Jessie Mathisen asked: The SAT is perhaps the most feared and misunderstood test in our culture. It’s not an IQ test, but it helps to be smart. It’s not a content test, but it helps to know your stuff. Many people with great scores never studied for it, but almost anyone can do better with practice. In some ways, it is a deeply flawed exam but it nevertheless tells colleges something useful about their applicants. More to the point, it is here to stay. As a tutor who works with many standardized admissions exams, including the SAT, I have thought about the test quite a lot over the years. Here is my advice for how to handle this quintessentially American coming of age ordeal.
First of all, let me be very clear: the single best way to prepare for the SAT is to be a good student over the long haul. No tutor or prep class can replace the benefits of paying attention in all of your classes and doing all of your homework (thoughtfully). It’s even better if you choose more challenging classes rather than easier ones. And of course, reading is critical. The books assigned in school are not meant to be a complete reading diet for any student; achieving highly in many areas, including the SAT, will be much easier if you read independently and voraciously. Being a good student and an active reader have many benefits that go far beyond getting a good score on the SAT. But it is also true that you are unlikely to get the foundation you need to score highly in any other way.
Being studious is the best SAT preparation that anyone can do, but if you are reading this, you are probably looking for more specific ways to prepare. In the medium term (roughly one to six months before the test) the best thing to do is to set a schedule for yourself and practice taking SAT sections and whole SAT exams regularly. The amount you study will depend on how busy the rest of your life is and what your goals are, but a decent rule of thumb is to do one SAT section a day, five days per week and to take one full-length test per month. Of course, grading yourself and going over the answer explanations for the questions that you got wrong is as important as actually taking the practice tests.
But what about test taking tricks? Many people are under the impression that the key to doing well on the SAT is to know a bunch of magic codes that somehow crack the test wide open. While there are genuinely valuable test-taking techniques, they aren’t magic. They also aren’t secret. I would summarize the most important techniques as follows:
1) Especially for math problems, view the answer choices as an important tool to help you find the answer.
2) If there is a variable in a math question and variables in the answer choices, you can plug your own number into the question and generally figure out the answer.
3) In many sections, the early questions are easier than the later questions. If a late question seems easy, be suspicious that there is a trap that you haven’t noticed.
4) The process of elimination is your friend.
5) For the essay, make sure that your essay has paragraphs, a beginning, middle, and end, and try to fill up most of the space you have been given.
6) Pace yourself. Don’t linger on a particularly tough problem.
I know that these suggestions aren’t as specific as you might like. To fully elucidate and explain them is outside of the scope of this article. However there are several ways you can get more detailed explanations. The least expensive option is to get a few SAT test prep books and begin a course of independent study. If you are not disciplined enough for that to work well or if you learn better through verbal discussions with another person rather than reading a book, you may want to consider tutoring. Working with a good SAT prep tutor is much like working with a good personal trainer: you get very specific, individualized advice and you also get built-in accountability and motivation.
No matter how you prepare for the SAT, remember that your SAT score can be important, but it will not define your life. College admissions depend on far more than just your SAT scores, and where you go to college will hardly be the most important thing about your life. While I admire and encourage hard work and high achievement, excessive worry and cramming is simply counterproductive. Likewise, if you score well on the SAT but don’t put in the necessary effort in other aspects of your life, your SAT score won’t get you that far. Study hard, but maintain a sense of perspective.
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