According to the College Board, which is the creator of the SAT, as little as 6-8 hours of personalized SAT preparation can lead to an average increase of 90 points on the test. Yes, preparing for the SAT makes a statistical difference. Those who prepare for the exam score better, according to the industry. Many SAT preparation courses also offer guaranteed improvement to students who use their preparation materials.
Many companies or private advisors will tell you that your SAT preparation courses will result in improvements of 100 points or more in your score. However, the reality is much less impressive. While test preparation courses will improve your SAT or ACT score, improvements are usually minimal. Most of the statistics that claim that scores have increased a lot are carried out by mentoring agencies looking to improve their reputation and attract customers.
Many of those results are exaggerated and promise to increase test scores by hundreds of points. The most likely result for improvement is closer to an additional 30 points on the SAT and one or two points on the ACT. The College Board reports that 55 percent of junior high school students improved their scores by taking the test again as students. The average score improvement of all students who retook the SAT was 40 points.
About 4 percent of test retakes resulted in increases of 100 points or more in critical reading or math scores. There were declines in subsequent test attempts for 35 percent of students, while 10 percent experienced no change in their grades. If you don't have 20 hours to practice, don't worry. Shorter time periods also correlate with significant score gains.
Six hours of study on the official practice of the SAT is associated with an average increase of 90 points in a small bump. Here are the potential benefits and drawbacks of test preparation courses, along with tips for navigating the college application process amid ongoing coronavirus concerns. Even more than improving test scores, test-taking strategies are one of the most valuable things that SAT and ACT preparation courses can teach you. For example, children who enroll in exam preparation courses and remain enrolled until the end are likely to be very different in many ways from children who do not.
This is one of the most attractive statements made by the organizers of the exam preparation and something that makes the preparation for the exam seem very valuable. Preparatory courses aren't cheap, and it's important that you know exactly how they can help (or hurt) you during the college admissions process, as well as how to weigh their value against current changes in the application process.
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