Let me tell you about a type of situation I hear about ALL the time from my elite test prep clients. It’s particularly common if someone is about to take the ACT, SAT, or Digital SAT for the very first time. What do you say—do any of these thoughts or behaviors sound familiar?:
It’s only a few weeks before you sit for the SAT, Digital SAT, or ACT—but you keep making little mistakes on types of questions you’ve definitely studied hard, like subject-verb agreement or systems of linear equations.
Maybe you’ve even made huge strides in one or two sections (English or Math, for example), but you have another section (like Science) that won’t improve no matter what you do.
You just can’t seem to focus. When you sit down to do another practice test, you hear that little negative-Nancy voice inside start to whisper, “who cares?” or “you’re going to mess it up anyways.”
In fact, that nasty inner critic has gotten SO LOUD that you’ll do ANYTHING to make it shut up! And you know JUST what to do to take the mental chatter away: CHANGE TO THE OTHER TEST!
In other words, if you’re studying for the ACT, you’re now dreaming hard about changing tack to the No-Calculator land of the SAT or experimenting with the new landscape of the Digital SAT. After all, you’ll get more time for pretty much all the sections, right?
And if you’re signed up to take the SAT, you’re starting to dream of changing course to the ACT: I mean, geez, wouldn’t it be nice for those reading texts and math word problems to be more straightforward, right?
And I GET IT! It all seems SO rational, SO real, SO legitimate.
I’m I here to tell you it’s all BS.
To explain how I could possibly know what’s going on in YOUR head (and what you should do about it), let me tell a short story. A few years back, I did something a little nuts. I walked on fire…barefoot. Well, to be clear, the fire had gone out, so I just walked on 2000-degree coals for about 9 or 10 steps, but still. And MAN, in the hours leading up to my fire walk (kids, do NOT try this at home!), my mind went crazy with every single reason why I shouldn’t do it:
I might burn my feet! And not fit into my shoes for my wedding in just a few weeks!
Even worse: what if I get so startled by the heat that I fall in the coals and burn my face?!
What’s the point? I mean, do I really need to walk on burning coals to show myself that I can? What am I really going to get out of it?
And also, I know I could do it if I wanted to…so why do I have to actually do it? I know I could.
It’s midnight, and I’m POOPED! I should skip this and go home. I’m not really missing anything. It’s not really going to change my life in any way.
I promised my fiancée I wouldn’t.
It wasn’t until I saw a dear friend of mine start to verbalize some of these exact same thoughts (minus the fiancée part!) that I had a sudden realization: these aren’t real, valid “reasons” not to do something—they’re just FEAR. Fear, pure and simple.
So, my magic words to you, dear high school juniors and seniors who are convinced that you’ve been studying for the wrong test this whole time and now need to change course a week or two before the SAT or Digital SAT or ACT: that’s just FEAR talking. In fact, your mind is concocting a potent witches’ brew of BS. But DON’T you swallow that potion!
Here’s what got me to actually walk on fire:
I took a deep breath and gently recognized that all these very rational-seeming reasons were, in fact, total horse crap. Nothing but FEAR taking the reins.
I saw that literally 15,000 other people were doing it and not getting burned. While I’m pretty freakin’ awesome and smart and talented, I’m not so special as a human to be the 1 in 15,000 that would get burned.
I reminded myself that I had been training for this challenge. I knew exactly what to do, where to focus my gaze, what mantra to say out loud, how to walk.
In that moment before taking my first step with my right foot onto the red coals, I had to just trust my training and the teacher who trained me. And GO!
So if you're about to walk on fire—mentally speaking, by taking your first SAT or ACT—ask yourself these questions before you decide to bail out because of fear:
Did I already take diagnostic tests at the beginning of my test prep process to see how I’d do on both tests?
Did I—or a test prep expert—determine which test would be more advantageous for me to do based on those diagnostics?
Have I been progressing on that test? Like, not from last month or last week, but have I gone up AT ALL in ANY SECTION from my diagnostic test? Even a little bit? Maybe not to target score levels, but at least higher?
If you can answer yes to all three of these questions, which I’m sure you can, then I promise you, IT’S NOT THE WRONG TEST. YOU’RE JUST AFRAID. And that’s totally normal. But fear shouldn't dictate your actions.
If you’re convinced you’re different from everybody else (like the other 15,000 people who firewalked and DIDN’T get burned), then you can always do this simple trick: take a mock test of the one you’re thinking of switching to. It's only a couple of hours, and it might be worth it if it'll really help put your mind at ease.
There are only three things that can happen:
You can’t even finish it, because you remember how much you hated the SAT/Digital SAT and are soooo glad you chose the ACT, or vice versa.
You CAN get through it, and the score is lower than the test you’re preparing for. (Which we already knew from the diagnostic testing in the first place. Hopefully, no one says “Told you so!” too loudly…)
You score much higher on the new test than the old test.
Now #3 basically NEVER happens, but if you really ARE the 1 in 15,000, go for it! Register for the next sitting of the new test.
BUT STILL SIT FOR THE OLD ONE, please! Trust me. I've seen this genre of meltdown many times. And I’m here to tell you that you’re almost certainly on the right track with the test you’ve been working towards.
If you’ve still got nagging doubts as to whether you’re signed up for the right test—or how to plan for any other element of the SAT, Digital SAT, or ACT—I’m here to ease your nerves. Learn more about working with me one-on-one, a service where I take the scary big-picture thinking off your plate so you can focus on actually studying!
