3 Ways to Prepare for the SAT

As one of the most widely-taken exams in the world, the SAT is something millions of students prepare for each year.

In this article, we collect the very best tips for success, helping you to prepare for the SAT and gain a top score. By the end, you’ll be ready to set up a revision plan and get to work on boosting your SAT score.

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Let’s get right into our top tips!

1 - Understand the structure

In an exam situation, you’ll only have a specific amount of time to get through all of the questions that are on the SAT. Due to this, you need to make the most of every single second, with any time wasted negatively impacting you, the time you have available, and your ability to perform well on the exam.

Although you can speed up your exam skills by practicing lots, another method to ensure that you don’t waste any time during the exam is to ensure that you understand the structure of the SAT. Every year, the SAT follows exactly the same format, with the three-hour exam covering the same topics in the same order.

With this in mind, if you take the time to familiarize yourself with the exam beforehand, then there won’t be any surprises when you open your exam booklet on the day. When familiarizing yourself with the SAT, you should pay attention to what comes up in the exam, and how long you have for each part.

Within the SAT, you’ll be covering three main areas:

• Reading - Over 52 multiple-choice questions, you’ll have 65 minutes.
• Writing and Language - Over 44 multiple-choice questions, you’ll have 35 minutes.
• Math - Over 58 multiple-choice questions, you’ll have 80 minutes.

Ever since the SAT changed to a maximum of 1600 back in March 2016, the sections have remained the same. Due to this, if you spend some time reading through how they’re structured and what they cover, you’ll be much more prepared.

We also recommend that you spend some time looking through a practice paper and just reading the information in detail. The test meticulously details what happens in each section and how you should answer the questions, which can be a real benefit to know. With all of this information solidify understood, you won’t have any problems when it comes to the exam’s structure.

2 - Know what is in each section

Each section of the SAT is created to test a different skill set. While distinctions between subject studies across sections like Math and Reading are obvious, the specific information that each section can test will vary. However, there are a set few topics that routinely come up in each wider section.

In the final scoring of the SAT, CollegeBoard treats the exam like two sections, each worth a total of 800 points. However, the exam is actually split into 5 areas:

• Evidence-Based Reading
• Writing and Language
• Math: Non-Calculator
• Math: Calculator
• SAT Essay

Depending on which schools you’re planning on applying to, the SAT essay may be optional. If you decide to take this additional part of the exam, then the exam will last for 3 hours and 50 minutes instead of just three hours.

Let’s break down what each section holds.

Evidence-Based Reading

The very first section of the SAT is all about reading through passages, extracting information, and answering questions on them. There will be a total of five passages, each of which you’ll have to move through and answer 9 or 10 questions about.

There are three main areas that are tested in terms of what you’ll be reading:

• Literature - There will be one literary narrative that you’ll have to work through.
• Science - There will be two scientific articles or discussions that you’ll follow.
• History and Social Science - You’ll finish out with two more that stem from this area.

The questions that you’ll answer in each section will mostly pertain to the purpose of the text, some inferences that they’re making, general comprehension of the extract, or a discussion point of the main ideas that they’re testing.

Writing and Language

Within this section, you’ll have to answer questions about grammar and fractionation. There are a range of different topics which are tested, each of which covers a different number of questions. Alongside grammar and punctuation, you may also have to explain some words in their contexts, order different paragraphs in a larger essay, or comment on intros and conclusions.

The specific skills that are that is tested will be:

• General punctuation - Between 6-11 questions on commas, semicolons, etc.
• Expressing Ideas - Between 20-26 questions.
• Verb usage - Between 3-8 questions
• Grammar topics - Between 0-5 questions like idioms, pronouns, modifiers, parallelism, etc.
• Explaining charts and graphs - Between 1-4 questions.

Math

Within Math, there are a set list of different topics that can come up across the two sections. These sections will actually test very similar skills, although the calculator section will have more steps that then require a calculator simply for speed reasons.

The list of topics that could come up are:

• Algebra
• Trigonometry
• Geometry
• Advanced Math
• Data Analysis and Problem Solving

You’ll be able to find further breakdowns of the SAT syllabus online.

3- Past Papers

Working through past papers will allow you to streamline your studies and rapidly improve. As there are so many previous years of SATs to go through, this is a fairly endless stream of content that you can work through.

Once you finish a paper and have marked it, you should:

• Find mistakes - Single out the errors you made.
• Group them - Are the errors similar? Perhaps in a certain skill or exam question style?
• Pinpoint why - Was the error a silly mistake, a lack of knowledge, a difficult question; what tripped you up.

By using this as a way to then continually improve your exam technique will ensure that once you arrive on exam day, you’re much more prepared for what’s to come.

If you’re looking to accelerate your learning, you can partner with an online SAT tutor to help you through the process. At TutorChase, our Tutors are world-class, having been in the 98th percentile or above for the SAT.

Reach out today, and we’ll pair you with a tutor that can help you prepare for the SAT.