James, our student from the story in the first post in this series, came to us in October of his senior year, hoping to do some preparation for the November or December SAT. While Fall of senior year is a popular time to prepare for the SATs, it’s the wrong time. James had his college applications due, his rigorous senior year workload, and a pretty bad case of early-onset “senioritis.” If everything had gone his way, James may have squeaked through with his preparation to get the scores he needed. Rarely, though, does it work out so well.

So when is the best time to prepare? When should James have begun? I, along with many other professionals in the field, believe that all students should start thinking about SATs no earlier than the summer after their sophomore year and no later than October of their Junior year. Notice I said thinking about, not preparing.

Here is what James should ideally have done. A week after his sophomore year James should have begun planning his preparation for the SATs with a full-length, college-board-issued diagnostic test. Though some students take the PSAT in 10th grade, it’s often not a good indicator and students should take another full-length diagnostic to see where they score. Using this score and comparing it to the average SAT scores at a variety of colleges that he may have been interested in, James would see how much of a score increase he truly required. If the increase was drastic, or the subject material on the test extremely unfamiliar or daunting, James may have chosen to begin preparation in his sophomore summer, culminating in his first real test in October of his junior year.

This method of summer prep is great as it would have given James a fair amount of time to focus uninterrupted on test preparation, and plenty of time to work toward a higher score after October of his junior year if he needed it. If James did reach his target score on his first test in October of his Junior year (as many students do, especially with the help of a tutor), he would have removed the burden of the SAT and thus would have given himself more time to focus on other junior year activities.

However, let’s say that a student already has sophomore summer plans and does not have time to prepare for the SAT, OR that the student is already scoring near their target and wants to do something else with his/her time over summer. In this case, the student should set up a plan for studying during fall, and then begin SAT studying concurrent with the start of Fall classes. This is sometimes more difficult for athletes or those with heavy junior year course/extracurricular loads, but sometimes preferable as the SAT becomes integrated with the rest of the work a student has to do. In this case, students should prepare less per week (I’ll discuss how much later in this series), but for a longer duration, culminating in a February, March, or April test date. May and June test dates should be left open for SAT IIs, and for last-ditch efforts at raising an SAT score from previous dates. In no circumstances should students be taking their first SAT in or after June of their junior year.

The benefits of starting early are profound: less stress during junior year, more potential test-dates, more time to prepare rather than cramming, and, most importantly, getting the SAT out of the way by the end of junior year to make time and mental space for college applications.

However, going back to James: even if he had begun preparing for his SAT during the summer after his sophomore year, he would not have reached his standardized test potential. As I mentioned earlier, James should have taken the ACT instead. In the next post, I’ll tell you why the ACT is a better test for SOME students (not all, by any means), and how you can tell yourself which test you should take.