SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips

While people associate the SAT with high school students, there are several reasons someone may need or want to take the SAT after high school. But can you take the SAT after high school? Absolutely! I took the SAT this past year as an adult and will be taking it again this May.

In this guide, I’ll cover the reasons you may want to take the SAT as an adult, how to register, how testing is different as an adult, and more advice.

For many students, the SAT is one of the biggest stressors to come up during high school. Few anticipate, though, that it may still be a concern during college. Occasionally, however, you might find that you need new SAT scores after high school. 

So can you take the SAT in college? Yes, you absolutely can. There is no regulation that forbids it. In fact, the College Board's website specifically discusses non-high school testers.

This article will discuss why you might need to take the test as a college student and cover some solid information about that process—and what makes it both unique and challenging.

If you're deciding between taking the SAT and the ACT and you have a tight budget, this guide will help. We'll cover the registration costs, reporting costs, and how you can save money no matter what test you choose.

Your senior year is coming up, and you're ready to blow those standardized tests out of the water once and for all. It's time to figure out the best study plan for you that still leaves time for summer jobs, shameful levels of ice cream consumption, and acquiring incomprehensible tan lines.

Follow these five steps to make the most of your summer studying before your SAT or ACT test date!

Did you graduate from college a while ago and now a prospective employer wants to see your SAT scores? Did you take time off after high school and now have to send your SAT scores to colleges? No matter the case, you'll need to know how to access your old SAT scores.

In this article, I'll explain how to get and use old SAT scores. I'll teach you how to retrieve old scores and discuss how to present them to prospective employers.

On January 25, 2022, the College Board announced that the SAT would undergo significant changes, including becoming a computer-based test instead of one you take with pencil and paper. What other changes did the SAT make, why did they make these changes, and when did these changes go into effect? This guide answers all those questions and more. 

When I started working as a professional tutor, I was fresh out of college with few qualifications other than high test scores and some volunteer experience. I struggled with tutoring my first few students—I didn't feel comfortable giving them assignments and I struggled to figure out how best to use our lesson time.

But after years of tutoring, I became thoroughly familiar with the ins and outs of the whole process. I've drawn on my hard-earned knowledge to create this guide laying out the key steps to helping someone excel at the SAT so that you know where to start when tutoring your own student or child. A big part of being a great tutor is being properly prepared—these seven steps will set you on the right path to raising your student's score:

If you've ever glanced through any of the year-end College Board data reports, you may have seen information about the SAT standard deviation. Unfortunately, the reports just list the numbers and then move on, without explaining at all what these numbers mean.

So how is info about the SAT mean and standard deviation useful to you? In this article, we'll explain what the term standard deviation refers to and what it means for you and your SAT score.

As a high school student, I took both the SAT and the ACT. I’d been taking the SAT every couple of years since I was in middle school, so I planned to focus primarily on it. However, as a public school student in Colorado, I was required to take the ACT by my school. My scores on the two tests were relatively similar and I ended up submitting both.

Taking both tests, whether because of school requirements or personal preference, has become an increasingly common choice for students, especially those applying to top colleges. Though it isn’t necessary to take both the ACT and SAT, doing so might be the right plan for you. This guide will walk you through the pro and cons of taking both tests.

Have you taken the SAT more than once? Are you wondering how colleges will look at multiple test scores? Will they review all your scores? Only your highest score? Will they average your scores and use that number? Standardized test scores are an important part of applying to college, but it’s not always clear how schools will review your SAT scores if you send them more than one set of scores.

Will colleges average your SAT scores if you take the test multiple times? In short, no. Colleges don’t take the average of your scores. Instead, they will look at your “best” score, however; there are multiple ways a school can calculate that. In this article, I’ll go over the various methods schools use to look at multiple SAT scores, if they require you to send all your SAT scores, and how you can use this information to your advantage and help strengthen your college applications.

The SAT is a pretty high-stakes test - it’s an important part of your college applications, which could mean trouble if you get a low score. But can you fail the SAT altogether?

The good news is that officially, it’s impossible to fail the SAT - but that doesn’t mean that a low score doesn't mean bad news. Here, I’ll review everything you need to know about why you can’t really fail the SAT, but why poor marks may as well count as failing.

Worried about your score? At the end, I’ll go over the steps you should take to pull them up.  

Planning to take the SAT? Before you sign up, you need to decide whether you're going to take the test with or without the optional Essay. How should you pick? Well, some colleges require that you apply with the SAT with Essay; others don't care whether you submit an SAT score with or without the Essay.

In this article, I'll provide you with a complete list of colleges that require or recommend taking the SAT with the Essay.

The SAT was first introduced in 1926, and since then it has continued to be a major test for college admissions standardized testing.

But what does SAT actually stand for?. To answer that question, we have to look more closely at the history of the SAT. The truth is that the name of the test has changed four times over the past 90 years!

Knowing how the name of the SAT has changed can help you better understand the significance of this major test for college admissions. The reasons for changing the name of the SAT point to controversies and scandals about the test that have affected how the test is perceived by colleges. Continue reading to find more about the history of the SAT and the reasoning behind the name.

Taking the SAT is usually an important part of the college application process. As application deadlines near, forming a plan of action for taking the SAT is important to hitting your target score and getting your college applications in on time. 

In this article, we’ve put together a complete list of all of the anticipated 2021-2022 SAT test dates, including the deadlines for normal and late registration and SAT score releases, so you can pick the right test dates for you. We’ll also go over four important tips for choosing your SAT dates 2021-2022. 

Let’s begin!

At PrepScholar, we've written the largest set of high-quality SAT guides available, covering pretty much everything you need to know to improve your score on the digital SAT. They're all free and online, right here on our blog, and we think they beat any book you can purchase.

This guide, our Ultimate SAT Prep Study Guide, combines our most important SAT guides on one page. If you master all of the concepts linked to on this page, use them in your own practice and studying, and stay motivated to work hard, you'll have an amazing shot at improving your SAT score. Essentially, you'll have a huge advantage over students who don't know this information and lack the motivation to employ it in their own studying.