ACT Test: Are Prep Classes Worth Your Money?

Not to put pressure on high school students or anything, but the ACT and SAT are, perhaps, one of the most important tests you can take. If you want to go to college, that is.
Although, increasingly, many parents, including Babble’s own Meredith Carroll, say the tests are not an accurate measure of a student’s ability.
For most students, the first step to planning for college is by taking the ACT or SAT standardized test. Scores on this test determine the colleges to which students should apply. Lot of pressure, right? With the test playing that big a role in college admission many parents choose to shell out hundreds of dollars for ACT prep classes to help their children prepare.
But is it worth it?
As Madeleine Behr reports over on Centraltimes.org, while the prep classes can be boring and seem pointless, you can get a lot out of the class you can’t get from a test prep book and they are absolutely worth parents’ money – if students stay awake – which Behr admits half her class did not.

My teacher taught strategies and constantly drilled us with English grammar exercises and math from Algebra 1 and Geometry. Every week, we would get the same assignments, but with different words and numbers, so we really learned how to do the problems. After so much repetition, it’s easy to know what to do. And, more importantly, during the test, you can do those questions quickly instead of stressing out over those, when there are much harder questions on the way.

Did you know some colleges award money when students earn a specific score? I didn’t know this, but then, my ACT taking days are long over. Indiana Universityawards $4,000 per year to students who have an ACT score of a 27 to a 29. Hey! I would have fit into that bracket! They also award $9,000 per year to students who achieve a 30 or higher on the ACT.  I would not have fit into that bracket.
Here’s the thing:  I didn’t study for the ACT. I didn’t even really plan to take it. A friend – whose parents shelled out big money for her prep classes – made me sign up with her. I forgot about the test until the night before.  She spent hours studying.  I scored a 27. She got a 21. She took another prep class and brought her score up a little higher but didn’t come close to tying my score.