Standardized tests
Most colleges require that students take the SAT or the ACT.
Scores on these exams have a very significant impact on college admissions prospects. Princeton University's admissions department reports that students who score between 2300 and 2400 on the SAT (out of 2400 total points) are over twice as likely to be admitted as students who score between 2100 and 2290. The students who have higher SAT scores will, on average, also have more impressive applications in other respects, so the difference in admissions rates can't be entirely attributed to SAT scores. Still, it suggests that that doing well on the SAT and/or ACT is very important for college admissions.
You can raise your SAT and/or ACT scores through judicious preparation. For example, the SAT tests knowledge of vocabulary words that are repeated year to year, and by learning these vocabulary words, you can answer more SAT questions correctly.
Books such as
- Barron's SAT preparation book
- The Princeton Review's Cracking the SAT
- The Official SAT Study Guide
- The Princeton Review's Cracking the ACT
- Barron's ACT 36
- The Real ACT Prep Guide
have been very favorably reviewed on Amazon, and working through them plausibly boosts your scores.
If you have difficulty staying motivated on your own, taking an SAT/ACT prep course or getting SAT/ACT tutoring may boost your scores. Aside from this consideration, it's unclear how much value taking SAT/ACT preparation courses add beyond working through the books above.
It's been said that the SAT is more of a test of short-term memory (relative to the ACT), and the ACT more of a test of long-term memory (relative to the SAT). If the colleges that you'll be applying to accept either one, you should take the test that plays to your strengths. You can also take both tests. Depending on your circumstances, you may be able to choose which scores to release to a given college, allowing you to submit the higher of the two scores.
Selective colleges often require that applicants take SAT Subject Tests. We give suggestions for how to prepare for these on our page on coursework. You can take an official practice test for a given subject by obtaining a copy of The Official Study Guide for ALL SAT Subject Tests.