When does 2 – 2 = 4? When a kid is stressed, the clock is ticking, and there’s only a few minutes left on the SAT or ACT. You’d be surprised by how many silly mistakes students make as they race through math problems, scribbling furiously in the margins of their test booklet. 2 – 2 = 4 is a careless, stupid mistake that will cost your child precious points.
Luckily, there’s a simple solution to these simple mistakes: use a calculator. It’ll drastically cut down on these careless errors, and your child will save valuable time by skipping tedious long division or complex algebra. So why don’t more kids whip out their calculators? Because they’ve been trained at school to always show their work. But there are no gold stars for doing work by hand on the SAT or ACT. So make sure your child knows that calculators are a definite must-have when it comes to taking the SAT or ACT.
Now, I may get run out of town by local math teachers for my pro-calculator stance, but just as learning the steps and understanding the underlying concepts are important for acing a school math test, so is knowing how to quickly and accurately use a calculator on the SAT/ACT. There’s a time and place for everything – and this is the time to get your child pushing those buttons.