After working with a lot of students on SAT/ACT prep, the single biggest score-killer isn't content knowledge — it's untimed practice.

Most students study by doing problems slowly, with no clock, to "really understand them." That builds accuracy in a vacuum but does nothing for the actual test, where every section is a race against time. The result: kids who ace practice sets untimed and then choke on section pacing on test day.

The fix is boring but works: from week one, do every practice set timed — even when you're bad at it. Track two numbers separately: accuracy and time-per-question. If accuracy is high but you're slow, the fix is drilling question types until pattern recognition kicks in, not doing more untimed reps. If accuracy is low even with time, that's a real content gap — go back to fundamentals.

Most prep plans skip this because it's uncomfortable to watch your score early on when timed. But by week 3-4, students who train timed from day one consistently pull ahead of students who waited until they were ready to add the clock.

Started The Study Hall to run exactly this kind of structured, timed-practice-first prep for high schoolers targeting the SAT/ACT and building their college app. If you're prepping right now, happy to share more of what's worked.