The SAT is king on both coasts, as well as Texas. The midwest is heavily ACT country. However, all four year colleges now accept either test, so go with whichever is better! I am pushing all of my students toward the ACT this year, and probably next, because the new SAT is such a moving target. And, there's next to no official practice materials available for the new test. Just go ACT and save yourself some grief!

Try Davitily. It can generate a lot of different types of problems, and it's very reasonably priced.

I'm a tutor, and I'd recommend Richard Corn's ACT Math book. The geometry review hits all the facts with appropriate questions for practicing concepts. However, this book assumes a certain level of competence with the subject. If she needs a bit more hand holding, Princeton Review's Math Smart book is good for math basics. Hope that helps!

@Himhimthem - Feel free to PM me. Putting together accommodations documentation/appeals is part of my business, and I can give you a few pointers. I'm actually in the process of writing an ebook on accommodations, and I'd love to have some input on the experiences of home school families, too. Hope to hear from you!

Bubbling errors are SO common. The SAT does kids a disservice by having ABCDE for all questions rather than ABCD and FGHJ like ACT. It's a really good idea with the SAT to initially mark your answers in the test booklet, then bubble them in a page at a time. That will save you a lot of grief!

I'm an alumni interviewer for my top 10 alma mater. I do it for fun, and because I'm an active volunteer with my local alumni group. I usually do five interviews a year, and average one acceptance every other year (which about matches acceptance rates overall). I like most of the kids I interview, and I feel most would be able to handle the academic demands. Of course, admissions is just tough, and plenty of perfectly qualified students are rejected every year. I will say that I have never had a student accepted who earned a low rating from me. We don't have access to grades/scores, and we are specifically prohibited from asking about them, so I have no idea if that's a function of just being unqualified or if a poor interview rating really does have an impact. I suspect a bad interview may hurt you, as suggested above, but a good one won't necessarily help you.

There are a LOT of literary devices you need to know for the Lit test, so I definitely recommend grabbing a review book if you decide to go that route (I personally like the McGraw-Hill series of Subject Test books...hard enough but not too hard!). That being said, Lit is definitely the one that requires the least content knowledge. If you're strong in reading comp and know your terms, it's not as hard as some of the others. I'd also recommend she choose to do it last. It's the "easiest" of the ones on your list, so save it for the time when her brain is a little fried :) If you do decide to do the Physics, be sure she tries a practice test under timed conditions. I've heard that it can be pretty challenging to get through it on time.

Question...is he a coffee drinker (or other caffeine user)? Just about every un-medicated ADHD student I've ever worked with has been a hardcore caffeine junkie. Why? Because it's a stimulant, just like most ADHD meds! It's no coincidence that ADHD kids, and adults for that matter, essentially self-medicate with it. If that applies to your son, use it as an argument :) The other approach I've used - which you may have already tried - is to compare it to someone that needs glasses to be able to read. Would he think that that person is somehow "less" because her eyes don't see all that well? Nope, right? Would he think less of a diabetic using insulin? Or an injured athlete needing crutches? So why does he apply different rules to himself? It's totally illogical. Some people just need meds to function at their best. And the great thing is that nobody will know he's taking meds unless he chooses to tell them. It's easy to "hide," so he only needs to tell people he wants to know. Good luck!

The SAT QAS and ACT TIR services do send you a copy of the actual test questions, but not the actual booklet you used. For the other test dates, you can get a copy of your answers and which ones you got wrong, but no test questions. Both tests recycle questions so they don't release the full test on all dates.

April and June are the other months that the ACT Test Information Release is available. Here's the order form: http://www.act.org/aap/pdf/release.pdf Annoyingly, they won't let you mail the form until after the test! It can take six weeks for the test and answers to arrive, often later than the next test date. Grrr...

For kids that hate the vocab (and drag their feet at doing the work on it) the ACT is a far better option. If he hasn't tried it, he should try a practice test. BUT, if he's already tried the ACT and decided the SAT is his test, then studying vocab will be necessary to see movement in his score. There are some good websites out there, and the recommendation of the Direct Hits books is a good one. They key is to find a resource that links words to things he already knows. Sitting down and attempting to memorize a list of words won't get you anywhere since you're making your brain work twice as hard to try to remember words. Whether it's associating to similar words, or learning vocab in context of reading passages, you need to find an approach that allows you to link new words to known ones. And Erica's book is fantastic, so if you think he needs more than just vocab prep I second that recommendation. Elizabeth King's Outsmarting the SAT is also a great one.

I've always worked from the premise that more than three looks desperate (and by that three, I mean three taken in sophomore year or later...earlier attempts don't count toward that total since they can't be considered "serious" attempts for most students). Also, in a practical sense, a student is very unlikely to improve his/her score after the third try. I realize this isn't completely on topic, but I am utterly flummoxed by the trend I see with students taking the SAT/ACT completely unprepared to get a "baseline." I can't see any point in that. That's what official practice tests are for! I have a current student who took the June ACT with zero prep, and she was shocked her score was so much lower than she expected. At least she's ready now and took the test yesterday :) But she's applying to schools that require all scores, and it's not good that she'll have to report that low score (which could have been totally avoided). The take home is that any time you take it for real (soph or later), make sure it's a serious try at it. If you want a baseline, do a practice test!

It's irrelevant as far as the scoring goes whether the test is "easier" or not. The scaling takes relative differences in test difficulty into account. If you look at the scoring info for the different tests in the red book (or across any official ACT tests), you'll see that the raw scores that equate to scaled scores are different for each test. A relatively easy test can actually make it harder to score higher scores since everyone else is getting more questions right, too. I hate being a downer, and I do think that an easier test can improve confidence so students feel better about attacking the more difficult questions. Will keep my fingers crossed for him/her! I had a bunch of students take it today, and haven't heard back from any of them yet about what they thought. I hate waiting :)

Try looking for a private educational diagnostician in your area for getting a diagnosis. As far as accommodations on the SAT and ACT go, if he has a dysgraphia diagnosis, he can request the use of a computer to type his essay, or request a scribe who will essentially take dictation (most find the computer option easier). That type of accommodation can be completely separate from extended time, so no need to extend the test if he doesn't need that. I'd absolutely recommend sending in a writing sample with his application. That's often very convincing evidence for the test companies. Hope that helps!

Assuming you're testing with standard time, there is a 15 minute break between Math and Reading, and a 5 minute break between Science and the Essay (if you're taking it). Hope that helps!

I'm a tutor, and I can't resist chiming in here about the ACT Science. The critical point to remember is that the Science test isn't really a SCIENCE test. It's a test of how well you can read tables/graphs/charts and how well you've grasped the scientific method. You don't have to understand all the weird terms they throw in there to score very high (and even better, you should be avoiding doing any actual reading of the passages)! There are at most two questions per test that require actual science knowledge (i.e. the fact that heat rises, the order of the planets - just to name a couple of examples). Science-phobes usually feel much better about the test when they hear that :) The hardest parts of the test are the breakneck pacing and the weirdly drawn graphs they throw in, but those can be prepped for.

While the ACT's math section does include higher level math than the SAT, it doesn't mean that the math questions are really harder. Yes, there's trig, but 80% of the trig questions are straight SOHCAHTOA, which a bright, motivated student can learn very quickly. Logarithms are also "advanced," but in practice are very easy for purposes of the ACT. If she's had Algebra I and Geometry, that's enough for the SAT. Best of luck to her!

I think the calculator folks are the ones who also advocate the "why memorize when you have Google" approach to education. Sorry, but Google doesn't help if you don't know what questions to ask it! Having knowledge IN your head makes you able to both learn more and solve problems efficiently. Sure you don't want to run your own classes? :)

I'm an SAT/ACT tutor who specializes in working with LD kids. I have a student now who CANNOT solve problems without his calculator even when a) it's faster and easier to just do the math and b) the answer choices on the ACT appear in fractions/radicals/exponents and all of his answers are in decimals. I am having to undo a lot of things he's learned at school, and I'm having to ask him to do fractions worksheets since he has no recollection of how to work with them. Grrr.... It's all done him such a disservice. It makes me angry on his behalf!

I'm going to be pushing all of my students to the ACT. There won't be much in the way of prep materials available for the new SAT, so I'd rather go with the known quantity. And really, the new SAT is likely to be very similar to the ACT, so if a student opts to try the SAT, any ACT prep we've already done may help! The vast majority of my students prefer the ACT anyway, so it's fine with me :)

There is some research out there on using different fonts and/or increasing the spacing between letters and lines to improve reading speed and decoding. Hope you'll let us know what they come up with!

I wasn't sure if it would be frowned upon (which is why I didn't link them to start with), but you can find them on my website, along with several free official SAT's. The link is here: http://satprepforadhd.com/resources.html I have all of my students download them, so finally decided to just load them all on my site to make that easier! But they're available to everyone who wants them, so please help yourself.

Just a quick comment on using the Real ACT Prep Guide for practice...it is a wonderful resource and a must for any student planning on taking the ACT. BUT, the tests in it are ancient and the Math and Science tests are easier than current tests. It happens all the time with my students that they knock it out of the park on the book tests, but their Math scores on the real thing are lower than we expected. There are four more recent freely available ACT's for download if you hunt for them online that are a better representation of what to expect these days. Hope that helps!

I'm new around here, so hope you don't mind if I jump in! Practicing the harder questions is just fine for last minute practice, but since you're looking at the big picture, it's important he do all the easy ones, too. First, the "easy" questions can sometimes stump strong math students simply because they can reference concepts from pre-algebra/middle school math. Doing the easy ones gives you a chance to brush up on any terms you may have forgotten (things like "least common multiple"). Second , the easy ones allow practice and review of concepts that are tested on the difficult questions, too. On the ACT, and the SAT in particular, the hard questions are often just multiple steps using simple concepts. Every practice question he does is an opportunity to learn something. And I ditto katilac that preparing for the timing is critical, too. The ACT in particular is a test of speed, so it helps when you are so ready for the easy questions that they become automatic. Hope that helps!