Slacking off during the summer may feel like a fantastic way to spend three months, but studies have shown that students tend to lose their learning skills during the summer. By ignoring your studies and entering the school year unprepared, you can significantly harm your standardized test scores and affect your college admissions chances. Here are four ways to boost your test scores during the off-season and before the school year starts again.
Focus on One Test
Not all students respond to either the SAT or the ACT the same way. ACT gurus tend to have great memory retention, reading comprehension, and can sift through detailed information very quickly. Those who score highly on the SAT are strong readers with good vocabularies and are very good at taking tests.
That being said, determining which test you’re more comfortable with isn’t just a matter of identifying what type of student you are. Taking a couple of practice tests over the summer can help you decide which test you want to hone in on and prepare for going forward.
Get Outside Your Comfort Zone
If you’ve taken either the ACT or SAT before and weren’t satisfied with the results, reassess your test preparation strategies before the next go-around. Mix up your process by incorporating quizzes (on your own and with others), verbalizing your questions and answers, and be sure to study in a conducive environment free from distractions.
Don’t stop reviewing and re-attacking the same material over and over again. Even if you feel comfortable with a subject or section, get back into it and try to analyze it from a different angle to make sure you truly understand it. The more ways you train yourself on a subject, the better the results will be.
Make a Lifestyle Change
Test scores have a lot to do with overall health and nutrition leading up to the test day. Summer is a great time to make a significant lifestyle change towards healthier eating, regular exercise, and positive activities. A better overall outlook and active people tend to be more confident, which can help come test day.
Summer is also a good time to develop healthy sleeping habits. Without the rigorous schedules that come with classes and extra-curricular activities, it can be easy to slip into an unhealthy sleep cycle. Rather than staying up late every single night, try and establish a consistent pattern. After all, good sleep will come in handy when your studies begin again.
Enroll in a Test Preparation Course
Private tutoring and test prep classes for the ACT and SAT are available during the summer months, so if you’re getting down to the wire and you’re still worrying about your test performance, you’ll want to explore all your options. A thorough test preparation class led by a talented instructor could be the difference between improving your test scores and being disappointed in the results.
Contact Sandweiss Test Prep to discuss your summertime test preparation options before the school year begins again. Our team has decades of experience in the test preparation field and our students have gone onto successful academic careers in Ivy League schools around the country, so give us a call today!