Student's performance on SAT or ACT exams can be essential to their college prospects. How to survie the STRESS TEST
The alarm clock rang at 6:30 a.m. Antonio Ortega dragged himself out of bed, knowing today was the day. It was April 14, ACT test day, and students all over the United States were waking up stressed, excited and bleary-eyed. Some had spent weeks studying, others had decided to wing it as best they could. The day promised to be just the right mix of tragedy, chaos and mind-numbing antics. Aedan Polly forgot his calculator. Finn Miller overslept. Rose Moon tried to eat sushi for breakfast. But Ortega, a junior at New Mexico School for the Arts, actually felt pretty good. As soon as he walked into the Pecos test center, though, the nerves hit. “It felt pretty intense,” Ortega said.
His reaction is shared by many when it comes to taking exams that may determine their collegiate future, but it is possible to survive the tests, regardless of the outcomes, teens say. And those who have taken either the ATC or SAT test shared advice with Generation Next on how to deal with all the stress.
Theo Goujon, a Santa Fe High School senior, has had his heart set on McGill University in Montreal since he was a sophomore. He waited to take either the ACT or SAT exam until the summer before his senior year — but that’s a strategy he does not recommend. “Not taking the test my junior year was a mistake on my end,” he said. “You should take it your junior year because that way you have your scores early, you can improve on them if you want, and it takes off a bit of the stress senior year.”
Goujon, who took the SAT three times (but never the ACT), went into his first test tired, unprepared and doubtful. “I just had this pit of dread in my stomach,” he said. And he was not satisfied with his scores, which were lower than the average score of his dream school. So, he took it again, and this time he studied. “Over the summer, I spent four to five hours a week studying on the online Khan Academy,” Goujon recalls. “It was still annoying that I had to [study], but eventually I kind of started enjoying the rhythm of it, and it was fun watching my practice test scores go up.”
Kathy Rappaport, who, along with her husband, Josh, runs Singing Turtle Tutoring in Santa Fe, agrees that the best way to prepare is to take a lot of practice tests, as well as a prep class or private tutoring, if possible. She also suggests choosing either the SAT or the ACT to focus on, not both. “Colleges accept either test, so it’s important to pick the one that best highlights your academic strengths, and then focus on preparingforthatonealone,”KathyRappaportsaid. “If you take the PSAT junior year, this will be a good indicator of how you will do on the SAT. Then you can take a practice ACT or an official ACT and compare results. The two tests are significantly different, so it’s less stressful and more productive to focus on preparing for just one of them.”
The main differences between the ACT and SAT, Rappaport said, are that the essay prompts are completely different and the reading on the ACT more time-constrained — but the questions more straightforward — than on the SAT. The ACT also includes the dreaded science section, which, contrary to common belief, is more of a reading test, she said.
Josh Rappaport, who mostly tutors math, added that the ACT is more geometry based, while the SAT focuses on data analysis and probability. “So if you love the Pythagorean theorem, circles and triangles, the ACT is your math test. If you love looking at graphs, charts and tables, the SAT’s math test will be more to your liking,” he said.
Once you decide which test to focus on, the studying begins. It can be really difficult to work it into your schedule, though. Goujon, who found time to study over the summer, aided by consistent — “sometimes annoying, but in the end really helpful” — reminders from his mom, agreed that the tests become too big a deal. “Personally, I’m against standardized testing because it puts extra stress on students who already have to deal with schoolwork, social life and extracurricular activities,” he said. “But we do live in a world where most colleges require either one or the other test, so it is necessary to make it happen.”
But just because the tests are necessary doesn’t mean they’re the best way of measuring a student’s intelligence and aptitude.
“I think grades are more a result of how much effort you put in, and I think that’s a better way of judging someone’s intelligence than a test on whether you know how to take a test,” Ortega said. But, he added, “It’s not as if my whole future depends on it. Whatever happens, I’ll make it work.”
Goujon agreed. And he said because of the time and effort he put into studying, he eventually received a satisfactory score on his SAT and will be heading off to Canada in the fall. His advice: “Find out what works for you in terms of prep and taking the test.”
Ortega said that in the end, “Just do your best, that’s all you can do.”