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Should I take the current SAT or the new SAT?  Should I take the ACT?  Do I need to take the SAT II Subject Tests?  Which Subject Tests should I take?  The class of 2017 is faced with more questions than past high school sophomores.  While these choices may seem like challenges, they also create opportunities for students to position themselves with the best chance for success.  In this article we will examine these opportunities and help class of 2017 students develop effective test taking plans.

Should I take the current SAT or the new SAT?

The last time the College Board revised the SAT, colleges accepted both the old test and the revised test for a few years.  Subsequently, It is widely believed that most colleges will accept either the old score or the new score for the class of 2017, though it is uncertain after that.  This means students may want to take a sample of the newly revised test once it is available and compare that score to their PSAT score from October of 2014, or if they did not take the PSAT, take a sample of the current SAT.  If a student scores higher on the current exam, he or she should consider taking the test in November of 2015 and again in January of 2016 (the last time it will be offered).

Should I take the SAT or the ACT?

If you have taken the PLAN, compare that to your PSAT or SAT scores using an ACT-SAT Concordance Chart (http://www.act.org/aap/concordance/pdf/reference.pdf).  Take whichever test your score equates to being higher on.  On the current SAT, there are some tricks and strategies that may be employed to obtain a higher score, thus if your SAT and ACT scores are roughly equal, it might be easier to improve your SAT scores.   The new SAT and the ACT, however, do not penalize students for guessing answers incorrectly, so there are no simple strategies for improving scores.

Do I need to take SAT II Subject Tests?

The answer to this question depends on where you plan on applying to college.  Highly selective colleges such as Yale, Harvard, Trinity, Bowdoin and Boston College require the SAT I Subject Test plus two SAT II Subject tests.  These are one-hour long knowledge based tests which students should take the end of each course.  If a student is in Honors Biology for example, I would recommend taking the SAT II in June.  If a student is enrolled in an AP course that tightly correlates with a SAT II test, however, he or she should take the SAT II Subject tests in May, as the May SAT II test date is typically the start of the AP Exam week.

Developing an Entrance Test Plan

The only decision that needs to be made by the end of this year is whether or not to take SAT II Subject tests in courses in which students are currently enrolled (Honors Biology, AP U.S. History, et cetera).  If the PLAN (Practice ACT) test is available to your child, I would recommend that he or she take it.  The PLAN is generally given in April.  You can then compare the PLAN score to the PSAT to see which test your child performs better on.  The new version of the PSAT has been released (http://bit.ly/1CKnLAA), but full versions of the new SAT aren’t expected to be released until June.  So, over the summer the student should take a practice version of the current SAT and a practice version of the new SAT and decide which test is better suited for him or her.  In October the student should take the new PSAT.

If you have any questions, please enter them in the comments below or feel free to email me at jmaroney@firstchoicecollege.com.