Does a Growth Mindset Raise SAT or ACT Scores? What the Research Shows

As of October 2026: No study has shown that a growth mindset lesson raises SAT or ACT scores. The largest test, Yeager et al. (2019) in Nature, gave a short online growth mindset program to 12,490 ninth graders in 65 public schools and found a 0.10 grade point gain in core-course GPA for lower-achieving students, not a test score gain.

The big national mindset experiment moved ninth-grade GPA by 0.10 points for lower-achieving students. It did not measure the SAT or the ACT at all. Here is what that means for your family.

By Nick Standlea, Test Prep Gurus. Figures may be quoted with attribution to Test Prep Gurus.

Nick Standlea on this question -- Nick Standlea, Test Prep Gurus (YouTube).

The biggest mindset study never measured the SAT or the ACT Yeager et al. (2019) studied 12,490 ninth-grade students who were individually randomized across 65 public schools. The outcome was core-course GPA at the end of ninth grade, plus advanced-math enrollment. The paper reports no SAT or ACT result. So any claim that a mindset lesson adds test points is not coming from this study.

The GPA gain was 0.10 points, and only for some students In Yeager et al. (2019), lower-achieving students earned 0.10 more grade points in core classes than the control group, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.04 to 0.16. Higher-achieving students saw no grade gain. The effect for lower-achieving students also depended on peer norms that backed the message.

Hours of real practice move test scores; our own results show the size Our published results cover 782 students. ACT students who started at 27 or below gained an average of 5.7 points. SAT students who started at 1350 or below gained an average of 190 points, and 63% of them gained 200 points or more. Those gains came from completed programs, not from a pep talk.

What did the national growth mindset experiment actually measure?

These rows come from Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., et al., "A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement," Nature 573, 364-369 (2019). Each row is copied as the research answer states it.

What the study reports	Value	Quote from the paper
Study sample	12,490 ninth-grade students; individually randomized; 65 public schools	"12,490 ninth-grade adolescents who were individually randomized to condition."
Intervention length	Less than one hour; delivered in two online sessions of about 25 minutes each	"a short (less than one hour), online growth mindset intervention"
GPA effect among lower-achieving students	+0.10 grade points in core-course GPA at the end of ninth grade (95% CI 0.04-0.16)	"lower-achieving adolescents earned higher GPAs in core classes at the end of the ninth grade"
Context where the GPA effect was sustained	Peer norms aligned with the intervention's message	"the intervention changed grades when peer norms aligned with the messages of the intervention."
Conditions where it did not work for GPA	It did not raise grades for higher-achieving students; among lower-achieving students, the grade effect depended on supportive peer norms	"lower-achieving adolescents earned higher GPAs"
Citation and DOI	Yeager et al., Nature 573, 364-369 (2019); 10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y	"Nature 573, 364-369 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y"

The study's outcomes were ninth-grade core-course GPA and advanced-math enrollment. SAT and ACT scores were not among them.

What score gains do we publish for students who finish our program?

These are our published results for students who completed the program, copied exactly as printed on our results page. They are averages, not promises.

Measure	Value
ACT students starting at 27 or below: average gain	5.7 points
SAT students starting at 1350 or below: average gain	190 points
SAT students starting at 1350 or below who gain 200 points or more	63%
ACT cohort	491 students, 2017-2023
SAT cohort	291 students, 2024
Total students in the published results	782
Founded	2009

Quote these exactly as printed; they are averages for students who completed the program.

Does a growth mindset raise SAT or ACT scores?

There is no study showing that a growth mindset lesson raises SAT or ACT scores. The largest and best-run test of the idea, Yeager et al. (2019) in Nature, looked at ninth-grade grades and course choices. It did not test the SAT. It did not test the ACT.

That matters because the claim gets repeated as if it were settled. Parents hear that mindset work lifts scores, and then they wait for a score jump that the research never promised. The honest version is smaller and more useful. A short mindset lesson changed grades a little, for some students, in some schools.

Here are the numbers from Yeager et al. (2019). The study included 12,490 ninth-grade students who were individually randomized across 65 public schools. The program took less than one hour, split into two online sessions of about 25 minutes each. Among lower-achieving students, core-course GPA at the end of ninth grade rose by 0.10 grade points over the control group.

That is a real effect from under an hour of screen time. It is also not a test score. If your goal this spring is a higher ACT or SAT, mindset is the frame around the work, not the work itself. Our own published results show what the work itself produces: ACT students starting at 27 or below gained an average of 5.7 points, and SAT students starting at 1350 or below gained an average of 190 points.

So the fair answer is both things at once. Mindset shapes how a student handles a hard practice test. Practice tests, review, and repetition move the score.

What is a growth mindset in plain words?

A growth mindset is the belief that skills can grow with effort, and a fixed mindset is the belief that skills are set at birth. Nick lays it out in his video on praise. "In a growth mindset, people feel good when they are working hard and pushing themselves," he says. "They believe that skills and qualities can always be further cultivated through further effort and perseverance."

The fixed side is the mirror image. "In a fixed mindset, people feel good when things come easily to them," Nick says. "They believe that skills and qualities are innate and can't be changed. They see success as carved in stone and predetermined at birth."

You can spot the difference in daily behavior. A student with a growth mindset takes on hard problems, listens to feedback, and treats a bad test as data. A student with a fixed mindset skips the hard problems, waves off feedback, and treats a bad test as proof of a ceiling.

None of this is about being cheerful. It is about where a teen thinks the next gain comes from. If the answer is effort and method, the teen will sit down for another practice section. If the answer is raw talent, the teen will quit early and protect the story.

For test prep, that second pattern is the real cost. Scores rise through repeated contact with missed questions. A teen who cannot stand being wrong will avoid exactly the work that pays.

Why shouldn't I tell my child they're smart?

Nick's answer is to praise effort and process instead of intelligence, because praising intelligence teaches a child to protect a persona of natural talent and avoid the risk of mistakes. That is the short version of a long line of work by Carol Dweck.

In the study Nick walks through, Dweck gave students a nonverbal IQ test made of puzzles that nearly everyone did fine on. Students were split at random into two groups. One group heard a line about being smart. The other heard a line about working hard.

Then came a choice. Students could pick a harder second test, where they were told they would learn a lot, or an easy repeat of the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90% chose the harder set of puzzles.

Nick explains the reason this way. "When we praise children for their intelligence, we imply that they should try to look smart and not risk making mistakes," he says, summarizing Dweck's conclusion. "Certain forms of praise like you're a great athlete or you're smart or you're an amazing artist encourage students to protect their persona of natural talent."

That protection instinct is the whole problem. A teen guarding a reputation for being smart will not take a diagnostic test seriously, because a low score threatens the story. A teen who hears praise for method will take the test, look at the misses, and come back.

What happened in Dweck's experiment after the kids failed?

After the hard round, the two groups split sharply, and on the final easy test the effort group improved on their first score by about 30% while the intelligence group did about 20% worse than they had at the start. Nick walks through the sequence in his video.

Dweck gave every student an extremely hard test that was built to be nearly impossible. All of them failed it. The point was never the score. The point was the reaction.

"Those praised for their intelligence on the first test assumed that their failure was evidence that they weren't really smart at all," Nick says. He quotes Dweck: "Just watching them, you could see the strain. They were sweating and miserable, and they gave up more quickly."

The effort group read the same failure as a signal to focus harder. "They got very involved," Dweck said, "willing to try every solution to the puzzles." Many of them said, with no prompting, that this was their favorite test.

Then came a final test built to be as easy as the first. The effort group improved by about 30%. The intelligence group dropped by about 20%. Nick calls the spread between the two groups a massive 50%, and notes that it all stemmed from one line of praise.

A single sentence changed how students met failure. That is the part parents can use at home tonight.

How big was the effect in the national Nature study?

The effect in Yeager et al. (2019) was 0.10 grade points in core-course GPA at the end of ninth grade, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.04 to 0.16, and it showed up only among lower-achieving students. The table above holds the exact wording.

Think about what produced that number. The program ran less than one hour, in two online sessions of about 25 minutes each. There was no tutor, no homework, no follow-up class. For that price in time, a tenth of a grade point is a solid return.

It is also small in absolute terms. A 0.10 shift in core-course GPA will not move a student from a C to a B. It will not, by itself, change a college list. Treating it as a shortcut to a higher transcript sets a family up for letdown.

The confidence interval tells the same story. The low end of 0.04 is close to nothing, and the high end of 0.16 is still modest. The study is strong because it is honest about the size of what it found.

Our read for parents is simple. One hour of mindset content is a good hour. It is not the hour that moves a test score.

Did the growth mindset program work for every student?

No. In Yeager et al. (2019), the program did not raise grades for higher-achieving students, and among lower-achieving students the grade effect depended on peer norms that backed the message. The gain was conditional, not universal.

The paper is direct about context. The authors write that "the intervention changed grades when peer norms aligned with the messages of the intervention." Put plainly, the lesson stuck where classmates already treated effort as normal. Where the room rewarded looking effortless, one hour of video could not hold.

That is a useful warning for any parent shopping for a fix. A program that works in one school may do nothing in another. The students did not change. The setting did.

There was one result that held more broadly. Yeager et al. (2019) report that the program increased advanced-math enrollment across achievement levels. Students signed up for harder classes even when their grades did not move.

We think that is the most interesting line in the paper. Course choice is a lever a family controls. A teen who takes the harder math class gets more exposure to the kind of thinking the ACT and SAT reward.

If mindset is not the lever, what actually moves a test score?

Repeated, guided practice moves test scores, and our published results show the size of the move for 782 students who completed the program. ACT students starting at 27 or below gained an average of 5.7 points. SAT students starting at 1350 or below gained an average of 190 points.

The share matters as much as the average. Among SAT students starting at 1350 or below, 63% gained 200 points or more. That is not a handful of outliers pulling up a mean. That is most of the group clearing a high bar.

The cohorts are stated plainly on our results page. The ACT cohort is 491 students from 2017 to 2023. The SAT cohort is 291 students from 2024. We have been doing this since 2009.

One caution, printed on the page itself: these are averages for students who completed the program. A student who starts and stops is not in them. The number assumes the work got done.

So the order of operations is clear. Mindset is what keeps a teen in the chair when the practice section goes badly. Hours in the chair are what change the score.

How should I praise my child about test scores?

Praise the process, using lines like "I like how hard you worked" and "I was impressed by the strategies you" used, rather than praise for being smart. Nick gives parents exact phrasing in his video, and it transfers straight to test prep.

His list is short. Focus on the process. Tell students that mistakes are part of the learning process. Teach them that failure creates opportunity. Encourage children to recognize, accept, and overcome their weaknesses, since "a weakness is just an area where someone can improve."

He also gives a script for a bad result. Say your child failed a math test twice in a row. Instead of "this is disappointing" or "you're not studying hard enough" or "you've blown it," react as though the failure can enhance learning.

The questions he suggests work on a practice SAT too. What is this teaching us? What should we do next? What strategies did you employ? Which ones can we try next time?

There is a reason this framing holds. Nick quotes Dweck: "Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control. They come to see themselves as in control of their success." Praise for raw intelligence "takes it out of the child's control and provides no good recipe for responding to a failure."

A score report is a list of missed questions. The right praise turns that list into a plan.

What is the power of yet, and does it help with test prep?

The power of yet means adding the word "yet" to a fixed statement, and Nick calls it his bonus tip for parents. "I'm not good at math" becomes "I'm not good at math yet." The sentence stops being a verdict.

Nick explains why the fixed version is dangerous. "The most damaging type of fixed mindset is a negative one," he says. "Statements such as, I'm not good at math, I'm not fast enough, I can't draw, can become self-fulfilling."

Adding "yet" sends an implied message that hard work and sustained effort can overcome the challenge. It is a small edit with a clear job. It keeps the door open for one more try.

In test prep, the fixed line shows up fast. Teens say they are bad at reading, slow at math, or no good under a timer. Each of those is a skill that practice changes, and each one gets better with the word "yet" attached.

We want to be careful here. Saying "yet" does not raise a score on its own. No number in the Yeager et al. (2019) study or in our results page comes from language alone. The phrase keeps a student working, and the work is what shows up on the report.

Will a growth mindset program help my teen's scores?

We would not purchase a mindset product expecting SAT or ACT points, because no study in this research names a test score gain. Yeager et al. (2019) measured core-course GPA and advanced-math enrollment. That is the evidence base.

If a seller promises score points from a mindset course, ask what study they are citing. The national experiment delivered its whole program in less than one hour across two online sessions of about 25 minutes each, and it reported a 0.10 grade point change for lower-achieving students. That is the ceiling the best evidence supports.

There is also the context finding. The grade effect held when peer norms aligned with the intervention's message. A purchased course cannot change the room your teen sits in every day.

The low-cost version of this is free and happens at your kitchen table. Praise the effort. Ask what the misses teach. Add "yet" to the flat statements. Nick's video covers all of it in one sitting.

Then put the hours where the score lives. Our published results, for 782 students who completed the program, show an average ACT gain of 5.7 points for students starting at 27 or below. Mindset makes those hours possible. It does not replace them.

What does the research not tell us?

The research in this pack does not report any SAT or ACT outcome, so the direct question has no direct study answer. We will not fill that gap with a guess. We can only tell you what the papers measured and what our own completed-program results show.

A few other limits are honest to name. Yeager et al. (2019) studied ninth graders in 65 public schools. It did not follow those students to a college entrance exam. It did not test tutoring, prep courses, or practice tests.

The paper also does not say that mindset is useless for older students. It simply did not study them in that setting. Absence of a finding is not the same as a finding of no effect.

On our side, the limits are printed on the results page. Our figures are averages for students who completed the program. They cover 491 ACT students from 2017 to 2023 and 291 SAT students from 2024. They do not predict any one student's result.

We would rather hand you two accurate pictures than one tidy story. Mindset changes how a teen meets a hard problem. Structured practice changes the number at the top of the score report.

What is the move this month?

The move is to start with a real baseline score, then build the habits around it. Take our free mock SAT and free mock ACT. A baseline turns a vague worry into a number your family can work on.

Then run the praise script for one month. When the mock score comes back, do not say the result is disappointing. Ask what it is teaching you, what you should do next, and which strategies to try next time. Those are Nick's exact questions.

Keep the two ideas separate in your head. Yeager et al. (2019) shows that a short mindset lesson moved ninth-grade GPA by 0.10 points for lower-achieving students, and only where peer norms supported it. Our published results show an average 190-point SAT gain for students starting at 1350 or below who completed the program.

If you want help setting the plan, call us at 949.229.5359 or start at https://www.prepgurus.com/take-the-next-step. We have been working with families since 2009.

One last note for the long run. Nick's closing line in the video is that students with a growth mindset learn the value of persistence and resilience, which leads to greater achievement over time. Test scores are one season. That habit lasts past it.

Questions parents ask

Does a growth mindset raise SAT or ACT scores?
There is no study showing that a growth mindset lesson raises SAT or ACT scores.

How big was the effect in the big Nature mindset study?
The effect in Yeager et al. (2019) was 0.10 grade points in core-course GPA at the end of ninth grade, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.04 to 0.16, and it showed up only among lower-achieving students.

Did the growth mindset program work for every student?
In Yeager et al. (2019), the program did not raise grades for higher-achieving students, and among lower-achieving students the grade effect depended on peer norms that backed the message.

Why shouldn't I tell my child they're smart?
Nick's answer is to praise effort and process instead of intelligence, because praising intelligence teaches a child to protect a persona of natural talent and avoid the risk of mistakes.

What happened to the two groups in Dweck's experiment after they failed?
On the final easy test the effort group improved on their first score by about 30% while the intelligence group did about 20% worse than they had at the start.

What actually moves a test score?
Repeated, guided practice moves test scores, and our published results show the size of the move for 782 students who completed the program.

How should I praise my child about test scores?
Praise the process, using lines like "I like how hard you worked" and "I was impressed by the strategies you" used, rather than praise for being smart.

What is the power of yet?
The power of yet means adding the word "yet" to a fixed statement, and Nick calls it his bonus tip for parents.

Method and sources: The research table comes from Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., et al., "A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement," Nature 573, 364-369 (2019), DOI 10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y. That study covered 12,490 ninth-grade students individually randomized across 65 public schools, and its outcomes were end-of-ninth-grade core-course GPA and advanced-math enrollment. It did not measure SAT or ACT scores, so no college entrance exam result is reported here, and we did not estimate one. The second table holds our own published results for students who completed our program, copied as printed on our results page; students who did not finish are excluded, and the figures are averages rather than guarantees. Rows in both tables are shown in the order the sources list them, with every value kept exactly as written.