What is the best time to take the SAT? Is there a harder SAT month, and how and when should you prepare for the SAT to make sure that everything is super awesome? I’m going to give you the whole rundown. There are a lot of factors to consider when you’re trying to pick the best SAT test dates for you.
The first question that I have is if you are going to prep at all. Are you a potential athletic recruit? Do you want to score in the top 5% or higher on the test or 3% or higher? Do you want to be a National Merit finalist? How are you scoring now, and how much improvement do you want to work toward? What is your personal schedule? When will you have time to devote to studying for this test? Have you taken algebra 2 or pre-calculus? And then the other thing that you have to take into consideration is when are tests available to you? The first place you should look is the national test date schedule.
Some really exciting news: the SAT just added a new test date for September 2025. Previously we had six national test dates a year, but this year we have seven, which is awesome. One of the things that I love to have students do often is take the test close together, and this gives us another test date that’s really close together next to other test dates, and I love that. The other thing that you can consider is when a school day test might be available to you from your high school. There are giant testing windows. If you’re not sure if your school does one, talk to your counselor or administration and see if that might be available. If they don’t offer one, you could suggest it.
The first thing I’ll see is when to take the SAT. Almost no one needs to take the SAT anytime earlier than about spring of sophomore year. However, I think everyone should take a practice SAT, called the PSAT, in October of sophomore year if your school makes it available to you. Some schools make it available to sophomores, but it’s optional. If that’s the case, take it because it’s good to get that diagnostic information. If your school doesn’t offer this, not to fret, there’s no harm or foul, but you should take a practice test fall of your sophomore year to see where you’re at so you can plan out the rest of your schedule and figure out how much time you need to prep if that’s something you want to do. You can either take a PSAT or a practice SAT. You can find those in the Blue Book app.
Next, in terms of general schedule, most students are going to take the SAT at some point during their junior year. I’m going to get into who should probably take it earlier in their junior year in a bit. Some may also take it in the spring of sophomore year or fall of senior year. I’ll get into those cases as well.
How many times should you take the SAT for most students? The answer is twice. For some students, the answer is even three times, especially if you’re a very competitive candidate. Why should you take it twice if you get a score that you think is pretty good? Well, there’s something called super scoring. Super scoring is a process that the majority of colleges and universities in the United States do, not all of them, but a majority of them. Over half. What it is is that when you send your SAT scores, if you send more than one SAT score, the school will take the highest math, reading, and writing scores, and they will put that on your profile. You will be judged by the combination of the highest scores. For example, let’s say you went in and you took the test and you got a 1530, and then you retook the test. You got a 1530 again, but the first time you took that test, maybe your math was 20 points higher and your reading was a little lower, and maybe the next time you took the test, your reading was 20 points higher than the first time, but your math was a little bit lower. If you superscored that, even though you got a 1530 twice on the SAT, you just got a 1550 superscore. You usually can optimize this process with a tiny little bump. That’s why I say that people should take it twice, even if you think you did okay. Take it twice. You get that super score, and you get a little bit of a bump potentially. The worst thing that happens is it doesn’t go up, but not a bad deal. And you can even take it three times, and that’s totally fine. Can you take it more than that? Absolutely. You’re not going to get flagged by the College Board unless you take it 10 times or more. Students can get burned out, so I don’t usually recommend you plan on taking it more than about three times, but I’ve had plenty of students take it five times, and they’re fine.
When is it too late to take the SAT? Well, most colleges’ and universities’ regular decision deadline is early January, so you’ve got to have a test before that, and the December SAT is kind of your last chance there. I will say, though, it’s really good to take the test two or three times before the October test date because if you want it to be included in an early action or early decision application, that is going to be your last test date that will absolutely be included and considered. So you’re aiming to be done with this by October of senior year. For most people, again, if you need that Hail Mary, there’s still the November and December options.
When specifically is the best time for you to take the SAT? So the first thing I’m going to address is if you are not going to prepare for the SAT, I would say you should probably take it twice. The first time I would take it is either June of junior year or September of senior year. The reason I say this is that if you’re not prepping for it, your brain’s not going to be wired to be ready for it. So I want you to be in school right before you take it. June, you probably just had finals; your brain’s going to be on, and you’re going to have just worked really hard to study for your finals. In September, you’ve rolled into school, you’ve gotten things started, so your brain is active enough to do well on the test. You’re not having that slump over the summer. The worst test date for students who aren’t prepping at all for me is August because your brain maybe hasn’t warmed up as much because the school year has just started or maybe not even started yet, and that has been shown to create lower test scores in students if you haven’t been doing any academic work. So that’s a little bit dangerous; if you’re not prepping, avoid the August test.
And then the other thing I would say is if I wasn’t prepping for the SAT, I’d probably try to take it again in like November or December of senior year, and the reason is you’re relying just on your brain knowledge, and the longer you’re in school, the better you’re hopefully getting at reading comprehension and problem-solving. There also tend to be kind of sleepy test dates, meaning they’re not as well populated. I would imagine the scoring on them might be a little bit easier, and we’re going to get into that in a little bit, but that would be my second recommendation for a second test.
Now the rest of this is dedicated to everyone who does want to study for the test. Next question: are you an athlete looking to be recruited? If so, test early and test often. I would say you want to take your first take of the test no later than June of sophomore year. Ideally, maybe even March or May, or if you have a school day test, you can do that. So if you’re a sophomore and an athletic recruit, it’s good to get on early. As an example, I was working with a recruit last year who was getting recruited by Harvard, and they kind of said anything over 1400 is good enough. But if you could get a 1500, that would be great, right? And that’s why you’re doing it early and often. If you could just get to that 1400, they know that they can vie for you for their team. But a higher score is also going to be beneficial. And if you can pull that in before the total deadline, that’s great too. So that’s why we want it early and often, because the scores start to matter earlier. We don’t want to just wait until we get the score we really want before we test, which sometimes we do with other students. We want to get as much information as possible because even a low score could help you a little bit over a lower score.
The next thing I want to ask is, how are you planning to prep? If you’re planning to self-study or you’re planning to take a group class, give yourself a bigger runway. If you’re an overachiever and you want to score really high on your PSAT and you want to do a group class or want to try self-studying, well, then maybe I’d put something on the books in June of sophomore year, assuming you’ve taken algebra two by the end of that. And the reason that I say this is, in my experience, the success rate for self-prep or group classes is much lower than private tutoring. For private tutoring, about 80 to 90 percent of my students get the scores they want and really get the most out of prep. Group classes we probably drop down, and maybe it’s different for some people with in-person classes, but online Zoom classes are very convenient in terms of time. You don’t have to drive around if you’re super busy. You’ve got sports. You can do makeup lessons because everything’s videotaped. There are lots of advantages to it, but I would say about 40 to 50 percent of my students actually do all the work. A lot of students get really busy when they have their AP class homework or they have my SAT homework and they barely got sleep. Guess what’s going to give? The SAT homework. So that’s part of what happens. Reality happens, and your best-laid plans don’t always materialize. So being cognizant of that, I recommend you try to take the test a little bit early if you want to self-study or do group classes. And I would say only 5 to 10 percent of students who decide they’re going to self-prep actually self-prep to the max. It is rare. You might be in that range, but not everyone is. And I just warn parents, acknowledge that, and if you want to be a self-prepper, just get started super early. Put a date on the book so that you’re motivated to try to use that date as fuel for the fire. See if it works. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, you’ve got time to regroup.
Next up, if you’re an overachiever who plans to score in the top 3 percent on the test, my favorite times to take the SAT are the August test, the September test, and the October test. Here’s why: the PSAT is a one-shot deal. If you want to be a National Merit Scholar, a National Merit Commended Student, you have to do it through your PSAT. There is one time when the majority of schools give the PSAT, and it is October. You can only pretty much take it on the day that your school gives. Because it’s a one-shot kind of deal, my goal with my top students is to have them prep once and then to perform, perform, perform all in a row. I want to schedule a test as tightly as possible so that there’s as little pain as possible, and we just get to the plate and then home run, home run, home run. That is my favorite prep schedule for a lot of my students. I would say over half of my students, that’s the prep schedule. We plan for junior year in August, September, and October, and then add the PSAT in October. I have some students also who have a school day test in October; that’s just an extra test, and you can kind of decide how you want to balance everything out.
Next point: avoid taking the test when you’re super busy. What does that mean? If you’re taking seven APs at once, be careful and don’t take that May SAT. It’s going to run right up against all your AP exams; don’t do it. Does your school get out in late May, and you’ve got like three weeks to kill before summer actually starts? Awesome, then you might be a great candidate for the June national test date. You can take three weeks and just study like crazy until your summer starts and get your SAT knocked out. Do you have fall sports but not in spring? Then you might be a candidate for the March SAT, maybe even a school day test in the spring. Make sure you have the brain space and energy to prepare and focus for the exam at least four weeks leading into that test date. And that’s probably one of the most important factors. You need to have the time to study, you need to have the time to ramp in, and then I like to cluster a few dates together so students don’t go crazy. They don’t have to study for it a zillion times.
Also, avoid taking the test if you haven’t finished algebra 2. Now, if you’re at the very end of algebra 2, the May or June test after you finish algebra 2 can be a great time to take it. There’s lots of algebra 2 on this test, so being fresh on algebra 2 is actually great. Ensure that you have enough prep if you haven’t done trigonometry. There are a few trig-ish kinds of questions, but not very many. It’s something that you can definitely overcome with prep as long as you make the effort. Algebra 2, though, there’s so much on the test that I really think you need that foundation.
The last question is a frequently asked question I get from students: is there a harder SAT? Is there a day that if you take the SAT on this date, it’s going to be so hard? If there is, it’s probably August and October, and that’s because that’s when all my overachievers are taking it. If you’ve got lots of really smart kids taking the test at once, the equating is going to be a little bit more of a challenge. Equating is basically the curve, but it’s not a curve because when you take the SAT, there are two questions that don’t count toward your score called non-operative items. Well, those two questions that are randomly assigned to students so they can test out new questions are all over the place on test days throughout America. That’s how they level out the questions and see how hard they are. But that process isn’t perfect, and the sample size is much smaller for who’s seeing those questions than the sample size for who sees the whole test. So on test day, they have a huge sample of students who’ve taken this test, and they’re going to nudge that equating formula to try to make every test an equally scored difficulty level, essentially. If you’re taking it on a day with lots of really qualified and smart students, it’s going to make that equating formula a little bit tougher to crack. It doesn’t mean to not use those test dates. They’re really good test dates, and that’s why they’re so popular. But if you’re trying to game the system and, you know, with a stroke of luck, get a little bit higher on the test or super score, maybe avoid those dates. That’s why for people who aren’t studying at all, avoid those dates. I also find that school day tests sometimes have a better equating scale. I sometimes have students get amazing scores on a school day test. This is all hearsay, conjecture, and speculation. Don’t quote me on any of this. But I hope this was all helpful!
