ACT or SAT?

It depends on your college goals. We recommend you research schools to find out what typical ACT/SAT scores of incoming students. For example, Google searching “UVA ACT scores” will bring up typical scores of 29-33.  The “typical” scores are the 25th – 75th percentile scores of incoming students.  We suggest shooting for 50th – 75th percentile scores which in the case of our UVA example would be an ACT range of 31-33.  

It depends on many factors: academic background, test history, learning profile, prep timeline, etc. For more details, take a look at our blog post on ACT vs SAT!

The earlier the better. We recommend you start the process during the summer of rising Junior year with a baseline practice test. Ideally, you should be done with standardized testing requirements by the end of Junior year.

As many times as necessary to achieve your goals. Most schools will take into consideration the four most recent official tests you have taken, so the more the merrier!

The SAT is by default “superscored,” meaning most schools consider your highest Math and highest Verbal scores across all submitted tests. The ACT does not officially do this, but a number of schools have adopted superscoring practices.

No. For schools to receive your test scores, you must send the full test record through the appropriate ACT or SAT channel.

No, unless you elect to send scores automatically to up to four institutions during registration (we do not advise this. See our blog post on ACT/SAT Registration and Score Submission Strategy).