A parent's guide to test prep

Many colleges accept the SAT. Some also accept the CLT (Classic Learning Test), which is popular with classical and Christian schools and home-schooling families. Check each college your child is considering; their admissions pages say which tests they accept.

• A common plan is two to three months of practice before a test date, a little on most days.
• A first full practice test early on shows where the time should go.
• Younger students (grades 7 to 10) can build reading, grammar and math habits with Owl Test Prep Junior, without any test pressure.

Short and often beats long and rare. Fifteen to twenty minutes most days, plus a full practice test every couple of weeks near the end, is a sound rhythm. The study plan in the app spreads the work to the test date.

• Practice scores on any site, ours included, are estimates, not official scores.
• Watch the trend over several tests more than any one number.
• Look at the skills, not just the total: the skill map shows the few that are costing the most points.
• Time matters: the results show questions rushed (missed in under half the target time) and questions right but slow.

• Ask what they learned, not how long they practiced.
• Celebrate the streak, and let a missed day go.
• Keep phones out of full practice tests, so the timing is honest.
• Sit in on one review of a full test: going over the misses is where most of the learning happens.

With any plan, a student can send a weekly email report to a parent, and the parent sees that student on the family dashboard: minutes, accuracy by skill and score trend. With Owl Family ($129 a year), one parent covers up to 6 children, each with their own account.