I cannot believe that it’s already time to be thinking about the SAT in our house. It seems like yesterday that I was preparing for my own, where I spent countless hours poring over SAT prep books and trying to teach myself how to effectively solve analogies with words I’d never heard of and do math problems that I could barely comprehend.
This post was sponsored by Huntington Learning Center but all opinions are honest and my own.
Christopher is heading into junior year in the fall so it’s definitely time to get the SAT prep rolling. I know my limits and my kid, and even though I have a Master’s degree, there’s no way that I can teach him everything he needs to know to succeed. Enter Huntington Learning Center and their SAT prep program- a lifesaver for busy parents as well as those that realize they may not be the most effective teachers for SAT prep. The test-taking strategies are a huge part of the program and the well-qualified tutors at Huntington Learning Center know exactly how to prepare your child for what they’ll see on the SAT.
I gave Huntington Learning Center a quick call and scheduled Christopher for an SAT practice test the following week. It worked out perfectly that he had a random Wednesday off of school so we were able to go in the morning and it didn’t affect our crazy after-school schedule (tennis, club soccer, scouts, etc). I dropped him off and while he got started on the practice test, I chatted with the executive director for a bit about the program as well as my impressions of Christopher as a student and his educational goals.
Christopher has always been a pretty good student- he gets A’s and B’s and the majority of his classes are Honors or AP. But, because of all the time spent teaching for standardized testing, I was worried that he had some coverage gaps in math and reading that would ultimately make it harder for him to score well on the SAT. He spent the next 3.5 to 4 hours taking a practice SAT (including the essay portion) and we headed home!
We visited Huntington Learning Center again the following week to go over the results of the practice SAT test and to develop a game plan for moving forward. We talked about how he felt going into the test as well as during the test (like if exam fatigue was an issue) and how he felt about the exam as a whole. We learned about superscoring (pulling math and reading scores from different test dates to create a superscore) and he was excited to find out that his top choice colleges accept superscored tests. Ultimately, we came up with a comprehensive plan that will get Christopher to where he needs to be to have the best SAT score possible.
His personalized plan includes some academic content hours in order to solidify foundational components before moving into the official SAT prep. Then the hours are broken down for SAT math, SAT critical reading, SAT writing, and the SAT essay so that everything is covered. Christopher (with some parental input) made growth goals so he knows exactly what he needs to do to be competitive at the colleges he’s interested in attending.
A student sees over an average 200-point increase in their SAT score when going through the Huntington Learning Center program which is absolutely amazing! And one of my favorite parts is that in addition to the in-person, one-on-one help, you can also work on the test prep from home using their online program. That means that even when we’re traveling, Christopher can still work on his SAT prep and achieve his collegiate goals!