The genuinely not-waffling answer is that every student is different. How long your child needs to spend preparing depends primarily on:
- What score do they want to achieve?
- What score do they have right now?
- How big is the gap between their goal and current scores?
However, the overly simplified answer is:
- For the SAT, students can expect about a 40-point improvement for every 7 hours of quality preparation
- For the ACT, students can expect about a 1-point improvement for every 7 hours of quality preparation
The operative word in this basic response is “quality.” Students cannot spend those 7-hours just watching videos on Khan Academy while simultaneously posting to Tik Tok. They need to be actively engaged in the material, taking practice tests, and truly learning from their mistakes.
The majority of the time spent on test prep is remediating basic math and English skills. No amount of tips, tricks, or talking-head watching will make up for not being able to actually identify the main idea of a paragraph or manipulate fractions.