18 Oct Road Map for October: Juniors
Juniors are generally busy in October with increasingly challenging academics and extracurricular activities that are ramping up. I hope you’re enjoying your classes and finding enjoyment and meaning in your sports, visual and performing arts, clubs, and other things you spend time on. This is a good time to update your record of these pursuits, which you’ll be sharing later in college applications. You might do that in the form of a resume (see samples here), or simply a list of activities and your accomplishments or highlights for each.
Most of you also took or are taking the PSAT this month. The SAT and PSAT are now digital, and you may have heard that the ACT announced this summer that they’ll be offering a digital exam starting in April. For those students taking the digital ACT, there will be other changes as well, including a choice on whether to take the Science section, a shorter test overall, and more time per question. By fall of 2025 these changes will also be part of the paper test. (You can learn more details here.)
It is not clear, however, how widely available the digital ACT will be this spring. At this time there are no plans to discontinue the paper exam, and in fact we may see most ACT students taking the test on paper in April, June and July if digital test sites are limited and fill quickly. So what does this mean for students who will be testing this school year? If you haven’t already decided between the SAT and ACT, this is a good time to take a practice ACT, which you can compare with your PSAT when scores come in, and make a thoughtful choice about which exam is best for you. Then you can think through the best plan by determining whether you have an advantage on one of the tests or a preference for one of them, and which testing calendar works best for you in light of your other commitments during the year.
For many students, the SAT/ACT conversation is the kickoff to the college admissions process. If you’re looking for support on this or other topics, I hope you’ll contact me about individual advising.