Varsity Tutors connects you with expert tutors who specialize in PSAT preparation. After you reach out, we match you with a tutor based on your specific needs—whether you're struggling with grammar rules, time management, or understanding question formats. Your first session typically focuses on assessing your current skills and creating a personalized study plan tailored to your goals.

Score improvement depends on your starting point, effort, and how consistently you practice between sessions. Students who work with tutors and complete regular practice typically see meaningful gains—often 50-100+ points—within 2-3 months of focused preparation. The key is identifying your specific weak areas (like comma rules or sentence combining) and targeting those through both instruction and timed practice tests.

Austin students often struggle with pacing—trying to read and answer 44 questions in 35 minutes leaves little room for error. Other frequent challenges include distinguishing between similar grammar rules, understanding what makes a sentence rhetorically effective versus just grammatically correct, and recognizing when a word choice is imprecise. Tutors help you develop strategies to work through these efficiently without sacrificing accuracy.

Practice tests serve two purposes: diagnosing weak areas and building test-taking stamina. Early in your prep, take untimed practice sections to identify which question types trip you up—verb tense, pronoun agreement, rhetorical questions, etc. Once you know your patterns, take timed full sections to practice pacing and decision-making. Tutors can review your practice tests with you to spot trends and adjust your study focus accordingly.

Test anxiety often stems from feeling unprepared or unsure about question formats. Building confidence through repeated, timed practice with real PSAT questions helps normalize the experience. Tutors also teach strategies like skipping difficult questions and returning to them, marking answers strategically, and using deep breathing techniques during the test. Knowing you've practiced similar questions under time pressure reduces anxiety significantly.

Most students benefit from 4-8 weeks of consistent tutoring, meeting 1-2 times per week, depending on their starting level and test date. If you're just beginning prep, starting 2-3 months before your test date gives you time to learn concepts, practice, and refine your approach. Tutors can recommend a specific timeline during your first session based on your current skills and goals.

Focus on the rules that appear most frequently: subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement, verb tense consistency, comma usage, and sentence fragments/run-ons. The PSAT also tests more subtle skills like recognizing redundancy, improving word choice for clarity, and understanding parallel structure. Tutors help you prioritize based on your diagnostic results so you're not overwhelmed—mastering the high-frequency rules first builds momentum and confidence.