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So, you are ready to take a College Board Test or Standardized Assessment Test—one of the most important steps in your preparation for the college admissions process now or in the near future.
The SAT, SAT II Subject Tests and the PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Tests are the gold standard for nearly every college in America to establish a prospective student's college preparedness. That's why more than two million students take the SAT every year.
The PSAT will reveal your strengths and weaknesses in skill areas that gauge how well you will succeed in college study. It assesses your cumulative knowledge throughout your school years. You will take it as early as the 9th grade, which gives you time to see where you rank in performance and where you need to improve—basically how you compare to other college applicants. The other important reason to take the Preliminary SAT is that students are automatically entered into The National Merit Scholarship Program, an academic competition for recognition and scholarship awards for high scorers. Click here for more information about NationalMerit.org. The SAT is the next big step in determining your academic background by which colleges will select applicants. You can take it in your junior year and then again in senior year. Preparation is key, which you can begin by studying SAT prep guides and doing practice questions and tests. The revamped SAT is longer due to the writing test. Strong writing and language skills have never been more important to boost performance on the SAT.
You should also consider taking SAT II Subject Tests even if some colleges do not require them, because your scores will show your core competency in particular subject areas. These can help you 'show off' your achievements in these specific areas and colleges will look at these Subject Tests to learn more about your academic background.
You can take both the SAT and SAT II more than once, and colleges will generally not interpret this situation negatively but they will see all of your scores and then use your highest one. The College Board no longer offers a 'score choice' option, so any test you take officially will show on your testing record. Click here for more information about the SAT online course.
The other college-admissions exam, which competes with the College Board's SAT, is the ACT and it has seen a major increase in popularity in recent years. 1.2 million High school seniors took the test in 2006 and the scores were the highest they have ever been. The multiple-choice tests cover four skill areas: English, mathematics, reading, and science. And the writing test, which measures essay-writing skill, is optional.
You can take the test as many times as you like and you control which scores are reported to colleges or scholarship programs. You cannot combine the best scores from different test dates; you have to pick from only one exam date. Statistics show that 55% of test takers improve their scores after the first exam. Check out more details, including test dates and locations at www.actstudent.org/.
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