SAT® Information for Parents
A Guide to Help Your Child Prepare for The Exam

A high SAT score can get your student into the college of their dreams and provide scholarship opportunities to help pay for tuition. Our SAT informational guide for parents will give you all the information you need to help your child prep for the test.

When Should Your Student Start Preparing for the SAT?

Students need ample time to review SAT study materials, take practice tests, and understand their strengths and weaknesses so they can focus on areas needing improvement. Six months of prep time is recommended. Students who don’t score as well as they want the first time can then retake the exam before most college application deadlines. Retaking the SAT allows your child to take advantage of superscoring.

An SAT prep schedule that includes one retake can look like this:

Encourage your child to take the PSAT® and other diagnostic practice tests that predict how well they'll score on the SAT. These assessments help your student determine which subject areas to work on and how much practice to put in to obtain their dream score.

While scheduling obstacles are sure to come up, work with your child to put together a study schedule that will see them preparing little by little regularly in the 3 to 6 months before the test. An ideal study plan will start in the spring or summer before junior year, but any prep time is better than none. Even students who establish their study strategies just a few months ahead of the test can make better use of the time available than those without a schedule.

How Can Parents Help Their Kids with the SAT?

The core components of an effective study plan are an early start and a realistic outlook. Key pointers to help prepare your child for the SAT include:

• Understand the SAT format and requirements
• Make sure your child follows a study schedule
• Find quality test-prep and study resources
• Become a study buddy and work with them
• Be there for emotional support

Understand the SAT

By better understanding the SAT, you can help your child study more effectively and limit their stress and misconceptions. Remember that the exam’s format has changed since you were in high school, so here are the differences between the previous version and today’s exam:

While the test format, topics, and concepts have significantly changed, scoring is the same. The SAT is scored on a 400 to 1600 point scale, with 200 to 800 points awarded for the Reading and Writing section and 400 to 800 points awarded for the Math section.

Students gain points for correct answers but are not penalized for incorrect choices. The SAT's new adaptive testing format adjusts the difficulty of questions in the second section of both subject areas based on how your child performs in the first section. The number of correct responses required for a given score varies from test to test based on what questions are served. On some tests, a student who missed 1 question in each section could still get a perfect 1600, while on another test a 1560.

The SAT is administered multiple times throughout the year, generally on a Saturday in March, May, June, August, October, November, and December. The deadline to sign up for a test is usually about a month before the test date, and scores are typically reported about 2 weeks after the test. For the current SAT test schedule, visit our SAT Registration and Test Dates page.

Make sure your child follows a schedule

Consistency outweighs intensity when it comes to practice. If your child begins studying 3 to 6 months ahead of the exam, dedicate one hour per week to test prep. The hour can be divided into 2 half-hour sessions over the week or three 20-minute sessions.

To help you get started:

• Sit down with your child and decide how much time they can reasonably set aside each week for SAT test prep.
• Create a study plan based on their learning aptitude and prep time.
• Save important SAT-related dates on your calendar to ensure your child can take tests with plenty of time to submit scores to their chosen colleges.

As you're developing that schedule, consider dividing time by exam section. A week studying the Reading section may provide more opportunities to develop and test new strategies – and learn from mistakes – than a week spent working on both sections.

If you need help creating a study plan, our guide on how to study for the SAT will show you how to develop a 6-month, 3-month, or 1-month schedule based on the amount of prep time available.