each subject area will have 10 questions.

So what are the 4 types of ACT Reading passages? Read on to find out!

Can’t make the test date you signed up for on the SAT? You're in luck! It’s possible to arrange an alternate test date for the following week, although it’s often easier to just switch to the next official test date.

In this article you'll learn what constitutes an alternate test date, the criteria for requesting one, and how to submit your request. 

I’m a dad. I give advice. It’s what I do.

You can’t fight nature. When it’s time to go, you go. When it’s time to advice, you advice.

So, it’s natural, really the divine order of things, that when my kids went off to college, I gave them advice. I was just doing my job.

I told them just two things.

Are you wondering about the difference between the ACT English and SAT Writing sections? Do you want to know how the two sections are similar? Are you trying to figure out which section would be better for you? (Or maybe you just love reading my guides?)

In this article, we will compare and contrast the ACT English and SAT Writing sections.  We'll compare their formats and content.  Reading this post can inform your studying and help you decide whether the ACT or SAT would be a better match for you and your abilities.

Imagine you’re taking the SAT Critical Reading, when all of a sudden you come across a sentence completion question that completely stumps you. What are strategies you can use to help with this situation, and what are some ways to avoid this situation altogether? The College Board’s advice is helpful, but only goes so far.

Keep reading for solutions to this issue. I'll go over ways to avoid sentence completion questions entirely, common wisdom advice, and what I think really works.

NOTE: This article discusses a type of question that no longer appears on the SAT. For more information about what is included in the SAT Reading section, read this article.