SAT or ACT? Which is better for ADHD kids?

nyermom
Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:42:52 +0000

No research from us…just anecdotal. My D13 has mandated accommodations (thanks to an extensive neuro-psych evaluation). She gets time and a half. On her PSAT, she had the extra time, but no medication–and scored 155. While having the extra time helped, she also ran out of stamina. We had been expecting a better score. We had her do 8 weeks of a small group a prep class plus a private tutor (most kids in her mainstream private school do the same). We found that the tutor could really focus in on those areas of difficulty…as well as call her out on losing focus from time to time. By the time she did her first practice test (with accom. & medications), she was scoring over 1,800. Her first SAT was a 1950 and her second was 2050. I think having the experience of a real test helped because the setting was nothing like the practice tests. We also opted for a smaller test site the second time around which helped.

For her, it was the combination of all of the above which sealed the deal. She really needed to have a strong score on some kind of test, because her GPA was really low (she wasn’t diagnosed until sophomore year). We considered taking the ACT but felt her lack of math would really hurt (she’d only finished algebra by end of junior year). She also felt the number of sections on the ACT would work against her–even with the extra time.

I do know another ADHD kid who didn’t do so well on the SAT but got a perfect score on the ACT. My feeling is that the ACT works for those kids who are “linear thinkers”. It’s a more straight-forward test. If the student has covered all the subject areas, like trig, it’s worth taking. My D is clearly right-brained and the “flexible thinking” of the SAT worked for her.

If your LD kid gets accommodations at school, be sure to start the process of applying for accommodations early. It can take a few months and there are pretty strict requirements for documentation. If you have a choice of test centers, pick the smallest one available. We had a very chaotic first test, with a 1,000+ kids filing into a building (plus a proctor who couldn’t tell time!). The second time, there were only a few hundred kids and things progressed much more smoothly. If your child needs medication, avoid taking the medication too early–it can take more than 90 minutes for them to get into their seat (depending on the test center) and then it’s another 5 hours of testing.