In order to score well on standardized tests, especially with critical reading section, the number one advice is to read, read, read and read. Read to know about something you are curious about and also something entertaining. One should be finding books and magazines and newspapers about both difficult and interesting topics and read them in daily basis. Anyone who tells you that high SAT score is valid without a lot of reading is wrong.

Image is credited to Dennis Vu Photography for Unleashed Media.

Now for some students who attempted to take SAT and did not do well enough to apply for Ivy League schools, the alternate option is to consider ACT. There are plenty of stories of people who did not score as much for SAT but they did very well in ACT compared to the equivalent score ranges for SAT score. ACT is much a different test than SAT, but if you are one of those students who just cannot test like the way SAT wants you to, considering ACT isn’t a bad idea – given how popular it is with competitive schools, especially on the West Coast.

Going back to SAT, good median scores for each section are about 740 points and ideally you should be aiming to be above the median in order to be successful. One thing that I do want to mention is that there are people with 3.6 GPA and SAT score of 1770 who are accepted into a Ivy League schools, but ideally (and few “n” – statistically – should not give you comfort into thinking this is the common incidents) if you’re attempting to apply to these schools and your score is under 2000 or even slightly over 2100, you should definitely consider retaking, and when you do, yes make sure that you put in a lot of efforts to compensate for the first time.

It’s a fierce journey for high school students, but if you are set in getting to Ivy League schools, aim to do well for SAT – and if that fails, maybe ACT is a valid option. But you shouldn’t just blindly take ACT without studying it either.

In regards to other competitive school, such as Johns Hopkins, you should still looking to score about at least 700 for each section but there are people who certainly getting in with scores higher and lower than that. The overall score range is probably around 2100 to 2300, but as you can guess, this is really word-of-mouth, and these schools are as competitive to get in.