It’s no secret that if you want to do well on a standardized test, such as the ACT, SAT, or ISEE, you’ve got to prepare for it. Standard procedure is to keep doing practice tests and problems until you’ve maximized your score. Then, when you take the real test, the hope is that you’ll match or exceed this score. But there’s one additional factor that needs to be taken into account–the test environment. 

When you take practice tests, the environment is usually quite friendly. It might be your kitchen table or your desk or a classroom at a test prep company. But when you take the real test, it’s obviously different. Test anxiety, illness, distractions and other unforeseen events come into play that might cause your real score to be less than your practice score. This means that to do your very best on the day of the test, you’ve got to be mentally prepared–or, as some people say, you got to be in the zone. 

Fortunately, there’s a way to mentally prepare, one that might surprise you. The secret is to draw upon the concentration skills you use while engaging in some of your favorite activities. You might compete in sports or play a musical instrument or take part in dance or theater performances. You might like to solve rubik's cubes or play chess or win at video games. You might love to climb rocks or to surf or to fish for trout in a swift-flowing mountain stream. Whatever the activity, if you want to do well at it, then you’ve got to give it your full concentration. 

Take acting, for example. Once the play begins, you can’t allow anything to break your concentration. If a sound cue fails, you keep going. If your fellow actor forgets a line, you cover for him. If someone in the audience has a sneezing fit, you put it out of your mind. Whatever happens, you don’t allow it to affect your performance. 

Or soccer. If someone trips you or elbows you in the ribs, you shake it off and keep on going. If you try for a goal and miss, you keep on trying. If some of the spectators are heckling you, you completely ignore them. Whatever happens, you won’t let it affect your game. 

What can I say about rock climbing? You’ve got to stay completely focused on what you’re doing or the consequences might be painful. 

You can see where I’m going with this. If you stay completely focused during the test, in the same way that you stay focused while you’re doing the things you love, you’ll maximize your score. The trick is to think of a way to shift this focus to the test. This will require some creativity on your part. For instance, if you play sports, you might see each question as part of the game. If it’s baseball, then transform each question into a pitch. If it’s soccer, the question is the opposing player, the one you want to beat. If you’re a performer, you might imagine yourself as a participant in a quiz show or in a movie about a math genius (as in the Academy Award winning movie Good Will Hunting). If you’re a video gamer, then you might imagine the questions as obstacles you’ve got to overcome. Yes, it will take a bit of creativity on your part to make the connection–but make it. Only you can do it. 

I can’t stress enough the importance of this technique. I know that it works because I’ve seen the results. I can’t tell you what’s going on in the students’ minds when they use it, but their scores go up, sometimes dramatically. They’re in the zone, and nothing’s going to take them out of it, including, but not limited to, some of the annoyances they’ve reported popping up during the test. Just for fun, I’ll list a few. 

• A car alarm that keeps going off in the parking lot.

• A nearby street crew fixing the street with a jackhammer.

• A room that’s freezing cold.

• A room that’s boiling hot.

• A desk with a top that keeps rocking back and forth.

• A proctor who keeps clicking away on her computer keyboard.

• A test taker who keeps clicking away on his pencil.

• A test taker that keeps sneezing and coughing,

• A golden retriever that wanders into the room (just kidding–I made this one up).

• And on and on . . .

As one student said, it’s all about attitude. If you bring a winning attitude with you to the test, then you’ll do your best.

SAT versus ACT

How To Decide Which Test Is The Best For You

That’s an excellent question, which needs to be answered before you commit to either test. The questions on the ACT math test cover a wider area than those on the SAT math test and tend to go into less depth. The SAT math questions go deeper, the difficult questions tending to be similar to the “challenge,” or “extra credit” problems you might have seen on your math tests. The time constraints on the math section of the ACT are tighter than the SAT. On the math section of the ACT you have 50 minutes to answer 45 questions. On the SAT you have 70 minutes to answer 44 questions, which are split into 2 modules of 22 questions each. Unlike the ACT, the SAT math test is adaptive, meaning that the difficulty level of subsequent questions depends on how well you are performing on the test. The ACT has an optional science section (the SAT does not) consisting of 40 questions that must be answered in 40 minutes. The science test is not an achievement test, but rather tests your reasoning skills in sciene. The best way to understand this is to take a look at an actual ACT science test that was given in the past. Here’s a link to a full ACT test that you can review. The science section is the last one—Section 4.

Now to the nitty-gritty. If you don’t have a College Board Account, you’ll want to set one up, take a Blue Book test under timed conditions, and score it. You may also have taken the PSAT once or twice, so look up those scores and compare them to your SAT score. Next, you’ll want to take a full ACT practice test under timed conditions, and score it. Here’s a link to a full ACT practice test. It’s important to be totally serious when you’re taking these practice tests. Take them all at once, not in parts, and with no interruptions. Now that you have the two scores, you’ll need to see how they compare. To do this, you’ll need to use the ACT/SAT Concordance Chart.

Once you’ve compared the scores, you’re in a position to make an informed decision. To help you a bit with the process, I’ll give you a few real world examples. A student of mine scored a 610 on her SAT math practice test. On her ACT, she scored a 35 in science and a 27 in math, which is about equivalent to an SAT score of 710—100 points higher. Since then she’s raised her math to a 31, and she’s only just begun. Choice: ACT. Another student scored a 23 on ACT science, and a 22 on ACT math. When he took the SAT math practice test, he scored a 580. Since this was slightly better, and since he absolutely hated the ACT, he decided to stick with the SAT, on which he eventually scored a 740. Choice: SAT. A third student had ACT and SAT scores that were about equivalent. After talking strategy with him, he decided to go with the SAT, as he would only have to focus on math, since there’s no science section on the SAT. He ended up with a 760. Choice: SAT. His sister decided to do the same and is scoring in the high 700s on practice tests. Choice: SAT

If you’ve done the above and you’re still struggling with your decision, feel free to give me a shout. I’ll be more than happy to help.