Everyone knows it’s a true process to study for the SAT and ACT, not an overnight deal…but how long does that process take?
This is one of the most common questions I get from my private SAT/ACT tutoring clients (and their parents). Just a few weeks ago, in fact, someone asked it during the Q&A portion of a presentation I gave at a high school.
If only there were a single, simple answer I could provide! Then this post would be super short, and you could jump into studying for exactly 46.6 days, or whatever the magic answer turned out to be.
Unfortunately, as someone who’s lived and breathed these tests for 16+ years, now, it’s my duty to tell you: the answer to this question is very case-by-case. Nonetheless, there are a few basic “if….then” guidelines that apply to most, if not all, of those cases. And today I’m going to share those guidelines with you so that you know how much of your Digital SAT or ACT testing timeline to dedicate to actually studying for the SAT or ACT.
Article Contents
1. Watch this article as a video
2. What determines your SAT or ACT study timeline?
b. How much do you want to increase your score?
c. Is your goal a perfect score?
3. Other factors that impact how long your Digital SAT or ACT prep will take
4. Conclusion
Watch this article as a video:
What determines your SAT or ACT study timeline?
There are three pieces of information that will chiefly determine how much time you’ll need to put into studying:
What’s your starting score?
By how many points do you need to improve to get to your Target Score?
Are you aiming for a perfect score (or something close to it)?
Let’s break down each of these factors in more detail.
1. Your Initial Score Affects How Long You Study for Standardized Tests
It’s probably self-evident why this one matters: your starting score generally tells us a lot about how much foundational knowledge and skills you currently have to work with. As in, do you understand how numbers and grammar work? Do you understand how to read a passage or a two-way table or chart?
After you learn how to set up a math problem about rates to solve, can you then solve the equation to get to your answer, or do I first need to teach you HOW to solve a two-step equation? And furthermore, before teaching you HOW to solve a two-step equation, am I going to need to backtrack and teach you how to add and subtract fractions in the first place and then do order of operations to THEN solve said equation?
When it comes to reading comprehension, do you basically understand the sentences you read and merely need help with passage strategy and question strategy…or do we first need to get you on a regimen of reading challenging material outside of class so you can quickly grasp the actual content of a passage?
If you’re tackling grammar rules, and I’m teaching you about how to combine two complete clauses, can that be our starting-point? Or do we need to step down a level of complexity to learn what a “clause” is in the first place…and perhaps step down even further to learn what a “subject” and a “verb” are, too?
In other words, if I’m giving you a piano lesson, can I ask you to “play the first three measures more sostenuto and adagio”? Or do I first need to teach you what a measure is, what a pedal is, and what an adagio tempo is considered to be in classical music?
If you need to master the baseline fundamentals first, that will take considerably more time to prep before we can even BEGIN to learn the actual concepts and strategies to improve your score! Thus, your starting score could easily add a few months to your prep time.
For instance, if you’re starting below an ACT composite score of 22 or a Digital SAT score of 1100, you probably need to factor in about 3 months MORE prep time to learn the basics…and then continue prepping to actually learn the new concepts.
2. SAT and ACT study plan: By how much do you want to increase your score?
This one’s another clearly necessary component: the more you need to improve to hit your target score, the more time it’ll take you to prep to get there!
For instance, if you want to increase 3 ACT composite points or 100 SAT points, that’ll typically take less time than it would to improve 6 ACT composite points or 200 SAT points.
Depending on your starting point, the first example (3 ACT composite points / 100 SAT points) could be a 1-3 month situation, while the latter (6 composite ACT points / 200 SAT points) could take more like 3-6 months.
If you need to improve MORE than 6 ACT composite points / 200 Digital SAT points, you’re generally looking at 6+ months of test prep. As in, we should jump in right after Sophomore year ends and prep through til February/March as our first test date.
3. Aiming for a perfect score?
As you near the top of the curves on both the ACT and the SAT, a funny thing happens.
On the one hand, each question starts to be worth more points. On the other hand, it gets tougher and tougher to get every SINGLE question right, because there are so many miscellaneous topics one has to know cold that might not get tested on each test. You actually have to learn considerably more nuanced concepts and strategies, just to make sure you’re well versed in them all, so you can be prepared no matter what’s asked.
For example, in my extensive experience, it’s easier to increase a student’s score from 1380 to 1520 on the SAT than it is to get a student from 1460 to 1600. Both are 140-point improvements. Both are starting at a pretty high level, and thus, we know both of these students have got their foundations down pat. But the second kid is striving for ZERO ERRORS, while the first kid just wants to improve 140 points and break 1500.
The first student needs to learn the concepts and strategies that consume the MOST number of points she missed on the test. Ideally, she’d learn as many concepts as possible, leaving room for errors. If she’s not the type of student prone to making errors on things she knows, then she could skip a few tricky miscellaneous topics that only show up on a test every once in a while. I’ve actually helped one student do this exact jump—1380 to 1520—with three intense WEEKS of private tutoring with me. And that’s all she needed to get an early acceptance to the University of Chicago.
However, a student starting at 1460 and aiming for a perfect 1600 would have to learn every single possible topic that MAY be asked, because the only way to guarantee you get a perfect score is to get every question correct.
Even if you’re aiming for a 1550+ on the Digital SAT or a 35+ on the ACT, that part of the scoring chart isn’t consistent, and you may have to take the test a few times—not just to get your top performance, but also to get a test that has a normal (more forgiving) curve at the top. You may miss 2 questions in the ACT reading and get a perfect 36 on one test…and get a 32 on a test with a tougher curve. Basically, you can’t control how the scoring guide is going to pan out; the only thing you can do is not leave any points on the table by making mistakes.
But, of course, these are general guidelines we’re talking about, here.
What else shapes the amount of time it'll take to finish your standardized test prep?
Though we’ve just covered the three key testing timeline criteria, there are other factors to take into account, too:
Which type or types of questions did you miss on the SAT or ACT? Are they “improvable”? Some question types have straightforward, easy-to-master hacks, while others are tougher to use shortcuts on.
What’s your junior year schedule like? Do you have a stretch of time when you can focus on test prep, or do you need to do a little bit over a longer period?
What are you currently learning in your math and English classes? Would starting test prep later allow you to learn more in school, so you don’t need to spend quite as long on test prep?
How long it takes you to study for the SAT or ACT is about what YOU need to nail your target score.
All these very personal factors and MORE are exactly the type of things I take into account when I make individual testing timelines for my students. This blog post has already given you a head start. But if you’d like an even bigger leg up, book an Ace the Test: Game Plan™, and I’ll take all of the birds-eye thinking off your plate so you can focus on, you know, actually learning the content and strategies you need to nail the test!
