Only a decade ago, test prep seemed to be a service available only to those willing to invest thousands of dollars in private tutoring. Sure, you could shoestring it by buying a book or two at Barnes & Noble but even that could set you back about fifty dollars.
All that has changed—and in a big way. With the College Board partnering with Khan Academy and the proliferation of blogs such as PWN the SAT and Magoosh’s High School Blog, free prep is quickly becoming the norm. So how does all this free prep stack up against fifty bucks worth of prep books?
It completely blows it out of the water.
Free SAT Practice Resources:
1. Khan Academy
The breadth of material and the quality of instruction you get here is excellent (though the math is better than the verbal). That Khan Academy, with all the instructional material (including free SAT practice tests from College Board), is free is mind blowing. I’d argue—though this isn’t very empirical—that Khan is better than some 3,000 dollar prep courses, especially when the instructor has limited experience or little motivation.
As of now, Khan is only available for the SAT. But its thousands of free math lesson videos cover most of the concepts on the ACT math test, too. Luckily, math concepts are fairly transferrable from one test to another.
2. PWN the SAT
This blog features great advice from a tutor who really understands the test. I’d say his math content is stronger, but the verbal advice is still solid. PWN sells books on Amazon, but many of these can also be found spread out over the blog.
3. Magoosh High School Blog
Like PWN the SAT, Magoosh has a blog offering tons of free SAT advice, lesson videos, and tips. Magoosh also has a product (disclaimer: I create SAT content for Magoosh) and you can access a certain number of videos for free.
4. The College Board
The College Board creates the SAT, so it’s good to take advantage of any free resources that come your way. For the old SAT they offered a “question of the day”. This feature, sadly, is now gone. What they do offer are practice SAT tests and a practice PSAT. However, this content overlaps with what you can get through Khan Academy. So for now, the College Board isn’t giving us too much new.
Free ACT Practice Resources
Unfortunately, ACT practice resources aren’t quite as robust as SAT offerings. At the same time, the ACT is trying to rip a page from the College Board’s playbook by offering free content through its partnership with Kaplan. This content, though, will only be free for those who qualify as lower income. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay $200, which at least is better than $2,000. We will just have to wait a bit for this. For now we have the following:
1. ACT practice test
Like the College Board tests, these ACT practice tests are written by the creators—in this case, the ACT. Unfortunately, as is also the case with the College Board, there are no explanations, only answer choices.
2. Magoosh High School Blog
Like the SAT section of the blog, you’ll get lots of free information covering all aspects of the test in the ACT section of the Magoosh HS Blog. There will be practice content from time to time, so you can practice ACT questions created by the people at Magoosh
3. Magoosh ACT flashcards
These flashcards are great because they take concepts fundamentals essential to the ACT and break them down in flashcard form. That means you can study on the go.
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