The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), which is on high school students radars starting freshman year, is upon us after three years of  PSATs and many e-mails from the Princeton Review, the College Board and a host of other entities claiming to be the expert sources for all things related to the college application process. During the first three years of high school, we've accepted the reality our college-bound student has to face just to be able to apply to college. So brace yourselves as I try to break down the approaching hurricane of examinations into smaller showers of information we can hold an umbrella to.

Below are seven tips I hope will help you weather the pre-college exam storm:

1. PSAT - Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test. Starting freshman year, high school students practice for the real SAT. My husband and I attended two scores back sessions, and after leaving the first session with a higher level of anxiety about what our son needed to do to increase his score, a year later we walked out of the second session more at ease with the unavoidable reality: Study and prepare for the real SAT in March of this year. After that one, there's only one more do-over left!

2. AP Exams - Students take Advance Placement course exams, usually starting sophomore year, if they took AP courses. As a junior, these tests will be taken again in May.

3. SAT - Scholastic Aptitude Test - This is The Biggie. According to our son's counselor, he can take it twice - once as a junior and then again as a senior in September or October - and choose the best score to send in with college applications. Then, the do-overs are, well, over!

4. SAT Subject Tests - He definitely has to take at least two of these subject area tests, one in each level, to apply to a UC school: Berkley, Los Angeles, and San Diego among them. Choose the subjects you're best at: English literature, history, social studies or math (level 2), science or languages. These exams are normally offered in February, April and June.

5. Prep Courses - Our local high school counselor doesn't advise paying the high fees (around $1,000) for a preparation course. Instead, she is convinced that taking the PSAT as a freshman, sophomore and junior, and the SAT twice should yield higher scores each time. So, if your child took the PSAT his freshman year and got a score of 1,200, the same PSAT taken his junior year should have shown a score improvement to around a 1,600 simply due to two more years of knowledge plus good grades. With a little studying and preparation, this score could be even higher for the real test.

6. College Coaches - If you just can't hack doing the research yourself, and you have another $1,000 to spare, a college coach will work with your child on filling out applications, writing the all-important essay, and doing research on what colleges are best suited for his or her major. Otherwise, save it and then spend it on the first year of college books.

7. 4.0 GPA - Keep those grades hovering around 4.0, especially your junior year. Only encourage your child to do this if you want him or her to choose the college he would like to attend, and not have the college choose him. To this end, we offered our 3.5 GPA student (previously 3.8, but we took a break from nagging and look what happened!) the following advice:

Parent to child in February: "The next three months will determine the rest of your life. A 4.0 will get you into almost any school you choose. Can you put the Xbox away, unjam the ear buds from your head, and stuff the iPod in a drawer for the next three months? It's only for three months, and this small sacrifice now will give you a life-long reward. Please?

Child to parents: "How can that be? I've got one more year to go."

Parents: "Unfortunately, your college application will have your transcript up until the end of your junior year. These will be the grades admissions officers will use to determine if you are good enough for them".

Child: "Darn it!"

Finally, after all this is said and done (hopefully by the end of junior year) take the summer off. Really? No, not really. The summer between junior and senior year should be used to do something meaningful; create a unique internship (good ideas are available at College Board.com), get an interesting job related to your college major, or volunteer with a philanthropic organization. All this work is important to fulfill the community service requirements many colleges have today, and some say makes for a well rounded student.

Don't curl up with a good book and hot chocolate when the raindrops hit your rooftop this month. Instead, grab Newsweek's How to get into College Fall 2009 issue, or the SAT prep book and help your child start answering some questions like this one taken from the College Board's Official Question of the Day:

Part of the following sentence is underlined; beneath the sentence are five ways of phrasing the underlined material. Select the option that produces the best sentence. If you think the original phrasing produces a better sentence than any of the alternatives, select choice A.

Chilean novelist and short-story writer María Luisa Bombal wrote innovative and influential stories featuring heroines which create fantasy worlds in order to escape from unfulfilling love relationships and restricted social roles.

1.     heroines which create

2.     heroines, they create

3.     heroines, they created

4.     heroines who create

5.     heroines that were creating

Want the answer? Just leave a comment and I'll give it you!

Finally, remember, this too shall pass...

Read more at my site: www.MamarazziKnowsBest.com, and at the new on-line publication I contribute to, www.TheWrap.com.

Submitted by Suzette1 (view blog)