The single biggest mistake that we see every year is students taking the SAT too early. Now with summer options curtailed, more rising 11th graders think that they can just use the entire summer to prepare for the SAT and then "get it out of the way" in August. No. Just no.
There are two main arguments against:
A) The SAT tests content that is learned in school. The longer a student spends in school reading, writing, and doing math then broadly, the better the SAT score. In math in particular many students haven't covered all the content that is tested on the SAT until well into 11th grade.
B) The start of 11th grade is vital for university applications and if possible students should throttle back on other activities as much as possible to ensure that they hit the ground running and keep that GPA up. Clearing the decks and not doing SAT-related activities during the school year until November and then targeting the December test is a decent compromise as that allows a few more later bites of the apple in March/May/August if need be.
We can't dictate when kids actually take the test, and despite some 30 years experience in test prep, students regularly blithely think they know best and test in August or October of their 11th grade. This often leads to kids getting stuck in a Sisyphean cycle of test/prep/test/prep/test that consumes way too much of their 11th grade, and results in the same score they would have gotten from just holding off a bit.
The only (sort of) rational argument for testing earlier than December of 11th grade was for potential student athletes who need to fulfil NCAA testing requirements. The NCAA has dropped this requirement for now, so this argument no longer stands.
If the student is a high achiever who will score a 1450 plus in August with loads of prep, the same student will likely score over 1500 with next to no prep in December and maybe 1550 come the following March. Older students score higher, it is just that simple.
We have our modular test prep programs that use the summer effectively and have a break before resuming leading to the December test. These are specifically planned for rising 11th graders. Doing any SAT-specific prep earlier than the summer before 11th grade is not something that we would condone for any reason, and indeed we will not take such students into our test prep programs - though we'd welcome them into our other 101 and Head Start enrichment programs, as appropriate. We only work with students who are preparing for the right test at the right time. We turn business away regularly from students looking to start too early, and also those students who really don't need any formal preparation.
