Hey everyone! As many of you (might) know, I am VERY close to becoming a legal adult.
And SINCE I have to become a legal adult, I have to choose what college that I have to go to for the future. But this isn’t about choosing the colleges, this is about the scores you have to send to the colleges to get you in. These scores are from the standardized tests that plague the minds of all high school students: the ACT and the SAT.
And since I REALLY want to get into some good colleges, I have been doing practices to redo the tests to get higher scores from them.
“Wait, stop right there! Nova, you’ve done the ACT and the SAT before?”
Yeah. I’ve taken the ACT two times and the SAT once (twice, counting today, but we’ll get there). But since my parents prioritize grades and a good education over everything else, they insisted that I take the ACT and SAT again to get better scores that I got before.
That said, I have been meeting with learning tutors and practice tests to prepare for the day of doom. And it is EXHAUSTING.
I’m just hoping it will pay off, or should I say, I hope it payed off.
You see, I just took the SAT today! But I’ve been having doubts on if I did well or not. Why? Well, I took a practice test the day before and got…
A lower score than what I had when I took the actual test for the first time. Yeesh. But, to be fair, I didn’t think too many things through.
Since I knew I was going to take the ACT and the SAT again, I just thought that if I did practice for the ACT only, I wouldn’t have to worry about doing any practice for the SAT, either!
Kids, don’t make that decision.
The ACT and the SAT are structured differently. While the ACT is more about getting the correct answer, which makes it reliant on memorization, the SAT is more about if you can understand the topic given in the problem, which is why there are a lot of questions on the SAT where you have to TYPE out the answer. To make things worse, the SAT will usually focus on words and math concepts you probably will NEVER hear about at school. This unfamiliarity surrounding topics that are VITAL on getting a high SAT score can hinder your grade severely.
Luckily, I didn’t find myself struggling on many problems in the SAT I took today, and I’m thinking of signing up for the spring SAT if I get a score I don’t like, so I think I’ll be fine. Hopefully the ACT will be MUCH easier to swallow.
Here’s to another year of education and burnout! >intense sobbing<
Cheers!
– Nova S.