It’s widely recognized that one of the best ways to prepare for any standardized reading test is to read—a lot and often. That’s pretty common sense: it’s unusual to earn an incredibly high score on an assessment of anything you never do or don’t do particularly well.

At the same time, high school students are continually encouraged at school to read up on current events and politics so they can understand the world around them. While understanding current events is great for History class and understanding literature (not to mention learning to understand one’s place in the world), reading about current events is especially valuable for preparing to write the SAT and ACT essays; students need several supporting examples for their arguments, and often world events are perfect choices.

We meet with high school students every day and know they have very limited time, so the time they do spend reading needs to be well spent. Our recommended reading for SAT preparation for every student we work always includes The Week magazine with and now we’re sharing that advice with you.

The Week is special in that it explains current events and then recaps the different ways those news stories were reported and described in different publications. Because every news source has its own agenda, The Week is especially good for understanding the varying sides of a story.

Here’s why we read The Week and why we think every High School Student (and their parents) should be reading it as well:

• Efficient, Effective Reading Because the most important comments from every major news source are included, you get a truly balanced understanding of the various ways of reporting and interpreting events, both local and abroad. The Week includes several full-length articles, as well, so get a taste of everything.

• Enhanced critical thinking skills Critical thinking is developed by learning to not only read for content, but also for understanding and context. Seeing the opinions of those on the right and the left sides of issues helps the reader learn to evaluate ideas and start to look for those influences in other contexts.

• Crash course on world current events Just about every major occurrence of the week is mentioned in the magazine, so if you need to know about it, it’s inthere. It virtually eliminates the need for hours in front of the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, or CNN.

• SAT and ACT Essay Topics SAT and ACT essay topics are often about motivation, success, failure, human nature, and technology, all of which are discussed at length in the news. As far as having essay examples at hand, reading The Week is a no-brainer.

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