<p>I agree. I don’t think it’s necessary to do formal prep. Practice tests are good, either the free ones … or a real SAT that can be retaken if the student feels she needs to boost that score. Your D sounds pretty darn intelligent … she seems capable of knowing what’s best for her.</p>
<p>Scanned the posts. The best prep is to do well in school. Don’t have her bother with more than doing a free practice test. We barely got son to that, he did extremely well. Students like your D are best off using their time to learn as they always have.</p>
<p>My boys did nothing but get a good night’s sleep; never saw an SAT except for the fact that they had taken the PSAT every year in HS (req’d and administered at school). One got a perfect score, one got one question wrong. If they’ve got it, they’ve got it, and based on previous socres, it sounds like she’s got it. Sometimes the more they prep, the more they second guess themselves and the worse they do. By comparison, my D was helped alot by attending a not-for-profit quick review course offered at her HS and just going over her PSAT answers to see where she needed to improve. It really depends on the child and they generally know themselves best.</p>
<p>Ditto sewbusy’s response. </p>
<p>This girl has shown she has the stuff to get top scores, so she should make sure she knows what’s coming on the PSAT before she takes it in October, but she probably doesn’t need to do much. </p>
<p>Then she should use some time during the fall and winter holidays to try taking one or two real SATs, timed, and see how she does on the different sections. By the December holidays she’ll have her PSAT scores for guidance, too. But part of what makes the SAT and ACT tests difficult is their length, so I differ with xiggi (can’t believe I just wrote that) on the importance of doing one or two practice tests under real world timing conditions. Most high schoolers are not used to exams that last so long and need to get used that.</p>
<p>She should take both SAT subject tests right before the APs in the same subjects in May. Those tests are much shorter and easier than the APs and cover the same subjects and are prepared by the same organization. She’ll be ready.</p>
<p>Skip the early SAT I you are planning for her and let her focus on her subjects during the middle of the school year. Every month represents real intellectual growth in these years, especially for a student taking challenging classes, and ultimately the comprehensive test scores will show that. </p>
<p>She should have more time, energy and concentration for test prep after she’s gotten past the APs in early May. She can take the SAT I in June as school is either finished or winding down. She can take the ACT again at the point, too, if she wants. She will probably see her scores improve enough that it will make this approach worthwhile. </p>
<p>The downside of this approach is that you won’t know until summer just how good her scores will be and that makes it harder to think about colleges.</p>
<p>Count me in among those who think that your D doesn’t need to do a lot of prep. </p>
<p>She sounds a lot like my S, who is very much an intellectual, and he never really prepped for any standardized tests, nevertheless scoring over 230 on the PSAT and 2310 on the SAT. He scored 780/760/730 on SATIIs, with prep ranging from none on one to a few hours on the third. I would say that he did do a few hours of prep for some of the APs he took, and none for others (six 5s, one 4, one 3/4).</p>
<p>I do think that it is worthwhile to run through a couple of practice tests (without doing the essay, of course!) in order to be familiar with the types of questions and the format.</p>
<p>One caution is that there is not necessarily a correlation between the subject matter on the SATIIs and the AP tests. Your D only needs one more, though, and obviously has prepping for those down pat, so it shouldn’t be an issue for her. </p>
<p>I would disagree with above poster, though, suggesting instead that she take the SATI in May and her remaining SATII in June, after she has completed an additional month of the relevant class and the AP test prep.</p>
<p>If she’s not happy with her SATI, she can always retake it in October.</p>
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<p>Good caution, Consolation. There were major sections that were on the biology SAT 2 that hadn’t been covered in the biology courses taken by D. Biology at our high school is a THREE year course! Best to check a SAT 2 prep book to see where some backing and filling might be required.</p>
<p>You can go to the College Board website to see what areas are covered in an SAT II versus the AP for the subject and determine if the school’s AP course has skipped something important, but there really is substantial overlap between most tests.</p>
<p>I stand by my advice to consider scheduling the SAT I and/or ACT in June after most of the school/AP season is done. You have to be well-rested and focused to do well on such a long and comprehensive exam. A student who is taking challenging courses should be focused on learning during the school year and that is stressful enough. </p>
<p>Son, a senior, and I worked out his testing schedule early in high school, before he knew how much tougher school gets as you take more honors courses, but he thinks it worked well. It’s not even October yet and he is already regularly operating on a sleep deficit from his heavy schedule. He was much more relaxed and better rested after he got his APs and finals out of the way last May and he thinks that helped his June test scores. He wanted to do well enough in June that he wouldn’t ever have to take them again. And he did.</p>
<p>Our 3 kids were done with all standardized tests in the spring of their junior year (no need for retakes helped…), and it was really nice not to worry about them in the fall of the senior year, which was stressful enough without them.</p>