With Harvard and Caltech joining the ranks of selective colleges and universities requiring a standardized test once again as part of the 2024-25 application cycle, MyGuru is more than comfortable asserting that all high schoolers planning to attend college should once again plan to take either the ACT or SAT. While many applicants will see this as a negative (who wants to take a test on a weekend, right!?), this return to standardized testing requirements has been supported by each of the institutions reinstating the exams with data illustrating that test optional policies have actually harmed the at-risk and lower income students that they purportedly were intended to help.
COllege Admissions News and ACT / SAT Strategy
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Posts about ACT prep:
How to Improve your SAT Score (or ACT Score) Through Deliberate Practice
If you really want to get a high SAT score, perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is that “talent” or “IQ” matters far less than you think. There are not really “math people” or “natural readers.” What matters is the amount and quality of your SAT prep, which of course is influenced in large part by how passionate and genuinely interested you are in doing well on the SAT or ACT. So if you want to get a 99th percentile SAT score or a 34 on the ACT, it’s possible that you can do it.
The Best Way to Prepare for the ACT or SAT Might Surprise - and Calm - You
What is the best way to prepare for the ACT or SAT?
Well, it’s true arriving at a useful answer to this question does depend a lot on your timing and the context. If you are a junior with average grades, but aspire to get a high SAT score, and you take the SAT in 30 days, this article should be able to help adopt the right mindset and bring some calm and confidence to exam day. But practically, with only 30 days until the exam, you should be considering online SAT tutoring or an SAT crash course to get the best SAT score you possibly can. SAT tutoring and courses can and will help you get a higher score.
Exploring SAT Tutoring Rates: Is SAT Help from a Private Tutor Worth It?
Since we are an SAT tutoring company, you might expect us to argue that hiring an SAT coach is almost always worth it. But we don’t believe that to be true.
Early College Planning: What Matters and How to Get Started
Parents of high schoolers frequently ask me when the best time is to begin planning for college. My answer is usually “now!” which often, and more importantly, leads to talking about “how.”
SAT Review Series: Reading Comprehension
In the first post of our SAT review video series, we approach working through a standard reading comprehension question.
The SAT reading comprehension section can often be a time crunch for many students. This video demonstrates a systematic approach to quickly reading and analyzing a passage in order to answer questions.