Spring is an important time for high school students, academics, and most importantly high school juniors. As a junior, it is said to be the most important time to really focus on as it can affect after-high school plans. 

As we are starting to get back into the normal groove after Covid along comes back all the tests and more thorough college decisions. As it was seen, students through Covid years and the 3 following did not have to have as much worry as students of the before and following years. We are now expected to go back to submitting our SAT and performance tests such as those. This is a switch from not having to and not having the test-taking focus. 

Juniors Ava Kozak and Julia Pearl both remarked that they are not good test takers. That seems to be the way a lot of students feel. When asked about preparedness to possibly help students with the preparation most students’ responses were saying they don’t plan on studying or there are no resources they were shown in school.

Junior Grace Vandenstorm said, “In AP Lang we do blue book testing.”

This is an important study, as a majority of students use the AP classes as a prep for SAT and college. Using the blue book is a resource to get a good idea of the setup that the SAT and important test will be on, giving you not only the setup but similar questions.

This is all that most students have heard about preparations for SAT testing, and sometimes in math, but with no school time it’s an at-home assignment, which makes the students feel as if it is not helpful if they want to rush and get it done at home when not at school.

There was also another curve thrown at students in the 2024 school year. The tests have been moved from paper to Chromebook, so it is all electronic now. With this students have mixed feelings about whether it will be easier or just cause them more problems. It is hard to consistently be focused on a screen of work as it is different from a phone.

Pearl said, “It may be easier cause we don’t have to worry about writing it out.”

Senior, Beau DeTar, said, “I didn’t study as much as I wanted to” as well as “We didn’t really have the worry of turning in our test scores.”

This goes back to the point of the struggle of how we can be more prepared as this wasn’t as big of a deal these past couple of years due to Covid.

DeTar has given advice to our juniors. She said, “It is good to study every week, but I personally took a class that was 6 hours long and I just sat there one day and it taught us all the tips and tricks of how to answer questions.”

As the SAT approaches students continue to worry about their scores and how this can affect them in their college application process. Hopefully, students can get more last-minute test prep.