SAT

So you wake up the morning of your big test and staring at you is a plate full of runny eggs.  Do you eat them?  Of course not!  Ok, that is a pretty easy call.  But what should you eat then?  Well, this is really a bigger question because it also involves what you should drink, what you should eat the night before, etc.  

Let’s start with the night before.  Athletic coaches will often tell you to load up on carbs the night before a big game. While you are not running a marathon, you will burn up a surprising amount of energy on test day – the nervousness alone accounts for a big part of that.  If you have not sat for the actual test yet, be prepared to be exhausted after!  So a bowl of pasta or a meal with some good complex carbs in it is a good idea for the night before the big day.  And stick with things that you have eaten many times before and that don’t bother your stomach (a super-spicy meal is probably not the best idea).  You don’t want to wake up on test day with a stomachache.

Additionally, you want to plan your hydration.  Part of the problem here is that you don’t want to drink too much right before the test and then have to go to the bathroom during the first section!  So try to drink a lot the day and evening before, so that the next day you are well hydrated.  However, stop drinking a few hours before bed so that you don’t wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and then find that you can’t fall back asleep.  

Similarly, on the day of your test, don’t drink a lot too close to when your test starts.  And if you drink tea or coffee, DO NOT drink those things within an hour or possibly more of when your test starts because you will very likely have to go to the bathroom during the first section.

In terms of what to eat in the hours before your test, keep it VERY simple!  You definitely need to eat, so don’t skip eating, but if you have a nervous stomach, you do not want to risk having issues at the test.  When I personally go in and take the SAT or ACT, I am nervous enough that all I eat is bread and a little water or juice (I call this the prison diet).  And I don’t even have anything but personal pride riding on these tests anymore!  Keep in mind, I’ve eaten really well the night before and have been careful to really hydrate the day before as well.  I just don’t want to challenge my stomach in any way right before the test.  If you feel like you have an iron stomach or are just not that nervous, you could certainly push it a little further, but again I would not risk eating anything that could cause you trouble (I would avoid eggs, for example).

One last very important point:  bring a drink and snack!  I usually bring a couple of granola bars and water with me to any test I take.  I am typically less nervous by the break, so I usually feel better eating at that point.  But I am still careful not to drink too much, so as to not have to go to the bathroom in the middle of a section.  I take some sips but will not polish off the entire bottle.

Feel free to personalize the above suggestions since only you know yourself and much of the above is, of course, subjective.  But how you feed and hydrate yourself will be important factors in your test day performance.  So have a plan for what you’ll eat and drink and when you’ll do it, and you’ll be much more likely to have a great test day experience.

In my previous post I mentioned the possibility that the SAT and ACT might one day be administered to students in the comfort of their own homes.  I cited as evidence the fact that GMAC and ETS, producers of the GMAT and GRE, had done research on that possibility for the GMAT and GRE.   Well here we are one week later and guess what? The GRE is now being offered online and the GMAT is slated to become available for online, in-home testing in a few weeks!  

The fact that this reality is already upon us is just mind-blowing.  It truly is a brave new world out there!  What does this mean for the SAT and ACT?  I predict that it is only a matter of time before the SAT and ACT are offered in-home.  It may take a while.  Possibly many years.   But it is going to happen.  

Presumably the SAT and ACT will go fully computer-based first.  The GMAT and GRE made that transition decades ago and clearly the ACT is already moving in that direction.  College Board will follow suit with the SAT.

There will be some logistical issues with offering online testing for the SAT and ACT since the scale of the endeavor is so much larger and since you have thousands upon thousands of kids who don’t have home computers and who would be disadvantaged in a world in which wealthier kids get to take the SAT and ACT at home.  But that will change and a solution will emerge.   I write this in part because as of 3 days ago I thought that the obstacles to online testing for the GMAT and GRE would be so formidable as to prevent it from becoming a reality until the distant future.  And yet, literally one week after mentioning it (more as a sort of dream scenario) in my previous post, it has become a reality. 

The age of in-home, online testing is upon us.  It may not happen tomorrow or next week or next year, but the march of progress will lead us ineluctably to the day when the SAT and ACT can be taken at home!

Let me start by saying that I feel guilty even thinking about the SAT and ACT at a time like this.  It is March 16, 2020 and things are starting to get bad with the Coronavirus:  schools are closing, the March SAT was just cancelled locally, and the stock market just lost about 12% of it’s value in a single day.  I have plenty of thoughts about the necessity of social distancing and I could write a whole post about what I think we need to do as a society and what changes we need to make to be better prepared in the future.  But the recent cancellation of the March SAT in many places around the country and the news that now ACT, Inc. and College Board have cancelled the April ACT and May SAT, respectively, have really devastated a lot of kids (for the latest on test cancellations, visit College Board’s SAT page and the ACT homepage).  It may seem trivial to adults, but to high school kids who prepared their tails off for these tests, it’s a very big deal.  So I thought it might make sense to offer some perspective on how the Coronavirus is likely to affect the SAT and ACT in the near-term and long-term.  What follows are some suggestions and predictions for how things move forward with the SAT and ACT, but time may prove me wrong (and if that is the case, I’ll probably remove this post!!!).

The Move to Eliminate the SAT and ACT

So I think the most obvious consequence of the current situation is that it will bolster the argument that schools should just abandon their use of SAT and ACT scores.  If the SAT and ACT cannot even be administered for a while, there will be many kids who won’t have as many opportunities to take the tests, and that will certainly help support the claim that schools should not be using the scores, at least for the upcoming admission cycle.   I suppose this will depend on when kids can start taking the SAT and ACT again, but I don’t think schools will drop the requirements completely.  If applicants for the upcoming admission cycle are really affected by the coronavirus and have really limited testing opportunities, then I think you will see schools declare either that for this cycle scores will weigh in less in admissions decisions or that submission of scores will be optional.  If the latter happens, I think you will probably see some schools stick with that policy moving forward and become “Test Optional” forever.  

But I don’t think that will mean that the SAT and ACT will go away.  First of all, ACT Inc. and College Board are just too big and powerful to go away.  I don’t see that happening anytime soon.  I also think schools really value the SAT and ACT.  It’s only part of the admission picture and one could argue that it carries too much weight, but it is a universal way for colleges to compare students from different backgrounds, and most schools will not be willing to completely do away with the tests unless some alternative exists.  And if you have read enough of this website, you’ll understand that the SAT and ACT really go beyond measuring one’s ability to just learn information and instead get at a person’s ability to reason and think critically and problem solve, and since these skills are so integral to success in college, it’s unlikely that schools will be willing to say goodbye to the SAT and ACT.

Additional Testing Opportunities for the SAT and ACT

It seems possible, perhaps even likely, that both ACT, Inc. and College Board will add additional tests if multiple tests get cancelled.  This is a difficult prediction to make because it may be that there are logistical reasons why this cannot happen, but make-up exams have been given in the past for a variety of reasons (I have had students take them), so it seems likely to me that the companies will go out of their way to provide more testing opportunities.  I could see ACT, Inc. adding a test for November and College Board adding one for September.  Or maybe additional testing over the summer?  

SAT and ACT Computer-Based Testing?

The ACT is already moving to computer-based testing, but I don’t think this will really be affected by Coronavirus.  Perhaps in the future there will be a way to administer these tests from home, and I am pretty sure that the makers of either the GMAT or the GRE or both have already considered this possibility, but in the near future that is probably not going to happen (although eventually I bet it will).  

Standardized Testing in the Age of Coronavirus

Obviously if schools stay closed for the next 6 months and the entire country is on lockdown, there will probably not be any standardized testing.  But assuming we even sort of get back to normal (maybe schools reopen but with some measures or restrictions in place to limit the spread of the virus) the tests will likely resume.  Even if schools put in place some kind of online learning platform, I could see a scenario in which schools are still closed or maybe open in some modified capacity, but the SAT and ACT are still given.  I think there is much greater risk of transmission on a normal school day then there is during the administration of the SAT or ACT.  It would really not be that hard to have students line up with some space between them as they are entering the building and then place them spaced very far apart in large rooms like the gymnasium or in smaller rooms in fewer numbers.   Really this is already sort of done anyway – you obviously don’t want test takers too close together for fear of cheating, so instead of having them spaced 4 or 5 feet apart you could have them spaced 10 feet apart.

I am sure some readers will balk at the idea of convening students in large numbers just to take the SAT or ACT, but it’s important to remember that many of these kids have prepared A LOT for these tests and it’s really not fair for them to not have an opportunity to take the tests and move forward.  I know because I have tutored many of them and most of them are devastated that they could not take the March SAT.  So while I am definitely in favor of social distancing and would definitely NOT take any risks at the moment, if things change in the next couple of months such that we as a society are starting to get back to normal and the tests could be administered with minimal or negligible risk of transmission, then it is really only fair to the cohort of students that have prepared so hard for the exams that they have an opportunity to take the tests, get the scores they want, and move on!