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.
The college and career aptitude feedback from your PLAN test results are excellent tools to get your wheels turning 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 at school in mid-October every year by registering through the high school guidance department. Scores resulting from the exam are typically returned to high school counselors between late November and early January.
The PSAT measures critical thinking skills in three areas: writing, critical reading, and math. The writing section calls for you to identify sentence errors, improve sentences, and improve paragraphs. The critical reading question has you complete sentences and answer questions based on an excerpt you have 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.
The PSAT only happens twice in October of 2008: Wednesday, October 15 and Saturday, October 18. Your high school will handle registration for one of these two dates.
For more information, contact your high school counselor and visit: http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/psat/about.html