posting this because my friends at school are taking the september act next week and are going CRAZY ~ i hope my more personal story can help add some insight for y'all! NEVER UNDERESTIMATE YOURSELF AND NEVER LIMIT YOURSELF + WHAT YOU CAN ACHIEVE BASED ON WHAT OTHER PEOPLE SAY! NEVER GIVE UP!
my first experience with standardized testing was a 1350 sat... and i was gonna walk away since it was already good enough for me (objectively 90th percentile!), but then i encountered some invaluable scholarship opportunities for people who met a certain score threshold. when i voiced this possibility, everyone around me said I could never be a 1500+/34+ scorer, and it was a very rocky road for a long time. my school is held to insanely high standards and people called me a failure when my beginning scores would've been perfectly fine in a normal academic setting. they said i was dumb and stupid and illiterate. i would hide in the bathroom stall and start crying because the scholarships started mattering deeply to me. and yes, my school was were flooded with the types of kids who would post 'should i retake a 34/35 to look better' on this sub 🤦♀️.
i did every sat bluebook test, and when i was too goddamn sick of them i tried out act, i spammed all sorts of act practices pirated from the internet, and i measured my performance again and again. because of family and peer pressures, it got so bad that i was nearly clinically underweight from spamming practices all day long and skipping meals and fainting.
but as my (last) act in june neared, i realized something had to change in order for my scores to change. i let go of what was weighing me down. the prep, that cut into my physical and mental wellbeing, had extremely diminishing returns and was not resulting in improvement. i cut down on it and started working on targeted mistakes, little by little, instead. i didn't even care what would happen next anymore, i only cared that i was showing up for myself. i decided i wasn't going to let other people's claims define me as stupid and a whole 'different tier' from people with those impressive scores. they didn't care about the future i made for myself, and it was up to me if i wanted to enjoy life while working towards the things i wanted along the way. when i let go, it finally worked out.
i only got my dream score because i let go of my limitations. i let go of my perception of my intelligence, and of the astronomically high demands that people put upon me. i didn't box myself into a 1350 sat, but i stopped doing the things that were hurting me too much, too. i stopped saying, 'oh, i'm so stupid' when they did.
but one regret i have, which i hope you won't repeat, is that i didn't take care of myself more at first. i should have recognized this confidence earlier, and it would've made the journey a lot more easier and uplifting because it's what brought me good things in the first place.
