ACT Preparation for Great River Juniors April 28th, 2015

ACT preparation

Juniors planning to go directly to college, or after a deferment, have two 'assignments' to complete by the end of the school year. Based on their interests (location, majors, programs, size, etc.) students should identify five schools they plan to apply to. Based on the information provided by these schools, they should complete their ACT or SAT testing by the end of June (they can take these tests as seniors, but it adds a level of stress).

New this year, the state of Minnesota is requiring students take the ACT in order to graduate. As such, Great River will be hosting, and the state funding, ACT testing for all juniors on April 28th. Students can sign up for SAT and/or ACT dates before or after this testing date. The ACT and SAT are absolutely tests students can study for and improve their scores with additional attempts. In the next week or so materials will be available on the Colleges and Careers section of the Great River website. Briefly, my studying suggestions are the following:

1 – Use PSAT results and online access to study areas where students may have struggled on their PSAT tests

2 – Use the same diagnostic test information from the PSAT, or from online practice tests, to employ the larger ACT and SAT study books – these have great features for content review and practice

3 –Consider hiring an outside tutor to address specific content areas or test taking strategies

4 – Consider taking an ACT or SAT prep course. I offer this as the last suggestion because they can be very costly and time consuming. That being said, if a student is really interested in improving their score and engages will all the class sessions and ‘homework’ they recommend, many have seen a significant increase in their scores. However, other students have found that following the above suggestions, which are less costly and time consuming, have meet their score requirements in connection to the colleges they are applying to.

Please contact me with any questions - Matt McElrath   mmcelrath@greatriverschool.org