Acing a big test

It’s a rite of passage for college-bound 16- and 17-year olds: Getting up early on a Saturday morning for the SAT, often at a school not your own. But for too many kids whose parents didn’t go college, for too long, the prospect of taking the test has been intimidating and foreign. So excellent going by Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña and Mayor de Blasio for signing up, and paying for, just about every 11th grader to take it. To encourage participation, they also added a new test-taking day, during school hours, at kids’ own schools.

The plan, dubbed SAT School Day, worked. Fantastically. More than 56,000 kids bubbled in answers on that Wednesday alone last April.

Overall, SAT participation rates among all groups soared. Among black kids, from 47% to 75%. Among Hispanic kids, from 45% to 73%. Among white kids, from 61% to 83%, and among Asian kids, from 73% to 89%. Those are stunning increases for a single year. New York City kids can still take the SAT on regular weekend sittings; each year, there are seven of them on Saturdays. The fee is $46 (or $60 with the optional essay). But now there’s an eighth day, with the tab picked up by the school system (paying a discounted $36 a head).

This year’s SAT School Day for juniors is Wednesday, March 21. Our advice: Get a full night’s sleep on March 20, eat a healthy breakfast and pack a few extra No. 2 pencils.

That may not guarantee a good score, but the first step to getting into college is taking the test.