How Your Kid with ADHD Can Score in the 99th Percentile

The SAT/ACT might challenge them in unique ways, but overcoming those challenges changes everything

Shilpa’s parents didn’t believe it when she first suggested she might have ADHD. Her father was especially skeptical. Several of the younger folks in his office claimed to have ADHD. 

He was adamant: “They’re just lazy.”

He certainly didn’t think Shilpa was lazy. She had perfect grades! But from Shilpa’s perspective, something wasn’t right. 

She was working way too hard for those grades. Her anxiety was through the roof.

And it seemed like standardized testing was going to be a major challenge.

Her first PSAT score?

Not what she was hoping for, with her sights set on highly selective colleges.

I asked Shilpa’s father, “Don’t you want this to be easier for your daughter?”

He relented, and agreed to have her tested, just to see. As it turned out, Shilpa had a processing speed issue in addition to ADHD. 

And rather than being an excuse to slack — as her father feared — Shilpa’s diagnosis only spurred her evolution. It gave her a whole new perspective on her abilities. 

She realized, “I just have to learn to work with my brain instead of against it.”

To do so, Shilpa’s tutor fine-tuned her test-prep strategy. We also figured out that she had natural strengths on the ACT over the SAT. To accommodate her learning difference, she was granted extra time on the ACT.  

Her anxiety subsided and her self-confidence grew. The very first time she took the ACT, she got a perfect score. 

We work with a lot of kids like Shilpa. Many of them come to us undiagnosed. They often haven’t told anyone what it’s really like for them.

Secretly, they’re working really hard just to keep up. Their self-confidence is low. A lifetime of being called lazy, disorganized, or forgetful will do that to a student. And now, they may believe they just aren’t smart enough to do well on tests — even though that’s not what’s going on at all. 

In fact, innate intelligence has very little to do with academic achievement. 

Most research finds that self-control is a much more important predictor of scholastic success — particularly when it comes to test-taking. 

And the challenge for kids with ADHD, is their brain chemistry makes self-control an uphill battle. 

A predisposition towards impulsiveness, time-blindness, and hyperactivity can be advantageous in certain contexts.

Standardized testing is not one of them. 

Doing well on a timed, 3-6 hour test requires planning, prioritization, self-awareness, efficiency, endurance, and impulse-control. The good news is, while not everyone’s brain is wired with these skills, anyone can be trained in them. 

They’re known as Executive Functioning Skills, and at Signet they’re one of our specialties. That’s why our test-prep students with ADHD and other learning differences experience significant score increases. 

We’re not just SAT/ACT experts — we’re performance coaches. 

And unlike traditional test prep approaches that run your kid through a cookie-cutter curriculum, we train them to work with their unique brains so they can:

• Stay energized and focus on a long test like the SATs 
• Use any extra time to their advantage — rather than getting bored and rushing through or spacing out
• Avoid distractions and make sure they have time to give every question their best shot
• Bring themselves back to center when test anxiety strikes

At the end of the day, this kind of specialized training gives kids like Shilpa so much more than impressive test scores. It gives them an entirely new outlook. A self-awareness most kids don’t develop until adulthood. And skills that make it easier for them to succeed in college, in their careers, and in all of life’s high-pressure situations. 

So fear not: an ADHD diagnosis does not have to take your kid out of the game. It can actually give them an advantage. 

To learn more about how we do this, click below for our most recent free learning session.