Testing: the SAT, the ACT, and test-optional

Testing comes down to a handful of decisions, and all of them can be made in advance: which test, when to take it, how many times, whether the prep courses are worth the money, and the one worth thinking hardest about - whether to send the scores at all.

The PSAT comes first

Before either real test, most students take the PSAT at school, and it causes more confusion than anything else in testing because there is more than one version.

• A sophomore may be offered it as pure practice. No college sees it, and nothing about it counts.
• The junior-year PSAT is the one that matters, and only in one specific way: it is the qualifying test for National Merit recognition, which a small number of students convert into scholarship money.

Either way the score never goes to a college. Treat it as a free diagnostic that tells you where a student is starting from, and use the results to decide how much preparation the real test deserves.

SAT or ACT?

Colleges accept both equally; there is no advantage to one. They're just structured differently. The move is to take a practice test of each, see which one your student naturally scores better on, and focus there. Most students have a clear preference within a test or two.

Both were rebuilt recently, so a friend's account from two years ago will be out of date:

• The SAT is digital and adaptive. It runs in College Board's Bluebook app, and the second half of each section gets harder or easier based on the first. Practice in Bluebook rather than on paper, which no longer resembles the real thing.
• The ACT made Science optional. The main score is English, Math and Reading only; Science is a paid add-on scored separately. Still worth sitting if your student is pointed at engineering, nursing or health, where programs and scholarships often want it.

When to take it, and how many times

The typical rhythm: a first real attempt in the spring of junior year, with a retake in the fall of senior year if the score can improve. Two or three sittings is the sweet spot. Scores usually climb a bit from the first to the second try, level off by the third, and rarely justify a fourth. Many schools superscore, combining your best section scores across dates, which is a good reason to take it more than once but not five times.

Are prep courses worth it?

It depends on the student, and the answer starts with what is free. The biggest driver of a higher score is realistic practice - full-length, timed, official practice tests. For the SAT those live inside Bluebook and adapt the way the real test does; Khan Academy's official material and ACT's own free practice cover the rest. A self-directed student can get a long way on those alone.

What a paid course or tutor adds is not secret content - it is structure, pacing, and someone diagnosing which questions your student is losing and why. For a student who will not sit down to timed practice unsupervised, or who is chasing the last stretch of a top score, that is worth paying for. Start with the free material for a few weeks: how consistently your student actually uses it will tell you which kind of help they need.

What "test-optional" means, and whether to send scores

Test-optional means the school lets the applicant decide whether to submit scores at all. It is not test-blind (that's a school that won't look at scores even if you send them).

Check each school in the year your student applies, because this is moving. Test-optional went close to universal in 2021 and has been unwinding since - much of the Ivy League requires scores again, and so do some large public systems. Plenty of schools are still optional. Only the school's own admissions page settles it, and that is the one place worth looking. If your student is a freshman or sophomore, plan on testing anyway: a score you turn out not to need costs far less than one you needed and never took.

Scores can matter for money even where they do not matter for admission. Automatic merit scholarships at many large public universities are score-triggered: hit a number, get a set award. Some state grant programs work the same way, and honors colleges often want a score where the university itself does not. So check each school's merit and honors pages, and your own state's grant program, before deciding to withhold.

Checked against primary sources on 2026-08-05. Rules in this area change; verify anything you are about to act on.