The heavy lifting is behind you. You’ve spent months preparing for this test, drilling the content, refining your strategies, and getting more confident with each practice exam. In this final stretch, the work shifts from simply mastering content to setting the stage for success. The way you study, rest, and prepare in the days before the exam can have a meaningful impact on how well you perform when it counts.
This period — the handful of days before the test and the morning of — is when students often make avoidable mistakes: overstudying, changing their routines, or letting nerves derail their focus. But handled correctly, these final days can give you a sharper edge and help you walk into the test center ready to perform at your absolute best.
The Final Few Days: Time to Review
At this stage, the best and most effective thing you can do is review. Many students make the mistake of over-practicing with new worksheets or practice tests to try to hone their skills. In many cases, this does more harm than good, as more new material tends to breed anxiety with only days before the big test. Instead, go back through your notes, revisit the problems you struggled with, and re-read the feedback from your tutoring sessions. Like film study in sports, reviewing your previous mistakes will help you groove the muscle memory you’ll need to call upon on test day. Understanding what you did wrong – and what you should have done instead – is far more valuable than racing through another random set of practice questions.
That’s not to say you should stop practicing entirely. One timed run-through of a practice section or two in the days leading up to the test is a smart way to keep your pacing sharp. Just don’t overdo it by spamming practice questions and full-length timed sections every day throughout the week.
Equally important is how you treat the night before the test. There’s a temptation to ramp up your studying or intensify your practice, like you would the night before a big test in school. But standardized tests are different from the tests you take in school. They’re more about performance and less about how well you’ve memorized a small subset of facts. Cramming the night before will get you nowhere on a test like the SAT or ACT. Your focus should instead be on getting your mind and body on the same page, ready to rock the next morning. That means treating Friday night like a school night where you have no homework. Do something that relaxes you — watch a movie, hang out with friends, or play a game — and then head to bed at a natural time (not too early). Your brain will thank you for it the next day.
The Morning of: Consistency Is Key
Test morning is not the time to experiment. If you don’t usually have a big breakfast, don’t suddenly decide that today’s the day for pancakes and eggs. If you never drink coffee, now is not the time to start. Consistency keeps your body stable and your mind clear — and when you’re sitting in that testing room, both of those things matter more than you might think.
Be sure to dress in layers – you never know what the temperature will be in that test room, and it could even fluctuate throughout the morning. Be prepared for all possibilities – you can take that sweatshirt off and put it under your chair if you get hot, but you’ll definitely want it if the thermostat is set to 60.
Before you leave the house, make sure you have everything you’ll need: your admission ticket, photo ID, charged laptop or tablet (if taking the SAT), calculator, pencils, scrap paper (again, only if taking the SAT), snacks, and water. It’s an easy way to eliminate unnecessary stress on a morning when your mental energy should be reserved for the test itself.
It’s also worth “warming up” your brain before the test begins. On the way to the testing center or while you’re waiting to be called into the testing room, try working through a handful of practice questions — even just a few reading items or a couple of math problems. The goal isn’t to learn anything new but to prime your brain to think in “test mode” before the clock starts.
Game Day: Mental Approach to the Test Itself
When you get into the test room, the most important thing to remember is that the exam you will be taking in a few minutes is exactly the same as all the practice tests you’ve taken in your prep. It is not somehow more difficult because this one actually counts. In fact, there are consumer protection laws — often referred to as ‘truth in testing’ requirements — that require real SATs and ACTs to closely mirror the style and content of the practice tests they release to the public. They are legally required to make their real tests match the style and content of their practice tests. By this point, you’ve taken a number of practice tests, done dozens of practice sections and hundreds of practice questions. This test is in your bones. You know what to expect, and you should act like it. Be confident that everything you’re seeing you’ve seen many, many times before. You are ready for this task and this moment.
Once the test begins, the most important thing you can do is slow down — especially at the start. The desire to rush is strong, particularly when adrenaline is high, but rushing leads to exactly one thing: careless mistakes. Avoid unnecessary dings to your score by actively slowing yourself down and focusing primarily on accuracy. Make sure you’re reading the passages and questions carefully and completely. Make sure you’re doing your math correctly, that you’re not missing negative signs, that you’re completely understanding what each question is asking of you. Lock in, focus on getting those early questions right, and trust that your pace will follow. Once you find your rhythm, you’ll naturally move faster without sacrificing precision.
That said, make sure you keep moving through the section. There’s a fine line between being careful and being stuck. If you find yourself rereading a passage and still not processing it, or staring at a math question that refuses to click, move on. Momentum is everything, and nothing kills momentum faster than getting bogged down on one question you just can’t get. In these cases, stop wasting time and just pick an answer and move on. Flag the question so you remember to go back to it if you have time remaining at the end of the section. But forget about it for now. No one question is ever worth 5 minutes of your time, especially when you have no idea how to solve it.
Maximizing Performance: Math, Reading, and Breaks
On the math sections, your mantra should be “think before you act.” Students who jump right into doing calculations before they know what a question is testing are bound to struggle, especially as they progress through the section to the harder questions. Instead, ask yourself what the question is really testing and sketch out a quick plan for how you’ll solve it. The math questions on these tests are designed almost like puzzles or brain teasers. Half the battle is figuring out what skills or concepts each question is testing you on. If you can do that – if you can see through the question and discover what mathematical concept that question is testing you on – you’ll have a much easier time solving it than you would if you just launch headlong into mindlessly doing the calculations that feel right in the moment.
Reading and Writing demand a similar kind of intentional focus. The biggest difference between a good score and a great one often comes down to how well you handle the toughest passages — and that means slowing down, rereading when necessary, and thinking deeply about the subtle differences between answer choices. The students who rush these questions almost always leave easy points on the table.
Another underrated key to a great performance: using the break wisely. The 10-minute break you’ll get in the middle of the test is crucial to ensuring mental sharpness on the 2nd half of the test. Get up, stretch, leave the room. Go to the restroom and splash water on your face and mentally pump yourself up for a big second half. That extra juice will carry you through and help stave off the natural fatigue you’ll be feeling towards the end of your test.
Control The Testing Environment
And finally, although you can’t control most environmental factors in the test room, you can control some – or at least influence – the other people in the room. If the proctor is doing something distracting, don’t be afraid to politely speak up. Most proctors are well-intentioned but inexperienced, and they often don’t realize when something they’re doing is disruptive. If your proctor opens his or her laptop and starts typing away, raise your hand and politely ask them to stop. They will not be offended. And even if they are, that’s ok. This is your big day, not theirs. Your performance matters more than the emails they’re hoping to get to.
And if the windows are open and the cheers from a nearby soccer game are worming their way into your consciousness, ask the proctor to close them. Again – they want to help you, and they will be happy to accommodate requests like this to ensure a distraction-free environment. And remember, if you’re distracted by something, chances are many of the students in the room are also getting distracted by that same thing – but most of them will be too timid to speak up about it. They will be grateful to you for doing so.
The Bottom Line
The days leading up to the SAT or ACT aren’t about cramming — they’re about sharpening. The morning of the test isn’t about reinventing your routine — it’s about sticking to what works. And the test itself isn’t about perfection — it’s about poise, precision, and execution.
You’ve put in the work. Now it’s time to trust it. Stay calm, stay focused, and go show the test what you’re capable of.
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