Standardized tests – SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT, etc. – are one of the few items on which practice doesn’t always make perfect. Remember, even Michael Jordan said you can practice for eight hours per day and not get any better if you’re not practicing the right things.

Each year, more than 2 million students take the SAT and ACT. Many of these students are taking it for the second (or third or fourth) time, hoping that test preparation courses will yield higher scores.

While it may be difficult to quantify the actual effect test prep courses can have on scores, even the College Board recognizes that coaching can raise scores an average of 20 – 30 points per section. And official test statistics kept by ETS, the makers of most standardized tests, show the average combined improvement on the SAT ranges from 60 – 70 points.

Many test prep services, based on comparing the before and after scores of program participants, cite increases of 25 percent, or up to hundreds of points – and that can spell the difference between being accepted to your first choice school vs. your safe school, or between paying your own way and earning a scholarship.

So when it comes to such a key element of your higher education, wisdom says it’s best not to go it alone. For example, there is widespread agreement that test prep courses can raise scores by helping students learn strategies and practice timing and pacing.

Overall, standardized tests rarely test a student’s ability to recall specific information; e.g., on what date was the Declaration of Independence signed? Rather, they test a student’s ability to solve a problem by applying skills learned in the classroom. No one can predict what questions will appear on the actual test, but the fact remains that mathematical concepts can be reviewed, rules of grammar can be studied and vocabulary words can be memorized – all proven tactics to increasing test scores and all taught in-depth by test prep services.