Is your teenager a great student who happens to be bad on big tests?
Is the SAT or ACT giving them a surprisingly hard time?
Is there a big mismatch between their stellar grades and their weak test scores?
Your teenager can turn this challenge into an opportunity for success – not just on the SAT, but for life!
To take a step toward the solution, let's take a closer look at the problem..
The biggest part of the problem is a wrong idea about what the SAT and ACT actually are.
Parents and students approach them as if they were intelligence tests.
They're not intelligence tests, and no student should take their SAT or ACT score as an indication of how smart they are.
This wrong idea is where most students go astray on the SAT or ACT.
It's why they don't practice enough and why they practice the wrong way.
If you thought the thing was an intelligence test, why would you practice?
Wouldn't you just walk in and take it?
So, if the SAT and ACT are not intelligence tests, then what are they?
They're games of skill!
The best way to approach the SAT and ACT is to see them for what they really are -- games of skill!
And now it's easy to see why your teenager might do great in the classroom and badly on the standardized test.
It's because they are two different games!
The idea is so simple that it is completely overlooked.
The overriding reason why some teenagers do great in school but badly on tests is that they've mastered the game of getting good grades and they've not yet mastered the game of scoring high on standardized tests
If we think about it, is it really so surprising?
Consider tennis champions Serena WIlliams or Roger Federer -- or more recent champions like Aryna Sabalenka and Carlos Alcaraz.
Great tennis players, right?
If they switched to table tennis, would we expect them automatically to be the world's best?
Would we say, "well, they have great hand-eye coordination, so they'll immediately rise to the top of table tennis competition"?
Of course not -- tennis and table tennis are two different games!
So here's the key for your teenager:
To recognize that the classroom and the big test are two different games, and to set about mastering their new game!
In the next part of this article (part 3), I'll share with you how to guide your teenager to approach the SAT or ACT as a game of skill.
