Test Prep In The Summer

Summer is here again, and for many students that means camp, jobs, off-season sports practices, volunteer projects—anything but a spare minute of idle time to be young and carefree.

In a lot of cases, it also mean it’s time to get ready for the SAT, LSAT, GMAT, or GRE.

When I first got into this field, I expected my summers to be slow.  That was a mistake.  The summer is one of my busiest times of year.  There’s a certain logic to this way of doing things that I’ve come to understand, even if I partially disagree with it.

The basic idea behind summer study, as you can probably imagine, is that it lets you get things out of the way that you’re too busy to do during the school year.

That’s not a bad idea, as far as it goes.  But most people who devote part of the summer to test prep use the “studying” approach that I hate so much, which is why they need three months to devote to a single test.  Google summer SAT camps and you’ll find many that offer weeks of extremely intensive preparation for thousands of dollars.

Ordinarily I would point out that SAT prep shouldn’t cost thousands of dollars or take weeks and weeks, but I’ve covered that idea extensively in other posts on this web site.

Instead, I’d like to say here that the summer should be a time of relaxation and recreation.  I know that sounds like a radical idea these days, but hear me out.

American high school students angling for spots in competitive colleges do more busy work today than they ever have.  If they aren’t cramming for an AP exam, playing on a championship sports team, or auditioning for the lead role in a school musical, then they’re coordinating volunteer programs or planning a campaign for the next student government election.

College students trying to make it into grad school aren’t much better off.  They’re  expected to work full-time internships in their field during the summer.

It’s a shame that many of today’s students don’t really get a summer.  Summer should be a time to relax a little bit and enjoy your youth while you still can.  Unfortunately, that just isn’t the case anymore.

So please, for your own sake, think twice about spending thousands of dollars on an intensive prep class that’s going to take up a lot of your summer.  There are cheaper, easier, more efficient ways to prepare.  Of course, I recommend my own test-prep guides as a way to get higher scores while saving time and money.  (For more on that, please check out my test-prep white paper.)  But even if you don’t go with my approach, I hope you’ll pick something that lets you relax and savor your summer freedom while you still have it.