You know what drives me crazy?  Looking at a high school parking lot full of cars on a Saturday morning in the fall when the SAT or ACT is being given.  Why don’t I like to see this?

Taking the SAT in the fall of senior year should be a last ditch effort at improving your score. And if that is why you are taking a fall SAT, more power to you. I hope your score improves. Unfortunately, most of the people taking the SAT in the fall are doing so for the first time.

If you don’t know what you SAT score is going to be, you are not able to put together a reasonable list of colleges. Without a list of colleges you can’t really get started applying. Which means that you are starting to apply after you get your scores, at the earliest, in late October.

This is the time I like to see my students finishing or at least being well through the application process at most colleges. When students don’t have a college list until late October they tend to rush through the process. And rushing through the college application essays is not a good idea.

I work with some of the brightest students in the country and many of them struggle coming up with an essay topic and writing their essays. That is why we start the essay writing process in early summer. With time, the students can reflect on who they are, what they wish to write about, and look at variations on their essays. When a student is rushed in the fall, much of this process is lost.

Another problem with a late test date is the option of applying early to a college may be lost because you just don’t know which college is the best option. Do you really know enough about a college to apply early decision at the last minute. Most likely, no.

The final major problem of waiting until fall to take the SAT is the question of what happens if the day does not go well. What happens if you get sick? What if you just have a bad day and don’t do well on the test?  What is you freak out because it is your first time taking the test?

If your October test does not go well then you are looking at the November test. Now you don’t know what your appropriate colleges are going to be until close to December. Early decision? Nope. Early Action? Probably not.

Waiting to test until fall senior year often results in lost options. Colleges that may have been a good choice for you just don’t work out because you don’t know what are the best colleges without a test score.

Do yourself a favor and don’t wait until fall senior year to take the SAT. Getting into the right college for your needs is challenging enough without making it more difficult than you have to.

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Many of the most selective colleges require that students submit SAT Subject Tests as part of the application process. But planning for the SAT Subject Tests requires some thought.

Subject tests should generally be taken after you have finished the highest level classwork related to that test.  While that is nice in theory, the reality is that you need to have these tests taken by fall of senior year which means that you need to have taken the classes by end of junior year.

You also don’t want to wait too long to take the test after you have the course work so late spring of junior year makes sense. Maybe.

The problem with testing the late spring of junior year is that this is the same time that you should have completed your SAT and most students will also have a number of AP tests to take at this time.

To further complicate the matter, you can not take a regular SAT and the SAT Subject Tests on the same test date. So, you are left with three SAT test dates between March and June of your junior year and you need one date for the SAT and one for the SAT Subject Tests. You can take the third date for a second SAT but that makes for a very busy spring.

And if this all isn’t starting to concern you, if you take three Subject Tests on a test date but are concerned that one of them didn’t go well, you can’t just cancel the test that didn’t go well. You either keep all of the tests from that test date or you cancel all of the tests from that date.

Ideally, you will get your SAT Subject Tests done before spring of junior year so that you don’t need to worry about them at that time.  If you can get your courses taken early then  you can take the Subject Tests early. This takes careful planning throughout your high school career.

Help with this type of planning is a common reason why families hire admission consultants.  Do you need help?

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1. Get the official SAT Study Guide from the College Board. This book contains 10 actual old SAT tests.

2. Review the book.

3. Take a practice test.

4. Review your answers to the test paying particular attention to the wrong answers.

5. Try to understand the concept behind the question you got wrong.Although the questions on the SAT change from test to test, the concepts stay the same. If you can understand the concepts that you got wrong, you are much more likely to correctly answer those types of questions on the next test.

6. Repeat steps 3 to 5 several times.

My experience has been that this approach to preparing for the SAT is often more successful than standard test prep. If you do need help understanding some of these concepts, then hiring a tutor may be appropriate to address the specific concepts that you are struggling with.

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I told you last week that you should take the SAT in the spring of your junior year. So when is the best time to prepare for the SAT?

The summer before junior year is the best time because you are likely to have more time to spend on the preparation than during the school year. Yes, I know you are busy and also want to have some time to relax in the summer. No problem. You don’t need to devote 40 hours a week to SAT prep but you do need to spend some time.

However, don’t prepare during the summer and then forget about the SAT until you take the test. Continue practicing through fall of junior year so that you are at your best when you actually take the SAT.

Next week I will tell you the best way to prepare for the SAT.

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A student recently told me that they had heard that the January SAT was the easiest one to take. Is this true?

The answer is NO, there is no one easier test date.  The college board, and for that matter the folks at ACT, are very careful to make sure that the relative difficulty of different test dates is about the same.

Do some tests appear to be easier for some students. Absolutely. But with hundreds of thousands of students taking each test, some people are bound to think that a particular test is easier.

Even if one of the tests is easier, it will just raise the curve on which the test is scored so that you will need fewer wrong to get the high score that you want.

Don’t try to figure out which test is the easiest. You will only end up wasting time and energy that you could put into actually preparing for the test.  Instead, focus on figuring out the right time for you to take the test so that you are as prepared as you can be.

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I just wanted to let you know about a new website that can help with SAT preparation. The site is Show Me and the helpful thing is it shows you how to answer each question from the practice tests in the College Board’s The Official SAT Study Guide.

This is how it works. You pick one of the practice tests from the Study Guide. For each question of the test they have an instructor that has done a short video on how to solve that problem.

At this point they only have answers to the first three tests but more are promised.

If you are someone who is planning on self preparing for the SAT, this is a great supplement to help with any questions whose concept you do not understand.

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DePaul University in Chicago has announced that they are going test optional with the class entering in 2012.

DePaul is believed to be the largest university to date that has gone test optional. While this is a 4 year pilot program there is no reason to expect that it will not be permanent. Many other colleges have implemented test optional status on a provisional basis and to the best of my knowledge, none have reversed their decision.

I congratulate DePaul on taking this step to eliminate the testing requirement in admissions.

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Salve Regina University, a regional university in Rhode Island, announced last Friday that they are going test optional effective immediately. The policy applies to all students except those applying to the majors in nursing and education.

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American University in Washington D.C. has announced that they will be going test optional for all students who apply to the college by November 1.  Last year they were test optional for students applying early decision so this is an expansion of last year’s policy.

Students wishing to have their admission decisions made without considering their test scores need to simply submit a test-optional form along with the rest of their admission materials. If a student wishes to have their test scores considered, then they do not have to submit this form.

I noticed that American clearly says in their notice that using the test optional program will not affect a student’s consideration for merit awards or for their honors program.

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Colorado College has officially changed the testing requirement for admission to the college. Unlike many other colleges that have eliminated standardized testing, Colorado College still requires testing but is providing many more options for students to submit scores.

Here is their new policy:

Three exams of the applicant’s choice chosen from a list of acceptable SAT or ACT sub scores, SAT II Subject tests, AP or IB exams, or the TOEFL test for international students. Students choosing this new option must include at least one quantitative test and one verbal or writing test.

So, if you still want to submit an SAT I or ACT test you may do so. But, if you want the college to consider, as an example, your SAT reading score, your ACT math score and your AP Biology score, that works also.  I have talked with the admission office regarding the new policy and their intent is to make it easier for each student to show their strengths.

While I am still not a huge fan of standardized testing, I congratulate Colorado College on reaching a compromise that give them more information about each student while recognizing that each student has different strengths.

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