<p>My son has won a free ACT Princeton Review class through our local Rotary Organization. He’s a junior and a good student. His PSAT score was 190, which is good, but with room for improvement. The classes will conflict with a number of other events, school and sports and other. They are on 8 Saturdays. I’ve had one parent tell me the class helped her child increase his score quite a bit. Another said it was a waste of time and thought a good book on ACT/SAT tips would suffice. Any opinions here?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>If your son has a high level of self-discipline and you expect that he would self-study effectively and you are committed to monitoring his progress, then having him work through study guides can produce good results. Often the SAT/ACT study classes are effective mostly because they enforce the necessary study discipline, and because they set the stage for ongoing self-driven study.</p>
<p>My experience is that many teenagers, despite the best of intentions, are not sufficiently motivated in a self-study situation such as that required for the SAT/ACT. Your son may be the exception.</p>
<p>By the way, there’s more to self-study than memorizing SAT/ACT tips. It’s a major project that is not at all like “cramming” for an exam.</p>
<p>Don’t know if anyone’s still interested, but my son took the Princeton Review class and it didn’t do much for his score. He went up a point on the practice test they took at the end of the class. Then he studied for the test on his own with a review book. He increased his score 5 points. So taking practice tests in the Princeton review book helped quite a bit. The class, not so much.</p>