6 Costly Mistakes Parents Make With Test Prep And What to Do Instead 

If your child is preparing for the SAT, ACT, ISEE, SSAT, or SHSAT, you’re already doing something right: paying attention. However, caring deeply about your child’s success and knowing how to support their test preparation effectively are two very different things, and the gap between them costs students points on tests every year.

From having worked with thousands of families across every major standardized test, our instructors at The Best Test Prep have seen the same avoidable mistakes again and again. None reflect a lack of effort or love on the part of parents—they reflect the fact that standardized test preparation is a highly specialized field, and most families simply have not had a reason to understand how it works until now.

Here are the six most costly mistakes parents make, and exactly what to do instead.

Mistake #1: Assuming Expertise

Parents are grown-ups and in charge when it comes to their children. After all, they have the best interests of their children at heart, but that does not mean they are experts in test preparation. In fact, the most common error we see among parents, by far, is authoritative decision-making without the necessary knowledge. Similarly, we’ve had very few students over the years whose test preparations were unsuccessful, but when it has happened, it’s usually been the result of an over-involved parent.

What to do instead: Stay in your lane of knowledge. Be cognizant of the boundaries of your own expertise. Don’t make any strategic decisions before consulting with a top instructor. Once you hire them, take a step back to give plenty of room, and provide them with as much support as possible.

Mistake #2: Starting Too Late

Parents often assume that a few weeks of focused studying before the test date will be sufficient, especially for a bright, hardworking student. It almost never is.

Meaningful score improvement on a test like the SAT or ACT requires time — not because the content is impossibly difficult, but because real mastery takes repetition, reflection, and mental stamina that builds only through sustained practice. Standardized tests contain content and skills that many students simply have not encountered in school — the goal is not to answer questions correctly, but to answer them correctly, quickly, and easily, which is very different. Test-takers need to use wit and cleverness, think outside the box, and spot shortcuts, all skills that take time to build. A student who begins preparation four months before Test Day will almost always outperform a student who first starts four weeks out, even if the latter student studies more intensely.

What to do instead: For high-stakes tests like the SAT and ACT, a light start towards the end of sophomore year is ideal, with a full preparation to follow over summer vacation. For younger students taking the SSAT, SHSAT, or ISEE, beginning an academic year in advance provides an enormous advantage. The extra time does not mean more stress; it means more flexibility, better assimilation of new thinking skills, and significantly higher scores. 

Mistake #3: Equating Being Busy With Progress

Many parents measure their child’s preparation by how much time is being spent studying. A student who sits at a desk for two hours every evening certainly appears to be working hard, but hours logged is not the same as progress made, and confusing the two is a trap that produces a great deal of effort with surprisingly little improvement.

Passive studying — rereading notes, flipping through flashcards without active recall, or working through problems without carefully reviewing errors can feel productive while delivering very little in the way of actual score gains. The SAT, ACT, ISEE, SSAT, and SHSAT are not exams of raw knowledge alone; they reward critical thinking, test-taking mechanics, and the kind of disciplined, reflective practice that most students do not naturally default to on their own.

What to do instead: Shift the conversation from hours spent to quality of engagement. Ask not “For how long did you study?” but “What specific progress did you make today?” The ability to clearly articulate the root cause of a missed question—not only the correct answer, but why the wrong answer was wrong and why the right answer was right—is one of the most reliable indicators of genuine progress. 

Mistake #4: Adding Pressure Instead of Support

This mistake is rooted in genuine concern, which makes it one of the hardest to address. When parents are anxious about their child’s test performance, that anxiety has a way of entering the home environment through frequent check-ins, expressions of worry, comparisons to siblings or classmates, or comments that frame test scores as reflections of a student’s intelligence or worth. All of it is well-intentioned. All of it can be deeply counterproductive.

Standardized test performance is significantly affected by a student’s morale and confidence throughout the preparation process and on Test Day. Students who approach their preparation with anxiety, shame, or a fear of disappointing their parents tend to underperform relative to their actual ability. Just the opposite, students who feel supported, competent, and genuinely motivated by their own goals tend to outperform expectations. This is not a minor consideration; it is one of the most important variables in the entire preparation process.

What to do instead: Separate your own anxiety from your child’s preparation. Ask how their sessions are going, express confidence in their ability to improve, and celebrate progress, not just final scores. If your child is working with a professional instructor, trust the process and avoid the temptation to second-guess or micromanage it. Your role as a parent during this period is to be the stable, encouraging presence in your child’s corner. That alone can make an immeasurable difference. 

Mistake #5: Treating One Test Score as the Final Word

A disappointing score on a first attempt is not a verdict. It is a valuable collection of data on the way to a high score. At The Best Test Prep, some of our greatest student successes came on second attempts. However, it is remarkably common for families to respond to an initial score that falls short of their goals with a combination of panic, discouragement, and premature conclusions about what their child is capable of achieving.

Test-takers are more likely to ultimately reach their score goals when their families understand the following from the beginning: test preparation is a process, and a first score is not necessarily the end of it. Students at The Best Test Prep have achieved stratospheric scores on their second attempts after impressive but more normal gains on their first; the need for a third attempt is rare, but when acted upon, eye-opening numbers have resulted. And of course, diagnostic scores from before the start of preparation should cause no disappointment at all—they tell little about the score a student is capable of earning after it.

What to do instead: Look at an initial score as a diagnostic tool, not a destination. Use it to identify exactly which areas need the most attention, adjust the student’s structured preparation plan around those areas, and give the process the time and professional support it deserves. Standardized tests can be retaken, and a motivated student working with the right instructor and a clear plan can achieve remarkable improvements. The key is to stay the course, trust the process, and resist the temptation to draw conclusions before the preparation has had the opportunity to do its work. 

Mistake #6: Underestimating the Importance of the Right Instructor

Parents who decide to invest in professional test prep often make their decision based on price and availability rather than on the qualities that actually determine whether a tutor will move the needle for their child. Even those who ask for recommendations often choose one in an expertise vacuum, and the result is frequently a student who spends months working with someone who is perfectly pleasant and reasonably knowledgeable but never delivers the transformative score improvement the family was hoping for.

Not all test prep instructors are created equally. The skill set needed to ace a standardized test is not the same as the one needed to teach someone else to ace that same test, so there is an enormous difference between someone who did well on the SAT years ago and someone who has been professionally trained by a reputable company and immersed in the science of test-taking. The latter has likely spent years analyzing the architecture of exams, understanding precisely how each question type is constructed, knowing where and how students are most commonly misled, and developing the proven methods that translate into consistent and dramatic score improvements across a wide range of student profiles.

The best instructors do far more than cover content. They change the way students approach every single question on the test. They teach professional methods, not just material. They hold students accountable in ways that books and apps simply cannot. And they deliver motivational feedback that identifies the specific issues costing a student the most points.

What to do instead: When evaluating instructors or tutoring services, ask specific questions. For how long have they been teaching this particular exam? Which test preparation company trained them? Do they have documented, professional methods, or do they simply work through practice problems? Are there company surveys providing student feedback in black-and-white, beyond just references? Can they also provide references from families whose children faced a similar starting point to your child’s? What score improvements have their students achieved? Are they available to review homework and answer questions between sessions? The answers to these questions tell you far more than a price point ever will. 

Avoid the Mistakes. Achieve the Score. 

Every one of these mistakes is avoidable, and avoiding them costs nothing except awareness. Starting early, creating a supportive environment, focusing on quality over quantity, treating the preparation process as exactly that, a process, and investing in the right instructor are among the building blocks of the score improvements that families come to us hoping for.

At The Best Test Prep, our instructors are among the most experienced and effective in the country. We tailor every aspect of the preparation process to the individual student, their specific strengths, their specific opportunities for improvement, their specific goals, and their specific exam. There are no rookies here, no cookie-cutter programs, and no shortcuts that do not actually work.

If you’re ready to give your child a preparation experience that produces real, dramatic score improvements, contact  The Best Test Prep today, and we can help.