Feeling inadequate. SAT practice test cold?

[Roadrunner]

15 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I’d agree with the latter statement.

Makes me wonder if their English section is the same - fast but easier.

Frankly we just got started on prep (as in two days ago 😄), so maybe we should first see what comes out of this SAT. 
Our only other experience in testing was in 7th grade.

[KSera]

2 hours ago, EKS said:

Whatever you do, make sure that your student takes the practice test under standard conditions.  There is a huge difference between doing the entire thing at once and divvying up the test over a period of days.

I agree this would be important for those wanting to prep as well as possible. For people who have reasons to not put a lot of emphasis on test prep (my oldest fell in this category—she had a lot of other life anxiety going on, and adding to it with test prep would have been counterproductive), it can be perfectly okay to not do a test under standard conditions. I don’t think most people are in that category, but I wanted to put it out there for anyone stressing about the whole test prep thing. No regrets about the way we did it. I expect my next high schooler will do more prep. 

[Roadrunner]

So what is a reasonable amount of prep to do? 
I am thinking to do a little bit (30 minutes?) every week day over the summer. I wonder after how many hours we hit diminishing returns. 

[Not_a_Number]

25 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

So what is a reasonable amount of prep to do? 
I am thinking to do a little bit (30 minutes?) every week day over the summer. I wonder after how many hours we hit diminishing returns. 

I really don't know. Depends what it is you're prepping for. If you aren't doing content at all, then I'd do all prep as timed tests if that's psychologically feasible. It's a much better rate of return on investment. 

[fourisenough]

29 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

So what is a reasonable amount of prep to do? 
I am thinking to do a little bit (30 minutes?) every week day over the summer. I wonder after how many hours we hit diminishing returns. 

Last summer my DD probably spent about 5 hours per week doing test prep over the course of 8-10 weeks. Most of that time was spent doing timed practice sections and analyzing her mistakes with the help of a tutor. She raised her ACT composite about 7 points over that timeframe. Of course, it was a pandemic so she didn’t have too much else going on! She did simultaneously do driver’s education and spent a few hours a day doing ballet via zoom. 

[Lale]

I'll chime in with our experience with both tests. My oldest has taken the ACT 3 times and the SAT once a few weeks ago. Granted, I've only done this with one kid so far so ymmv. 

My kid found the time constraints for the ACT to be brutal and really struggled to get the tests done in time. He is a strong math student and a slow reader. I had read that the SAT can be good for that type of kid, so we tried a practice test. We found that the reading/grammar portions of the tests were much easier for him, but he was still struggling to get the math sections done in time. We practiced the math pretty relentlessly this past month to get him enough practice to finish it in time. I think it has paid off, because he feels that he could have gotten a perfect score on the math. We will find out soon. 🙂 We worked on the other sections as well, but not as much since he was scoring fairly well on those in practice. 

What I learned through this process is that he had really been struggling with test anxiety on test days which kept him from being able to finish in time, plus he was getting burned out on testing in general.  We started about a month in advance this time and just did a portion of the test almost every school day, and tried several full practice tests over that time under testing conditions. I think if we had done more than that, he would have revolted. I think with all of the practice that he did, he gained confidence and felt really good about his last test. Hopefully it will be the last time he has to take it!

One more thing: there is no substitute for not truly knowing the math, but we found the Scalar Learning Channel on youtube to be hugely beneficial for SAT math.

 

 

 

[EKS]

4 hours ago, KSera said:

agree this would be important for those wanting to prep as well as possible. For people who have reasons to not put a lot of emphasis on test prep (my oldest fell in this category—she had a lot of other life anxiety going on, and adding to it with test prep would have been counterproductive), it can be perfectly okay to not do a test under standard conditions.

This is true, but if you're trying to understand how the student is going to do on test day on one exam or the other, part of what is important is doing it all at once.  For example, there is much less time per question on the ACT.  Can the student maintain that pace for the whole test without the quality of their answers going down?

[KSera]

31 minutes ago, EKS said:

This is true, but if you're trying to understand how the student is going to do on test day on one exam or the other, part of what is important is doing it all at once.  For example, there is much less time per question on the ACT.  Can the student maintain that pace for the whole test without the quality of their answers going down?

Right. I agree with you that’s best.

Edited May 19, 2021 by KSera
Deleted tmi

[Roadrunner]

How much easier is PSAT than SAT?

I am asking because there are some PSAT tests available for practice, but I wonder if they are worth using (if they are much easier).