Louis: 28 to 31 on the ACT Starting in Late September of Senior Year

Louis came to us in late September of his senior year.

That is, by any normal reading, too late. Early Action deadlines were weeks away. He had a 28, target schools averaging 30 to 32, and a schedule that already included a shoe reselling business, a custom computer building habit, and a full senior courseload.

The first thing Carson told him was not to apply Early Action.

Why skipping Early Action was the whole move

Early Action feels like the responsible choice. Apply early, hear early, reduce the stress.

For Louis it was a trap, because it meant locking his application—and his 28—in place in early November. Every deadline after that would inherit the same score.

So the plan went the other way. Skip EA entirely. Take the October test. Take the December test. Then apply ED II to Tulane, which has a January 1 deadline, and Regular Decision everywhere else.

That single decision converted a five-week runway into a three-month one. Same student, same schedule, same starting score—three times the room to work, purely from sequencing the applications differently.

This is the part families almost never get from a tutor, because it isn’t a tutoring question. It’s an admissions strategy question that determines how much ACT prep is even possible.

Four hours a week, in the gaps

Louis couldn’t do an hour a day and we didn’t pretend otherwise. He committed about four hours a week.

The delivery had to bend to fit that. He met with coaches during free periods at school. Everything else came asynchronously—video explanations and voice notes he could work through between classes, or after the business needed attention, or whenever the time actually appeared.

He went 28 to 29 on the October test, then 29 to 31 in December.

The test-optional conversation

Tulane is test-optional. Louis assumed that meant not submitting.

Carson showed him the admissions data instead. At selective schools, applicants who submit scores are admitted at meaningfully higher rates than those who go test-optional, even when the test-optional applicants have strong GPAs. Test-optional is a policy, not a neutral choice—the pool that submits and the pool that doesn’t are treated very differently in practice.

Carson’s framing was: a 31 at a test-optional school puts you ahead of everyone who went test-optional.

Louis submitted. In his wrap-up meeting he specifically thanked Carson for that conversation, separately from anything about the score itself.

Where he landed

Six acceptances: Tulane, Auburn, Clemson, South Carolina, Penn State and Fordham. Multiple scholarship offers. He enrolled at Tulane, which admits around 14% of applicants.

All of it starting from a standing start in late September of senior year.

What Louis’s story shows

Three points is a modest gain and we’d rather show it than hide it. What made Louis’s outcome disproportionate to those three points was everything around them—the decision to skip Early Action, the ED II timing, and submitting a score at a school where he’d assumed he shouldn’t.

If your senior is looking at the calendar and concluding it’s over, it’s worth having someone check the assumption before you accept it. The deadline structure has more give in it than most families realize.