Question: My son, a junior in high school, is about to take the SAT this spring. I fully realize the importance of this test. Is there anything that I can do to help him master this test? -- Test Dad
Answer: You are certainly right about the importance of the SAT. And it is the same story for the ACT. Both tests play a large role in determining whether your son will be admitted to most colleges. The first thing that you need to do is view the www.collegeboard.org website, where you can learn so much about the SAT. For parents whose children will be taking the ACT, the website to visit is www.act.org.
Beyond learning about the tests, here are some additional things that you can do to help your son become a competitive candidate for college:
- Understand that it is essential for your son to prepare for the test that he will take. Practicing on sample tests definitely pays off. Both websites will have information on obtaining practice tests as well as the official question of the day, which your son can have emailed to him.
- Once your son sees how well he does on practice tests, a determination can be made on whether that score is sufficient for him to be admitted to most of the colleges that he is considering attending. If he needs to improve his score, there are several options: personal preparation, an online course or a course at a preparation center.
- The secret to preparing well for the SAT and the ACT is motivation. To do well, your son must be motivated to spend the time to do well. Talking with him about reasons to do well can increase his motivation.
- Because having a good vocabulary is necessary to score well on these tests, you can do two things to encourage him to enlarge his vocabulary. First of all, by encouraging him to read, you will be helping him learn more words. And secondarily, part of supper time can be devoted to talking about and using words from test word lists. Becoming familiar with the top words used on these tests will pay dividends.
- Above all else, don't obsess too much over these tests, because this can make your child very nervous about them. After all, he will have more than one chance to take these tests and improve his scores. Many students do take these tests more than once.
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