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The sweetspot is that he is ready to tell coaches his impressive test scores in the summer before his HS senior year.  Now, if he aces the SAT and/or the ACT spring of Junior year, then he's all good.  But if he needs a couple of cracks at it, and possibly some tutoring, practice tests and prep, then he should test spring of Soph year or Fall of Junior year.  His Soph PSAT score may or may not be a good gauge.  Better to take the real tests.

If he is taking pre-calc then he should take the SAT. Otherwise he mau struggle in the math portion.

Work backwards.  Yes, he needs scores summer before senior year.  Each company (in normal times) offers their test 7 times a year.  2 or 3 of those dates are during spring baseball season, one is during fall ball.  Unless you plan to have him miss games for a test, he pretty much has Nov, Dec, Jan, and Feb.  Probably he will want to take them more than once.  So, start as soon as possible, and go from there.

Note that this applies not just to high academic (there's that term!) kids, but to anyone.  Every school will have some minimum score that they want, and some kids have to take it many times to get that score.  We've known of kids who were down to the wire.

I recommend taking both SAT and ACT and take them early. He doesn't need to report the scores to any schools, but we found it helpful to get baseline scores at the end of sophomore year. My son wanted to play at a high academic school and I believe it was an advantage to have these scores early when talking to coaches during the recruitment process. Please feel free to PM me if you'd like.

Know your kid.  I believe my son was a tick or two lower on his SAT because he took it in the Spring during baseball season.  He missed several review classes because of practice, rainouts, reschedules (lack of discipline, whatever). As always, my kid is different from your kid.

My older kids have each taken an ACT prep class in the summer after sophomore year. The course ended on a Friday, ACT was the next day. Worked out really well and set them up to take the test again 3-4 more times if needed before senior year. Expensive, but highly recommend.

Also, almost all schools now superscore, which really helps.

The ACT plans to allow section retests (was supposed to go into effect last Fall, delayed by covid) - this is a huge advantage over the SAT, where everyone is required to take the entire test each time.

Lastly, be sure that the schools your son is interested in actually require a standardized test score. My 2022 athlete is finding that more and more schools (announcements come weekly) are waiving the test requirement, some of them for several years (like the UCs), some forever.

@DD 2024 posted:

Lastly, be sure that the schools your son is interested in actually require a standardized test score. My 2022 athlete is finding that more and more schools (announcements come weekly) are waiving the test requirement, some of them for several years (like the UCs), some forever.

I thought that the NCAA required the SAT or ACT scores, regardless of whether the school itself require them.

@mattys posted:

I thought that the NCAA required the SAT or ACT scores, regardless of whether the school itself require them.

Yes, if you are receiving a scholarship.

My kids are going D3.

No; they look at only the highest scores.  So, it's very much to your son's benefit to take it early, see what areas need improvement, and work on them over time, when it works with your schedule.

You and your son get to decide who sees what scores.

The testing services encourage automatic score reporting by including something like 5 score reports as part of the test fee. The problem is that you have to agree to send the scores before you know what they are. If you don't want the scores sent until you see them, you can leave the recipient section blank but it will cost you ~$10 to send each score later, which adds up, esp if you have multiple scores and are sending them to multiple schools.

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If schools require test scores - for a scholarship or just for admission - you will likely wind up sending them every test score, because of the superscore.

So for a kid who scores a 20 or 900 because he took the test too early, no worries, it's unlikely any section of those tests would be useful for the superscore. On the other end of the spectrum, if he hits a 34 or 1500 in one go, you're done. Just send it in.

Most likely case is something in between, where son does really well on one part, but wants to improve his score on another part and retests. The results then reverse because he's focused only on one section for two months. So now you have two full sets of scores, each with one good score and one crappy score. Argh.

Now you go into an infinite loop: Retest or not? Try to increase the superscore or not? Risk low scores in one section while he tries to pull up the other section?

You begin to see the value in having to only take one section at a time both on your sanity and your wallet.

So to answer your question directly - no, there is no downside to low scores and multiple test results, as long as you have plenty of money and infinite patience.

Good luck!

My kid took the test early before pre-calc and prep classes, he performed as expected but it was a good baseline. For me, he learned a lot about the tempo of the testing both SAT and ACT, they are different. He is in a prep class now and I think he will fare a lot better and he is scheduled for tests if needed. I am hoping he can score in the better merit range.