Congratulations on completing your junior year! This is when high school becomes truly enjoyable. You're finally one of the big guys, an upperclassman.

If sports are your thing, you can participate on varsity teams, or you might be able to snag a fantastic apprenticeship and acquire real-world skills while earning real-world money.

However, there is one small—okay, quite large—fly in the ointment. It's the fact that you have to take the SAT this year. But it's pointless to waste time thinking about it.

Instead, use your superior study abilities to attack the exam head-on! Here are a few strategies for improving your SAT preparedness without spending a fortune on expensive instruction.

See where you stand with diagnostic tests

Before you begin your heavy-duty SAT prep, it's a good idea to find out what you already know, what you kinda-sorta know but could need a refresher on, and what you certainly don't know and should start working on right away.

If you took the PSAT within 6 months of when you expected to take the SAT, your PSAT scores may be an excellent place to start. If you took the PSAT at the start of your sophomore year, presumably you've learned something since then, so that information may be out of date.

So, how do you figure out what to study for the SAT? The best option is to take a practice exam, which may be found online in plenty (including official ones from the SAT website).

While some students choose to study only one topic at a time (for example, arithmetic on Tuesdays and vocabulary on Wednesdays), the optimal preparation entails studying all of the areas because this will better mirror what you'll be doing on test day.

Even if you just have a few minutes to study, test yourself on some reading questions. Then add a few writing and language questions, followed by some math.

This kind of studying will get you used to flipping between disciplines. This method of studying will get you used to moving subjects, which will make it less of a shock when you have to do it for real.

Read, read, read!

The more reading you can do before the big day, the more equipped your brain will be to handle all that will be thrown at you.

The SAT itself will demand nearly a novel's worth of reading; the reading component has five sections, one after the other, that you must plow through in an hour while also answering questions.

The questions aren't difficult, but you'll need to read (not just scan) each text for them. If you're not used to reading that many words on a page at once, your brain could give up halfway through.

You should be able to manage if you progressively increase your reading capacity by spending some time each day in front of a book (or an e-reader). Read additional nonfiction passages to familiarize yourself with the type of reading you'll be doing on the SAT.

Magazines, newspapers, biographies, sports books, even true crime...all are wonderful, but make sure you're reading at grade level and not your younger sister's 3rd grade text3rd-grade

Find some study buddies

If you're having trouble staying motivated on your own, the College Board, the people who bring us the SAT, recommends joining a study group. They claim that learning in a group not only fosters camaraderie but also fosters a sense of accountability.

In other words, you won't want to be the team member who fails to show up and contribute, so you'll study equally as hard as everyone else. Students who study in groups are said to learn twice as much as those who study alone.

What you should aim for in a group is five to eight individuals, and group members should all be people who plan to take the SAT around the same time. Your group should aim to meet once or twice a week for 45 minutes to an hour each time.

Naturally, you'll have to plan around school hours and even extracurricular activities, but you might try meeting in the mornings, evenings, or even at lunchtime provided you have a suitably long break and everyone on the team has theirs at the same time.

It will be well worth your time to plan ahead of time so that you can ace the exam without having to hire a costly teacher. Your pocketbook will thank you, and who knows, working with peers may turn out to be a lot more fulfilling, enjoyable, and enlightening experience than hiring a professional.