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Ace the ACT and SAT
The SAT and ACT are the most talked about exams among American high school students. And for good reason, too—1.26 million students took the SATs last fall and 1.7 million souls braved the ACTs in 2001. You too will have to take the tests before applying to most U.S. colleges and universities. Here are our top 10 tips for acing these monsters.
1. Don’t stop for directions “It’s not so much beating the test; it’s about knowing how it works and practicing so you have your timing strategy down,” says Susan Steron, director of the Sylvan Learning Center in Rochester, N.Y., which offers SAT-preparation programs. Take as many practice tests as you can. Read the directions carefully so you can skip them during the real thing and move on to more point-procuring activities. Practice tests will also give you a feel for the concepts you’re likely to find on the tests, such as basic math formulas and commonly tested words. The PSAT is the official practice test for the SAT. They also give a fairly good indication of how you’ll do on the for-real test. Most people score within 100 points of their PSAT score on the SAT.
2. Start at the beginning On the practice exams, you’ll find that questions start easy and get tougher as the test continues. Get those easy questions out of the way and finish longer questions later. Don’t spend too much time on a tough question; plan instead to revisit it after the easier stuff is done.
3. Take a class If you need more help than practice exams provide, consider an SAT or ACT preparation program. In these classes, you’ll find two types of students: high achievers wanting a more competitive score and people who scored lower than average. SAT preparation classes teach you strategy, such as learning groups of words by associations instead of memorizing 3,000 vocabulary words.
4. Become a thesaurus Cram your brain with strategies, but don’t leave knowledge building completely ignored. Vocabulary building is a gradual process. Memorizing words won’t help much. (What if those 20 words you study don’t show up on your test?) Surrounding yourself with decent literature can help, though, so read as much and as often as you can.
5. Learn how they grade If you do absolutely nothing on the SAT but mark your name, you’ll get 200 points on each section—a lousy 400 points total. Answer an SAT question incorrectly and you’ll receive negative points—either a minus third or fourth of a point, depending on the section. Answer correctly, and it’s plus one for you. Leave it blank and nothing happens. You don’t lose a thing—but you don’t gain any points, either. On both the SAT and ACT, guess an answer only if you’re able to narrow the possibilities. Randomly guessing won’t help, as you’re as likely to guess wrongly as you are to answer it correctly.
6. Guinea-pig section The PSAT has six sections: three math and three verbal. On the SAT, there are seven sections. That extra section is 30 minutes of either math or vocabulary questions The College Board uses to test possible future SAT questions. That “equating” section, as they call it, isn’t graded; rather, the Board uses it to test potential future questions. Concentrate on all the test sections equally; no one knows which section is the experimental one.
7. Send your scores The College Board will send your test scores to colleges of your choice, which you’ll indicate on the test. The ACT lets you review your scores before sending them (or not) to your prospective schools, allowing you to decide what the schools will see.
8. Take it over If you bomb the SAT but are usually a stellar student, call the universities to which your scores were sent to learn their policies on re-dos. Each individual school decides how it will handle bad scores and test takeovers. Sometimes they’ll take your highest math and verbal scores, even if they’re from separate tests, and count them as one exam score. More often, a school will average the scores of your original and any take-over tests to figure a new composite score. Decide whether or not to retake the SAT or ACT depending on the weight your prospective school places on the tests. If a higher score means more scholarship money or a better shot at admission, you might consider taking the tests over. If the school cares more about your extracurricular involvement than test scores, then retaking a standardized test might mean more headache than it’s worth.
9. Don’t take the tests Terrified about taking the SATs? Then don’t. “It’s just another exam. Who wants to take another exam?” asks Raymond Lew, assistant director of international enrolment at SUNY Buffalo in Buffalo, N.Y. International students at Buffalo aren’t required to take the SATs. “We don’t feel the SATs are fair to international students,” Lew says. For starters, Lew says, Americans grow up knowing they’ll have to take the exams. Americans also use different measurement systems and testing methods than other nations. But Lew still recommends taking the SAT or ACT to give admissions counsellors an indication of how you’ll fare in college. “But it’s not like, if you get a bad SAT score, we’ll deny you,” Lew says. That’s the general mindset of most U.S. college admission counsellors, we’re told: The SATs don’t necessarily make or break your college career. More important than standardized testing can be portfolios, extracurricular activities, community involvement and your overall academic track record.
10. Ignore these common myths These are some of the most common myths associated with American standardized tests. They’re not true—so get them out of your head now: * If you don’t do well, you’re stupid. * You can tell which part of the SAT guinea-pig section. * Cramming for these tests works. * If you score badly on the SAT or ACT, your future with American colleges is toast. Leanne McAndrews, 16, took the SATs last October. “It’s scary because your teachers flip out and tell you, you have to do well on the SAT if you want to go to a good college.” But, she says, “when it’s over, the teachers then say, ‘Well, they don’t really matter, as long as the rest of your academics are good.’” Article provided by 
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