When it comes to the standardized tests that can shape futures for young Americans, many have posited the question: When do I begin working with my child for these tests? As everyone will have different expectations, no answer could be simple and direct. This outline will serve as our best attempt to guide parents through personalized expectations for the SAT and the ACT.

In many ways, you’ve already begun the process without knowing it. Even if you’re reading this as the parent of a middle-schooler or elementary-schooler, certain fundamental techniques imparted at this stage of your child’s development will be relevant come test time. Eliminating extraneous information from word problems, logical progression pattern recognition and part-of-speech identification are all core fundamentals learned early that often must be re-taught to Juniors for the tests. Reinforcing these core essentials now can save money, time and energy in the future.

For parents of high-schoolers, it’s never too early or too late to begin preparing for the SAT or the ACT. Beginning the process with a decision about which test to take often proves the most frugal, as the tests and the preparation both can be expensive. To better understand each test separately, see this post on SAT vs ACT. High schools sometimes provide their own version of test preparation curriculum, and some even have free versions of the ACT or SAT administered during school time. These can be incredibly beneficial for certain students. However, most students need more intensive reviews to maximize their testing potential.

The most critical time to begin is before 11th grade. Sophomore year is crucial to the process, since most students will want to consider Junior year exclusively as a test and college application year. For those who wait until Junior year to begin test review, the stress can be intolerable. Avoiding this can be as easy as pro-actively attacking the problem one year sooner. “Study hard, test easy” serves as a helpful guide into this point of view.

Ideally, students could gain reinforcement retention during the initial teaching of the subject. To understand when this initial learning happens, let’s first quickly examine the ACT and SAT themselves. The tests cover from elementary school core fundamentals up through the end of Junior year, according to most curricula.

Generally, we recommend no less than 10 weeks of active preparation. This means that for those looking to take tests in the fall of their Junior or Senior years, the ideal time to begin ‘cramming’ will be early in the summer months. Lots of useful knowledge already gets lost over the summer, and classes to prepare for the ACT and the SAT can serve dual purpose in retaining that knowledge and increasing readiness for the test.