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1. Don't Trust Results from Third Party Tests

There are countless third party practice books for the ACT and SAT by companies like Barron's, Princeton Review, Kaplan, and many others, and students/parents frequently ask me which one is best. The answer is that these resources are really only useful for practicing objective skills, like grammar and mechanics for verbal sections or algebraic/geometric formulas. Their practice tests aren't normed (so the questions are sometimes weird) and are not predictive of a student's results on the real thing. Anecdotally, a student of mine told me his friend went into the Digital SAT feeling very confident after scoring over 1500 on his last Princeton Review test; he scored in the 1100s on the College Board version.

2. Use Official Tests SPARINGLY

If you shouldn't trust third party tests, the natural conclusion is to practice with materials written by the College Board (Bluebook and Khan Academy) or the ACT (the "red book"). That's true, but it's very important to note that the official materials are limited, so make a plan about how and when to use them. Students should save at least 2 full practice tests for the lead up to an official test, and since almost all students will retest, 3 or 4 is ideal.

3. Avoid Using AI for Help

In a recent session, a student told me he was unable to solve a math problem from his homework but that ChatGPT told him the answer was C, so he just asked me to explain why. Of the few things about this interaction that were troubling, the worst was that the right answer actually wasn't C. Not only can AI-generated answers not be trusted to be perfect, but also when they are correct they may provide students with mistakes in logic or simply poor methods to arrive at the right answer. Some students also use AI tools to generate practice material, but without those materials being vetted by experts, they can't be trusted to be either accurate or representative of the real test.

4. Be Skeptical About Tips from Social Media/Youtube

There's a lot of great test prep advice online...and also a lot of terrible advice. A quick search on Tiktok for "Best SAT Hacks" yielded three top videos: one about breathing methods to relieve testing anxiety (decent advice, but really depends on the individual); one about answer types that are "always right" on Standard English Conventions (poor advice, as there are counterexamples on real tests that show these aren't "always right"); and one about running regression analysis in DESMOS to solve an admittedly challenging quadratic (terrible advice--the method is far more complicated than solving algebraically or using DESMOS in a different way!). Again, students need to make sure the information is coming from trusted sources and applies to them personally rather than just being blanket advice.

5. Build Habits, Not Just Knowledge

Parents and students often ask "What's everything we need to know for the SAT/ACT?" It's important to remember that tests can't measure what you know--they can only measure what you do. That means that even if you've been exposed to all the content you see, you might miss questions because you misread them, got distracted, second-guessed yourself, ran out of time, or relied on biased reasoning. To get better at a test, it's not enough to just review what you missed and see what the right answer is; you have to make objective determinations of WHY you missed a given question and install/practice habits to limit such errors in the future.