While most colleges take your grades and extracurricular activities into consideration during the college admission process, your SAT and ACT tests may be the deciding factor in whether or not you get in to your top college choices. An excellent score on these tests can also be a major scholarship magnet. To reduce anxiety about the ACT and SAT tests, it is important to learn what these tests are designed to show college admissions officers.
First, these standardized tests show how you size up compared to others; they are supposed to provide an “apples to apples” comparison between student applicants from very different high school backgrounds. The SAT and ACT also measure your test-taking abilities and can assess your readiness for college course placement as well as your grasp of high school curriculum.
The PLAN, which is the ACT prep test, and the PSAT, which is the SAT prep test, will be given to you well before you take the big tests to help you troubleshoot any subject area weaknesses that 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’s content areas include 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.