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　　you want to do well on the SAT, but don't know where to begin? Or, perhaps, you've already done well but want to get those extra few points to impress that adcom at that ivy league school? I'm writing this guide because I feel that after two years of studying and having taken every released exam for the new SAT (both SATs and PSATs), I think I can be of help to many people.

 

　　Mindset

　　You can't go into the SAT thinking that it's "stupid" and "doesn't measure anything". This is counterproductive. The SAT does, in fact, measure the essential skills you need to be successful in academics. Perhaps it's not perfect, but it's the best way that college admissions officers have of comparing students from all over the country. Whether you like the SAT or not, you've got to put the negativity aside and have a positive attitude. Without one, preparation will be painful and fruitless.

 

　　Materials

　　You don't need to be rich and have parents who have money flying out of their noses to be able to afford to prepare for the SAT. With a few bucks and a lot of dedication, you can adequately prepare. I come from a middle class family and couldn't afford to go to any $1000 preparation courses (like most of my friends did) -- but in truth, I think it's better to prepare on your own. If you want to succeed with the SAT, go out and buy the following materials:

　　- The Official SAT Study Guide ($18)

　　- Both Wednesday and Saturday forms of the 2006 PSAT ($3/each on collegeboard.com)

　　- The 2004 Wednesday PSAT ($3 on collegeboard.com)

　　- The 2007 Saturday PSAT ($3 on collegeboard.com)

　　See how inexpensive it is? All I'm asking you to do is spend $30. You don't need any more than this. I'll provide you with the strategies here (hence why I didn't ask you to buy any "strategy" books). Let's go!

 

　　General Strategies

　　There are of course general "test taking" strategies that people who are "good test takers" know:

　　Process of Elimination : oddly enough, not many people take advantage of this! For the critical reading and writing sections, this is especially important. The idea here is to just cross off answers that you KNOW are wrong and to pick from the remaining answers. If you can narrow it down to one, then great! But what if you're down to two? three? four even? Still just guess. If you manage to narrow every question down, on average, you will end up with a net increase in score rather than just leaving things blank.

　　Don't be too liberal in crossing things off. Often times, in a really difficult question, you'll eliminate all the choices (it's happened to me...), in which case you must go back and carefully figure out what to eliminate.

　　This is a basic strategy -- it's helpful, but it should be integrated with reasoning skill and not used in substitute of it.

　　Bubbling : you wouldn't believe how many people misbubble or SPEND TOO MUCH TIME ON BUBBLING! The two mainstream strategies for bubbling are:

　　1. Bubble as you go. Some people prefer to just bubble in questions as they answer them.

　　2. Bubble in chunks. Some others prefer to do entire "chunks" of their exam and then bubble them in together. This method is more efficient, but some may not prefer it.

　　The other issue is that some people are so paranoid about erasures/stray marks that they spend forever just trying to perfect their bubbles. Screw that! Just fill in the bubbles as best as you can without wasting time. Odds are, your bubbles are fine and that little picometer extra pencil that strayed off will not hurt your score. Lingering and not having enough time to answer questions will hurt your score.

　　The word on bubbling? Just do what is most comfortable for you.

 

　　How to prepare

　　Now that we've got all the basics out of the way, it's time to learn how to actually prepare for this thing.

　　First and foremost, you MUST get used to doing full exams. Doing individual sections is fine if you want to do it with one test or two, but the bulk of your preparation regimen should be focused on taking full tests in timed, realistic environments. Remember, the SAT isn't just testing whether you can answer the questions: they're testing how well you can answer questions in a timed environment .

　　So, here's how you should prepare:

　

    The Diagnostic

　　In that big-blue book that I made you buy, there are 8 practice examinations. THESE ARE GOLD! Once you run out, they're gone. Those PSATs won't last very long either.

　　So, at the beginning of your preparation regimen, take one exam under timed conditions and score your exam.

　　Now, the tests may be harder/easier, so just give yourself a "score range" of +- 30 points. So, say, if you get a 620 on a test, consider it really a 590-650.

 

　　Learning from your mistakes

　　A lot of people just zealously take a lot of exams without stopping to figure out what the heck they got wrong (or right). After each exam, you should spend a lot of time analyzing each question. Figure out what you did wrong! There are three kinds of errors:

　　

    Lack of Knowledge

　　These errors occur because you simply didn't know something. Perhaps it was a word or a property of some geometric figure. In these cases, MAKE SURE you look up that concept. The SAT is standardized -- any concept you don't know WILL haunt you.

 

　　Reasoning Error

　　This is the annoying one. You know how sometimes you know everything there is to know about parabolas yet you couldn't figure out a particular problem involving parabolas? Or how you understood the passage perfectly yet managed to get 1/2 of the questions wrong? Unfortunately, these errors aren't quite as easy as looking something up. For these errors, you have to go back to the question/passage/whatever and really sit there and try to figure out WHY the right answer is right. MAKE THIS AN ACTIVE PROCESS! Don't just rely on instinct when figuring out problems: reason things out to yourself. Follow a thought process and make sure it makes sense. The more you practice doing this, the better off you'll be.

 

　　D'oh!

　　Don't you just hate that? You solved for x when they wanted 2x. You missed the "NOT" in that critical reading question. Perhaps you made this error because you were going too fast or because you weren't focusing. In any case, try to make an effort to read things carefully and minimize these errors! But luckily, these are the easiest to fix.

 

　　Your next test

　　This depends greatly on how much time you have to prepare. If you have these 12 tests and you have 9 months to prepare, a test per week is NOT advisable. Perhaps one per month until "crunch time" when you can up the number.

　　The trick is to just space them out so that you don't end up out of exams before the real test. I will leave this up to your good judgement. But I will say, though, to make sure you've reviewed your previous test so thoroughly that, if you took that EXACT TEST again, you'd get a 2400.

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