Not too long ago, one of my extraordinary ACT tutoring clients—let’s call him Bruno—came to our weekly session to ask my advice about something. His conundrum was one that I’ve encountered over and over again while helping high schoolers get into elite colleges for the past thirteen years. When, Bruno asked me, was he supposed to actually fit in studying for the ACT….given that his intense junior year courseload already gobbled up every spare second of his week?
This was not a roadblock that Bruno was used to. He’d been cruising along the test prep path just fine before fall semester midterms started. In fact, he’d always been super prepared for his sessions with me. This was an intelligent, high-achieving student who would never dream of going to school without his homework finished, and was probably a bit embarrassed that he hadn't been fully prepared for some of our most recent meetings. If he literally couldn’t find the time to sit down and study for the ACT, how could he possibly get the high score he needed for that dream school—a high score he knew he was capable of achieving?
Perhaps you or someone you know is in a similar pickle. You’re in the thick of junior spring, or senior fall, and you just don’t know how you’re going to get it all done—let alone done WELL. Here’s how I like to help students find the hours they need even when they think they have no free time to spare.
Article Contents: How to Find Time for SAT and ACT Test Prep.
How to Find Time for SAT and ACT Test Prep
1) DRAW OUT your schedule.
The first thing Bruno and I did was take out a blank sheet of paper, divide it into seven days (Sunday through Saturday), and block off all chunks of time that were occupied by known activities.
For example, block off a big chunk of time for school every Monday through Friday. Also incorporate the time you wake up. And you’re also going to label the time it takes you to shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, and travel to school. What extracurricular activities do you have every week? Block those off, too. Do you eat your dinner as a family at a certain time each night? Draw that in. Is there a certain time you prefer to go to bed? Yep—block that off, too. Sleep is crucial, people!
What about your weekends? Do you go to synagogue or church, or see your Uncle Stu for lunch every Saturday, or take pottery classes? They all get a designated slot. You get the idea.
Start here...see? A column for every day, with your school day serving as the basic blueprint upon which the rest of your schedule gets built.
2) Be realistic about how much time you need for schoolwork.
Bruno did an average of 2 hours of homework each school night, and needed about 3 hours of prep time a week to study for each test. He generally had 2 tests per week, so we needed to fit in an extra ~6 hours of study time somewhere. (Yeah, it's starting to sound like a gnarly math problem. That's why we drew it out! Seeing it on paper makes this all MUCH less abstract and more conquerable.)
Being honest with yourself about how much time you really need to ace that AP Chem exam or get the grade you need in French will mean that you're not fretting and having to retool the schedule every day. Instead, you’ll stay calm and focused because you’ll know what you need to do during a given hour. So think realistically, and make your best guesses.
Studying for tests is flexible—you could do it in many different time slots—so find where they fit best based on your work habits and daily responsibilities, and block these off, too.
Now we've filled in extracurricular commitments, recurring appointments, the needs of a daily routine, and even family time.
3) What's left? Your ACT or SAT study time!
In Bruno’s case, if he really got his homework done after school but before dinner (instead of vaguely planning to work but ending up perusing TikTok with his brother), he would have the post-dinner, pre-bed time slot to either study for a test in school or study for the ACT. Woohoo! We’d found his standardized test prep time! (And ACT prep wouldn’t even need that much time: 30 minutes to an hour in a given session, sure, but not 2.5 hours! There was still some TikTok time left after all. Phew!)
As an added bonus, we also found cushion in Bruno’s schedule for those weeks when he had extra tests or projects due: all Saturday afternoon and basically all of Sunday after lunch. This time could be used to do homework, chip away at a school project, do ACT prep, study for an exam...OR, he could opt to use that time to have some fun with family or friends. And because he wouldn’t be feeling ambiently stressed about all the stuff that was hanging over his head anymore, "fun" was suddenly a lot more fun.
Here's the bottom line: Bruno now knows that the way he spends her time is his choice, and he can make it an informed choice. He knows when those time slots are that he can do work or study. If he has fewer commitments on his plate in a given week, he can Instagram away! But if he has a particularly stressful week on the books, he knows what to focus on in his schedule so he doesn’t waste his opportunities to accomplish what he wants. It helped him feel calmer and get more done—a winning combination.
Now we've dropped in the blocks of time necessary to get homework done and blocked off time necessary to study for tests. Take a look at this schedule—it's a busy one, but it still has room to add a few compact blocks of ACT/SAT prep time. And taking social time into account and putting it on the schedule means that fun time can be guilt- and worry-free!
4) Take heart: this schedule is not forever!
When I have a ton of work or projects to do, I sometimes freak out a little about what that “means”—like, if my schedule’s so tight that I have to plan when I’ll be taking my showers for a few weeks, that can look like it means I’m never going to have free time again. EVER.
Thankfully, this worried way of thinking just isn’t true. There are discrete periods of time when I have to make every minute count and can’t waste a second, sure. But those periods of high intensity always end eventually.
It’s the same with junior and senior years, luckily. Studying for the SAT or ACT, writing college applications—there’s no denying that these things will take up a lot of your time. However, in the grand scheme of things, you probably have 3-4 months at most during both junior and senior years of such high-level stress. Then the pressure comes off! So just decide that you’re going to give it 100%—because…
the stress eventually ends.
I promise. Plus, learning to handle it now enables you to go on to achieve even bigger and better things with your life—and isn’t that the whole point of the college process?
