While most colleges consider your grades and extracurricular activities during the college admissions process, your SAT and ACT test scores could be the deciding factor as to whether you get into your top college choices. Not to mention, excellent test scores can also help you win scholarships.
Understand that the ACT and SAT are standardized tests meant to show how you compare to others; they are supposed to provide an apples-to-apples comparison between student applicants from different high schools. The SAT and ACT also measure your test-taking abilities and can assess your readiness for college course placement and your grasp of high school curriculum. You can prepare for the SAT and ACT by taking some other tests earlier in your high school career to help you identify any subjects you may need to work on.
You take the PLAN, the ACT prep test, and the PSAT, the SAT prep test, well before you take the big tests to help you troubleshoot any weaknesses you need to work on before the real thing.
The PLAN
The PLAN test is administered by the American College Testing Program to help you prepare for the ACT. You will be tested over common high school skills and knowledge, usually in the fall of your sophomore year.
The PLAN test includes 50 questions on English (usage/mechanics, rhetorical skills), 40 questions on mathematics (pre-algebra, algebra, geometry with calculators allowed), 25 questions on reading comprehension and 30 questions on science.
The college and career aptitude feedback from your PLAN test results are excellent tools to get you thinking about life after high school graduation, both in terms of college and career. As with all standardized testing, it is important to work through the sections, answering the questions that come easiest to you first so you don't get bogged down on the hard ones.
For more detailed information about the PLAN and post-test interactive tools, visit www.actstudent.org/plan.
The PSAT/NMSQT
The Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) is administered by the College Board. The PSAT/NMSQT is both a pre-test for the SAT and the exam used to find National Merit Semifinalists and Commended Students.
High school sophomores and juniors take the PSAT/NMSQT in mid-October; you need to register through your high school guidance department. The test scores are typically returned to high school counselors between late November and early January.
The PSAT measures critical thinking skills in writing, critical reading and math. The writing section calls for you to identify sentence errors, improve sentences and improve paragraphs. The critical reading section has you complete sentences and answer questions based on an excerpt you read. The math section allows calculators and covers numbers and operations, algebra and functions, geometry and measurement, data analysis, statistics and probability.
Like the PLAN test, the PSAT is much more than a preliminary round for college entrance exams. As a sophomore, your PSAT results include college admissions game plans and career skill aptitude feedback as you chart your high school course.
For more information, contact your high school counselor and visit http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/psat/about.html.