“All things are ready, if our mind be so,” wrote William Shakespeare. When you hit test day, your preparation is the key to your success. You know this; it’s why you’re here. And this chapter outlines the strategies and game plans for you to prepare for the SAT and the opportunities that follow.
SAT prep can start at any point along your high-school path and still be effective. In this chapter are how to plan your studying when the test is a year away, a few months away, and right around the corner. And for those of you who suddenly realize that the test is next week, there is a panic-button scenario (and some suggestions on goal planning and time management). Lastly, this chapter tells you what to do the night before and the morning of SAT day, and what to do if you’re faced with adverse conditions.
Starting Early: The Long-Term Phase
You’re the person who buys summer clothes in December. (Smart! That’s when they’re on clearance.) You also plan ahead — way ahead. This is not a bad strategy for long-term success in life and career. When your SAT is roughly a year out, start with these strategies:
Sign up for challenging courses in school. Skip the courses that require papers short enough to tweet and just enough math to figure out how many minutes remain before your next vacation. Go for subjects that stretch your mind. Specifically, stick it out with math at least through Algebra II. If high school is in your rearview mirror, check out extension or enrichment adult-ed courses. Colleges will appreciate this initiative along with your SAT scores.
Get into the habit of reading. Instagram, Snapchat, and Discord don’t do the trick. Instead, take on academic journals, established news sources, and any publication aimed towards an adult audience. The more you read challenging material, the more you build your ability to comprehend it. This will help you in so many ways in life, but on the SAT, it helps you understand vocabulary, analyze reasoning, and deconstruct evidence. Take note of unfamiliar words and check the words online. Also notice how an author makes a point — through description, citing experts, word choice, and so forth. This helps you understand the passages of the Reading Test, recognize the writing methods of the Writing and Language Test, and construct a logical, flowing essay for the optional Essay Test.
Take a critical eye. Reading the school or local paper, websites, or any publications, look for reasoning techniques. They’re everywhere, and once you spot them, you see them all over. Is the sales pitch, persuasive argument, or editorial using statistics, emotion, anecdotes, or humor to make its point? As a side benefit, you learn to see through these tactics and spot the logic.
Revisit your math. Resist the urge to burn your geometry text the minute the semester is over. Keep your math notebooks and especially your old exams. Revisit the questions, especially the ones you missed, because these are the topics you’ll see on the SAT. Research shows that memory improves when concepts are reviewed after a period of time, and this will help you when the SAT asks you to factor a quadratic, which you may not have done for a couple of years.
Take the practice exams in Part 5 of this book. Work your way through all those questions and then check the answers and explanations to everything you got wrong, skipped, or wobbled on. After you identify your areas where you need to focus, you know what you have to practice. There are also free practice exams at www.collegeboard.org.
Build up your grammar. The grammar review in Chapter 5 covers almost all of what you need for the Writing and Language Test, but the SAT likes to throw the occasional “oddball” grammar curveball that no one is expecting. For a more thorough, in-depth review of English grammar, pick up English Grammar Workbook For Dummies or 1,001 Grammar Practice Questions For Dummies (both authored by Geraldine Woods and published by Wiley).
Take the PSAT/NMSQT. This “mini-SAT” gives you a chance to experience test conditions. It may also open the door to some robust scholarships, including the National Merit Scholarship (the “NMS” in the title of the test). The PSAT is a good preview of the SAT, and when you get your scores, you get to see the questions you missed along with the right answers — which, as stated in Chapter 1, is like turning on a light to see your exam performance.
This is a good, early start. Now continue on to the medium-range plan as the time before your SAT shortens.
Moving Along: The Medium-Term Phase
As the SAT moves along its timeline closer to your door — or something like that — here’s the medium-term phase of your plan. Don’t worry if you didn’t start earlier. You have time, and these steps make a huge difference.
Continue sharpening your reading skills. College-level reading skills matter in all the exam tests (Reading, Writing and Language, and Math). Continue reading college- and adult-level materials and searching up words that you don’t know. Peruse (read carefully) the daily newspaper, either online or in print, and check out the way that stories are told and statistics appear. Be sure to read the editorials and think about how the author argues a point.
Work on your writing. Send a story in to the school newspaper or send letters or emails to a publication editor. Writing for an audience ups your writing game, because you pay much closer attention to your reasoning and grammar. Do this a few times, and you’re a pro! This is especially true with the sort of writing that makes a case for a particular point of view, because that’s what you have to read, analyze, and possibly write on the SAT.
Get a math study-buddy. Not a tutor. A tutor is good, but you can also benefit from studying with someone on your own level. You’ll get stuck on questions that your friend knows, while your friend will need help that you can provide. The studying process gets a little less tedious, and you’ll be glad to know that you’re not the only one in the room who doesn’t know all the answers.
Revisit the practice exams in Part 5 of this book. Pay special attention to the questions that you missed before, or if this is your first round, mark those missed questions for review later on. Also check any question that puzzled you or took too much time, even if you guessed the right answer! After you know which sort of question is likely to stump you, read the chapters that explain how to answer those questions.
Revisit your PSAT/NMSQT. Just as with the practice exams, you need to revisit your performance on an SAT-style exam, but the PSAT is more relevant because it shows you how you do in an actual exam setting. Plus, you need to make sure that you can handle the topics that you missed on that exam, such as reading passage main idea, verb parallelism, or coordinate geometry.
Keep following this plan, and you’ll be in fine shape for the SAT. Now to shift your process for the final stretch.
Getting Closer: The Short-Range Phase
The SAT is weeks away! Whether you’ve been following the progression or are starting now, these steps can make a nice difference and add quite a few points to your score.
Work or revisit the practice questions in Chapters 4, 6, 8, and Part 4 of this book. If you can answer the question easily, you’re good — but if you struggle with a question,