Well, have you got any? I need to do well as I'm trying to enter a good college.

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I took kaplan courses, lol. I'm an immigrant so I have a valid reason to. You should first try studying it on your own, take the practice test. If you're not satisfied with what you got, either study harder on your own or try taking Kaplan courses.

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^ here
I forgot to mention the most important thing. Start doing the things I've mentioned at least a year ahead. You'll be glad you did, trust me.

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I took the ACT last year, and I got a 30 on it. I did not prepare whatsoever.

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I have taken the SAT, the LSAT (law school admissions test), the GRE (graduate requisite exam) and the MCAT (medical college admissions test). On all of these tests I scored in the 99th percentile. Now, I happen to be a good test-taker, but I will share the method that I use for standardized test preparation, since my opinion is that it is probably among the best methods for preparation for anyone.

Forget your Kaplan courses. It's a waste of time and money — I started taking one for the MCAT, but dropped and got a refund after a week. Those courses do help, but they only help because they require you to actually practice taking the test in a structured environment.

What you need to do is this: Get as many practice tests, of as high a level of authenticity, as you possibly can. Then, months before your test, start taking them. Take one every day (I used to take my test in the morning at a little breakfast cafe where I got free coffee in exchange for a big tip). Give yourself five less minutes per section than you will have in the real test (that way, you'll be less stressed on the real thing).

At first it will seem like you're floundering and accomplishing nothing, but after a few weeks you will notice your scores start to dramatically improve. After a few months you will have become the master of your chosen test — taking one will be like doing the crossword puzzle or playing sudoku in the daily newspaper. Soon afterwards, you will consistently be making an unbelievable score, and you will have made at least a couple of perfects.

I believe that this method works well for the same reason that fighting disciplines like Brazilian jiu-jitsu work well. The reason that guys trained for a few months in BJJ can easily kick the shit out of kung fu and karate blackbelts is not because kung fu and karate are inferior martial arts (they aren't, IMO), but because the BJJ guy actually trains against resisting opponents every day, whereas the kung fu and karate guys hardly ever engage each other in full-contact sparring. Thus, the BJJ guy knows how to use his skills to actually win a real fight. The same principle operates here — all that time spent in Kaplan learning "strategies" is equivalent to time spent in karate learning "kata" — it's not completely worthless, but it's time that could be better spent in real-life drills.

Remember that these tests are very important! Be disciplined about taking one every day (except maybe for weekends), even if you aren't disciplined for anything else! I'm a bit of a slacker, but I managed to coast into top academic programs because of my ability to absolutely ace these types of standardized admissions tests. Tons of my classmates in college worked their asses off padding their resumes with extracurricular nonsense and grubbing for top grades — I just relaxed and made medium-high grades and did nothing extra. However, my standardized test scores were so fucking high that I got offered scholarships — while many of my peers who hadn't focused on the entrance exams were lucky to even be offered admission to shitty programs. I might have done a little extra work in preparing for those tests, but it saved gobs of work with respect to everything else.

This is going to sound arrogant, and normally I would omit a statement like this, but I do need to qualify my advice somewhat, since I'm the only person whom I personally know that uses this method: I am pretty smart (IQ more than three standard deviations above mean). That means that to the extent that IQ correlates with these tests, it would be expected for me to score in the 99th percentile anyway. However, when I used this method, I definitely saw huge improvement in my average test scores over time, especially if the test was more intellectually rigorous.

Also, it could be that this method won't work for a less intelligent person (maybe your brain won't figure out how to do the test on its own just through repetition). However, my gut feeling is that the method will still work, but that you might need more time than just a few months if you aren't just naturally really sharp. Notwithstanding the above, as an anontalk poster worrying about the SAT, I'm certain that you are probably an exceptionally smart individual, so you probably have nothing to worry about with respect to this issue.

Hope this helps.

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@69,586

Did you have a particular source for all your practice tests?

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@70,092

Nope; I had no particular source. I took the SAT over ten years ago, so there were scant online resources. With all of the tests, I personally just went to bookstores and bought all of the various branded practice guides, each of which usually contained many practice tests. Some of them were not "official" tests, but still contained a high proportion of official questions. It cost a fair amount of money, but less than a Kaplan course, and it was definitely worth it.

Just make sure that you have a large amount. If you've got fifty tests, for instance, you can start recycling them once you've gone through them all, since the old ones will be more-or-less "fresh" to you. This isn't a flaw in the strategy — many of the standardized admissions tests (particularly the MCAT) recycle questions, or pose the same problems with mere cosmetic changes.

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