Taking SAT's in Grade 10

Bartleby007
Thu, 07 Nov 2013 14:03:52 +0000

Most students might benefit by waiting a little longer to take the SAT for the first time. There really isn’t a big rush to post an early score, and you might benefit from additional school work in the humanities (English, history, etc.). The SAT Critical Reading section has an emphasis on vocabulary, so students tend to perform better on that section later on in high school (junior, senior years). On the other hand, strong students usually have taken enough math (through intermediate algebra) to do well on the SAT Math section by sophomore year in high school.

That being said…
If you are a high-achieving, highly motivated sophomore, then I would recommend preparing for the SAT in your sophomore year. I’ve helped a few sophomores do this in the past…and it has turned out very well for them. They post excellent standardized test scores (SAT 2200+; ACT 34+) in their sophomore year. This frees them up to focus on school/extracurricular activities until fall of senior year when they apply to college.

FYI, many top-tier schools accept Score Choice score reporting for the SAT reasoning test. This means that a student could hide a lower score by simply not sending in that score. Johns Hopkins is OK with Score Choice score reporting. On the other hand, Stanford, Yale, and UPenn have a different position on the matter. These schools stipulate that students submitting an SAT score should turn in scores from all “sittings” for the test, i.e., the entire testing history. Schools do this so that they can see which students had the benefit of taking the test multiple times.