I came to the US as international student almost a year ago. I heard about some great schools and the SAT/ ACT tests and just started prep recently. I need advice about my schedule and how to prep for college.
I don't have any financial help from anywhere, so I am working about 25 hours a week. My new SAT score was about 900. I am planning to apply early action - I'm especially interested in Stanford and Harvard and other top US schools, and I would like to study entrepreneurship or engineering.
I can prep for 6-7 hours a day, and I will soon be starting an SAT prep program at my college. Should i cut work hours to study more, or is it enough study 6-7 hours a day? I don't have a lot of time (until October 1st for the SAT)...
Studying 6-7 hours a day should be enough time, assuming you're studying in the most effective way possible. As our 6-step guide on how long to study for the SAT states, if your initial SAT score is below 1000, then you have a good chance of making drastic improvements through focused studying. We generally recommend studying 150+ hours for a 300+ point score gain, which is very doable with >90 days until the next SAT.
I'd also recommend reassessing your SAT studying progress halfway through the time remaining (so by around August 15th or so) by taking a realistic, full-length practice test. If you find that your score is not responding to your studying, you may want to reassess the number of hours you're working; however, even then the first thing you should do is consider whether or not your studying methods are effective, rather than cutting your work hours. Large score leaps require large amounts of hours of studying, but there is an upper limit to how much time you can spend on the SAT and still be effective.