After months of preparing for the SAT, the final week can feel surprisingly stressful. You might wonder if you should squeeze in one more full-length practice test, learn a few last-minute math concepts, or simply hope everything you’ve studied sticks. It’s easy to feel like there’s still so much left to do. The truth is, the week before the SAT isn’t about learning everything you don’t know. At this point,…

The most common question I get from families starting college prep is which test their student should take. The most common answer they get from other people is “take both, see which is higher, and submit that one.” That advice sounds sensible and is almost always wrong. Preparing for two different tests simultaneously is expensive, exhausting, and dilutes the depth of preparation on either one. Very few students have the…

College applications can feel like a numbers game, but don’t count yourself out if things aren’t adding up! When it comes to the SAT, the test is definitely greater than the sum of its parts… but understanding how those parts work is important. Like all standardized tests, getting a top score on the SAT is about more than just basic knowledge; it’s about strategy! And no strategy is complete without…

The single most expensive mistake families make with the SAT isn’t picking the wrong prep program. It’s starting too late. The default assumption in most American households is that SAT prep is a junior-year activity, something you begin sometime in the spring of eleventh grade and finish before senior year applications. That timeline works, but it’s also the tightest possible window for the highest possible stakes, and it forces families…

Have you ever heard of an adaptive test before? Knowing that the SAT is adaptive, without knowing what goes into an adaptive test, can be a little… unsettling for some students. A test that gets easier or harder as you take it? How does that work? How is that fair? Today, we’re going to take a deep dive into what an adaptive test really is, and why you don’t need…

– For decades, many middle-class families had an important financial aid advantage when sending multiple children to college at the same time. If you had two children enrolled simultaneously, the federal financial aid formula effectively recognized that reality. Colleges understood that a family paying two tuition bills at once had less financial flexibility than a family supporting only one student, and the calculation reflected that. That advantage is now largely…

Junior year is the most demanding stretch of high school. Three or four AP classes. Whatever sport, music, or extracurricular commitment you’re going to lean on for college apps. The first round of standardized tests. College visits starting to fill weekends. And then, sitting on top of all of that, the SAT, which most students start prepping for sometime between the fall and spring of this exact year. The math…

If you’re taking the ACT for the first time in 2026, you’re walking into a test that looks a lot different from the version older siblings may remember. The ACT is shorter than it used to be, Science is optional now, as is the essay, and students may test on paper or online depending on registration and test center. Still, the purpose is familiar. Your job is to know the…

Most students treat a practice test as a measurement. They take it, get a score, feel briefly good or bad about the number, and move on to the next study session. That habit is the single biggest reason scores plateau. A practice test isn’t a measurement. It’s a diagnostic. The score is almost the least useful thing it produces. The wrong answers are where the actual value lives. Every question…

Have you ever watched a quiz show, like Jeopardy, and wondered why some contestants just don’t seem to get any questions? It’s not always because they don’t know the answer- it’s because their buzzer skills are lacking. Maybe they buzz in too fast, or maybe they’re too slow. Whatever it is, they struggle- and it’s not for lack of knowledge, it’s for lack of skill.  You can think about the…