Most General Academic high school juniors will take the ACT or SAT two or three times to ensure they earn the score they need. There is no penalty for taking the test multiple times, and colleges only care about the highest score. Note that most juniors will also take the [...]

General Academic recommends that rising high school juniors start preparing in the summer (June/July) in the lead up to the fall test dates (August/ November). This timeline allows the student to work around particularly stressful periods like mid-term and final exams. And it provides ample time to prepare not only [...]

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 [...]

The shorter answer is that students who have the means and time to prepare and take the ACT or SAT should absolutely do so. Colleges like standardized tests because they're norm-referenced and their scores are comparable across the entire US population regardless of school and curriculum. However, the uncomfortable outcome [...]

Whether your child should take the SAT or the ACT is purely a matter of preference. With about 1.3 million students taking either tests every year, both are equally accepted nationwide. The SAT is more popular in Houston just because of historical preference, and Houston ISD pays for every junior [...]