Why Summer ACT Test Prep is a No-Brainer
Let’s be honest, high schoolers have CRAZY schedules. From September to June, they have so much that they constantly are doing — whether it’s something they’re REQUIRED to do or the things that they WANT to do. Between academics, sports, extracurriculars, activities outside school, part-time jobs, hanging out with friends and leisurely video game and Netflix time, who has time to throw in ACT prep, too? Now, we’re not saying it can’t be done — it’s done all of the time! SO many students somehow mix ACT test prep into their crazy schedule during the school year and can successfully juggle all their responsibilities. But talk about stressful! Not to mention making a busy schedule even busier… More than this, test prep during the school year isn’t the most effective way to raise ACT scores.
The absolute BEST time to focus on ACT test prep is DURING THE SUMMER. Devoted practice time, well-rested students, and high summer spirits are like a special sauce for ACT score progress. Make this the summer that your student reaches their full potential on the ACT and paves the way for an awesome future.
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Still not convinced? Read on to find out why ACT test prep during summer is the secret to successful test prep.
5 Reasons why it’s hard to prepare for the ACT during the school year
It’s a Tuesday morning. Your son is a junior in high school. He sits through a pre-calculus class, where the teacher is currently demonstrating how to match functions with their derivatives. Your student then strolls to 11th Grade Literature, where he analyzes two chapters of The Taming of the Shrew. Then, it’s an all-too-short lunch break laughing amongst friends before it’s on to Spanish III and practicing conversation utilizing the future tense. Eventually, final period rolls around, and your student sits in chemistry class and listens to the teacher discuss scientific notation. The school day is now over, and your student has received four homework assignments: three worksheets to be completed and two chapters to be read. He will need to find time to do all of this TODAY before the class periods tomorrow. But he doesn’t have time to think about that now. He’s got to hurry up and get ready for basketball practice because that starts in twenty minutes. After basketball practice, he’ll drive himself home and sit down to eat the lovely meal you’ve cooked for him. He’s about to open up his backpack and dive into his homework assignments when you scold him — don’t forget! You have ACT tutoring tonight! And then he’s off again to ACT tutoring, where he’s drilled on conventions of standard English grammar, basic geometry rules for circles, squares, and triangles, reading comprehension, and scientific data analysis. Once done, he’ll hurry back home, speed through his homework as fast as he can and eventually get to bed much later than he’d hoped.
Test Prep Takes Time
It seems ridiculous to try to cram anything else into that crazy schedule above, but your student is probably also involved in clubs and organizations at school, too, and maybe they even have a part-time job. Even if you do succeed in adding test prep time to your student’s schedule in the midst of school and sports seasons, you can pretty much guarantee that it isn’t going to be as much time as it should be in order to see the results you’re after. Yes, any prep is better than no prep, but real progress takes real time. The ACT is a very particular monster of an exam, and it’s not one that students can cram for last minute and hit their goals. Significant score increases take a lot of dedication to studying and practicing, and the reality is that that kind of time is not always available to students during the school year. There’s a reason that students go to school five days a week: because consistency is key. The ACT is the same way — throwing some studying in here and there isn’t really going to do that much good. You need to have a proven plan with a proven timeline. To get a better idea of how much time your student should devote to test prep to hit his or her ACT test goals, you can check out our post here: How Much Studying Do I Actually Need To Do For The ACT?
Demands of a Packed Schedule
What we skipped in the story above is everything leading up to when your high schooler walks into that first pre-calculus class in the morning. So let’s take a step back for a second… Your student’s alarm sounds at 6:30 AM, time to wake up. It’s so early, though, and he’s so tired (remember all that homework he was up late finishing?). He hits snooze a few times and finally rolls out of bed, showers, and gets ready for the day. He doesn’t manage to eat a good breakfast before it’s time to go, so he grabs a granola bar and runs out the door. He then speeds the whole way to the school, throws his car into a parking spot, and hurries into the building. He dumps his belongings in his locker and runs down the halls to class to avoid being marked tardy. The bell sounds just as he takes his seat. He’s sighs in relief and tries not to doze off for the entire class period.
Let me tell you what, this is NOT a dramatization! This is what many days are like for high schoolers. Their scheduled days begin early and end late. They are TIRED. They are tired because their brains are exhausted from learning. They are tired because they pack their schedules with too many activities and sports and jobs. They are tired because they spend too much time FaceTiming their friends and scrolling through Instagram. Regardless of the specific reasons, your student is definitely tired! Feeding more information into a tired brain is not a very efficient way to progress. A tired student does not learn to their potential.
Interference from Academics
Not only is your student going to struggle to complete his homework that’s due tomorrow, but how can we possibly expect these students to simultaneously learn about functions and derivatives, literary analysis, foreign language tense, scientific notation, zone basketball defense, English grammar, geometry, reading comprehension, and scientific research? Unless your student is, by some stroke of crazy luck, currently enrolled in classes on algebra, English grammar, reading comprehension, and scientific data interpretation, they are going to have a hard time retaining everything that is being thrown at them from all directions — ACT tutoring and school alike. Imagine trying to learn to speak Spanish and French at the same time. The two are pretty similar and yet super different — you’re bound to get confused between the two and sometimes speak Spanish when you mean to speak French and vice versa. A jam-packed brain can not retain everything loaded into it. Your student will be fighting to recall the area of a triangle while functions and derivatives are swimming at the forefront of their brain.
Distractions
So you’ve convinced your student to set aside Tuesday and Thursday nights for ACT tutoring sessions. Everything is going great. Then suddenly, it’s basketball season, and your student has a much more appealing invite on a Tuesday night than ACT tutoring. Of course they want to go to the basketball game with their friends, and, after listening to their friends talking about it all day, you know they’re going to ask you if they can go. Even if you say they can’t go, now you have a crabby student that’s going to go be crabby for an ACT tutoring session. And we know that that isn’t exactly conducive to effective learning. This one goes back to both the full schedule and the exhausted brain of your student. It’s really important to have friends and find time for fun amidst the chaos of high school schedules, and, since your student is surrounded by friends all day long at school, these distractions and “better offers” will come up frequently during the school year.
Seasonal Influence
Our main service area for tutoring is the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Residing in Minnesota, we are no strangers to the reality of seasonal depression! Winters are long and days are short. It’s gets dark outside so early, and the freezing cold hurts your whole body. All you ever really want to do is curl up in a blanket and stay home. It’s completely normal for the seasons to affect our moods as humans. This also goes for your high schooler. They’re bound to be a bit more ornery, tired, and overall grumpy throughout the cold months.
But wait! It’s the start of June, school is out, and now you suddenly have a high schooler with TONS of free time. Even with summertime activities, part-time jobs, and family vacations, students usually have a lot of time left over during the long summer months. This is a great time to devote to and focus on something important that isn’t school. And you know what that thing should be? For rising high school juniors and seniors, summertime is well spent prepping for the ACT.
4 Reasons why summer is the key to effective ACT test prep
Available brain power
It’s summer, and your high schooler works three days a week, plays a sport twice a week, and spends the rest of their free time sitting around the house or hanging out with friends. You venture up north to the cabin most weekends, but other than this you really have nothing planned. Now, this is NOT a tired student. This is a student that is well-rested. This student’s brain is prepared to learn and retain new information.
By focusing ACT prep in the summer, you are effectively separating ACT prep from any other distractions. Separating ACT prep from school means there are not other topics weighing down your student’s brain and fogging their learning. They can be fully focused on just the ACT. Studies show that humans will fail to retain approximately 60% of what we learn within 48 hours of learning it if we do not frequently revisit and review the information. This is why sporadic test prep does not work and is the same reason that students go to school five days a week and are frequently quizzed and examined on their retention of information and concepts. ACT prep during the summer allows for the necessary amount of focus, repetition, and consistency required to see efficient progress. This is when we see ACT scores increase in leaps and bounds.
High spirits
We all know there’s something magical about summertime. Days are long, the sun is out, the world seems brighter and happier. Maybe it’s all the Vitamin D finally swarming our systems after a long, dark winter; Maybe it’s all the time spent on the boat and barbecues with great friends, cold drinks, and lots of laughter; and, specifically for your high schooler, maybe it’s the time away from school and away from so many responsibilities. Is it even a Maybe? Probably not!
You might be thinking, well, it seems awful to quash my student’s summer high by making them do ACT tutoring, but that’s where you’re wrong! Your high schooler may already be thinking about the exciting leap to college not too far away, and, while they may find some of the work they do at school meaningless, the ACT is an exam where once you meet your goal, you are DONE. Students are often actually excited to defeat the ACT monster and feel like they are learning, growing, and accomplishing something important. Additionally, all of our expert tutors at The Prepared Student are educated young adults who went through all the same things as your student not that long ago. All of our instructors relate well to our students, and, for this reason, we find that tutoring is actually something students look forward to when the rest of their world isn’t overly chaotic. Your student may resent the idea of tutoring initially, but they’ll soon be overcome with the want to defeat the ACT and increase their test scores, and, come the start of the school year and another jam-packed schedule, they’ll be happy to have the bulk of this tutoring behind them.
Open Schedule
The way a student’s schedule changes is so drastic when summer starts. Where there used to a recurring event every single day from 7:30 AM - 2:30 PM, there is now nothing. Well, you’ve probably added some things to their schedule, but probably not seven hours worth! Summers allow for the amount of time necessary to do as well on the ACT as a student wants to do. For the student who has scored a 20 and REALLY wants to get that up to a 28, summer is the time. This is a HUGE jump that will require a lot of determination and a lot of frequent tutoring and practice. There is never really time to prepare for this kind of jump outside of the summer. Similarly, the student who wants to jump only three points will benefit from summertime tutoring as well. He can probably progress faster than during the school year because, in addition to not being bogged down by other academics, he has time to meet twice a week instead of once. As we’ve said before, a session here and there won’t really do much when it comes to ACT prep. What counts is a consistent schedule that’s calculated to help a student reach their goal score, whatever that may be. Again, you can calculate much time your student should devote to test prep by checking out our post here: How Much Studying Do I Actually Need To Do For The ACT?
Routines are easier to establish
Students don’t feel like they only have a couple of hours of precious free time each day during the summer the way they do during the school year. That means your student won’t be angry to find time to do ACT prep because they won’t have to pick between tutoring and doing the fun things with their friends that they want to be doing — There’s plenty of time for both! And if scheduling conflicts do come up, that’s okay! Sessions are WAY easier to reschedule during the summer, since students have more free time and more availability. This leads to fewer sessions skipped and thus fewer times that progress stops during the ACT prep process. Remember that consistency and frequent review are key for learning and retaining any new skills and information.
