SAT™ & ACT© Suggestions for Students

When preparing for the SAT™ or the ACT® exams the best advice is - PRACTICE, PRACTICE and more PRACTICE. Think of it as training for your brain! An analogy -if you train for an athletic contest - you should train every day - the same is true if you want to maximize your SAT™ and ACT® performance!

Build your endurance and build your skill level in handling the kinds of questions asked - build your skill level handling their formats. Then you will not waste time on the actual exam day reading and re-reading exam instructions. Furthermore, understand that these exams are not like any test the students have taken in high school.

We recommend - actually it is imperative if the student is going to maximize their scores, that they start preparing early and engage in considerable SAT™ and ACT® test practice. To most carefully simulate the testing environment on test day, only utilize tests prepared by the College Board as your practice exams.

In addition, the SAT™ and ACT® instructor should be trained in exam specific strategies. It is important to emphasize that each of these exams require different strategies, particularly with respect to guessing. You want to be sure that the instructor understands that just helping a student refresh their memory on previously learned skills in mathematics, reading, grammar, and writing is not sufficient preparation for the SAT™ or the ACT® exams.

Finally, we suggest that those planning to take the SAT™ for example, plan to take the exam at least twice and possibly three times to obtain the highest scores since only the best scores that will be used by the colleges and universities. American Tutors Online™ offers One-to-One Tutoring and small groups of eight students or less for each of the basic SAT™ sections - Reading, English, and Mathematics as well as assistance in preparing for the Writing portion of the exam.

During the past few years the ACT® exam has grown in importance and has become required at more colleges and universities, particularly in the Midwest section of the US. As such, we highly recommend that students review all of the requirements of the schools where they are considering applying. Should one or several of the schools require the ACT® it is important to determine whether they require the entire examination including the Writing portion. Furthermore in preparing for the ACT®, in contrast to the SAT™, there should be less concern with the test taking strategies that our SAT™ Prep course emphasizes because the exam is more content oriented.

American Tutors Online™ offers One-to-One Tutoring and small groups for each of the basic ACT® sections - Reading, English, Mathematics and Science as well as assistance in preparing for the Writing portion of the exam. Because the ACT® is more content oriented than the SAT™ we believe that the personalized approach will serve our clients' needs best - hence our eight student classes are very popular.

For more information, please contact us