The Scholastic Aptitude Test, or commonly known as the SAT, is a reasoning test for getting admissions to universities in the USA and across the globe for undergraduate programs. The total score of the SAT exam is of 1600, where 800 for each of the two sections.
Below is the walk-through of the process of how to start preparing for this fun-to-study-for SAT test-
1. The SAT exam is structured below as follows-
The Reading, Writing and Language sections comprises of a total of 200 - 800 marks. Similarly, the Maths Section (with calculator and without calculator) comprises of a total of 200 - 800 marks. The sum is a total score of 400 - 1600 and sitting for the duration of 3 hours (50 extra minutes for the essay), with short breaks in between as allowed.
2. You should start preparing for the SAT test at least 3 months before the test date. To prepare for the SAT test, you can either take help of education consultants located near you like the TeamStrategize or prepare by yourself with the help of online resources and books available on numerous websites. The books for SAT exam preparation seems monstrous and enough to scare you at the first glance but, to be very honest, they are nothing less than fun thing to solve. Once you get into the habit of practicing the sample tests, you’ll find that the SAT basically tests your familiarity with the types of questions it throws at you.
3. The best time to give the SAT exam is in the 11th grade of the high school, well before application deadlines, to give you time and elbow room for improving your score and reattempting the test, since the final year is strenuous for most of us. This also gives you time for your preferred college applications.
4. One should begin by registering on the official College Board website to register for the SAT exam and you can also take SAT Practice Tests over there.
5. Keep solving books, such as those offered by the College Board, Barron’s, and The Princeton Review. As for the vocabulary part, it is recommended that you jot down new words that you come across, or learn, daily on the sticky notes or flashcards and paste them in your study room or any other place that you find convenient to look at them more frequently.
6. The SAT is MCQ based. Learn the art of plugging in the choices in the question at hand as this will save a lot of your time spent on calculation. When you get stuck on a question or if you think it’s taking a lot of time, move on to the next question but not to the next section, till the time one particular section has ended. The simple rule to save your time during the SAT test is to first attempt the easiest questions, which you think will take up less time of yours.
7. Set your target SAT exam score in accordance to the preference of the colleges you want to apply to. You can make use of the consultants from the TeamStrategize to get knowledge about the colleges that will accept your score range as per your desired college. You can also check your average percentile on numerous other websites. For example, if you want to get into the Ivy League schools, you will have to score above 1400.
8. Take a full-length test after every 1-2 weeks under a time constraint of 3 hours as given. One can also practice for the essay part only if it is required by the University, as the Essay section is optional. Read newspapers and passages is a good way to improve your vocabulary. Limit your essay section to 50 minutes.
9. You will have to spend more time in preparation to increase your score, say about 20 hours for 50–100-point improvement, 80 hours for 200–300-point improvement, and 150+ hours for 300–500-point improvement.
10. Last but not the least, sit back and relax on the day before the SAT test. Surely, it is an advice which is hard to follow, but resist the temptation to study some more as it will only make you more anxious and less confident; you don’t want to pull on your hair when you are unable to answer a question in the middle of the test and trust me, it actually happens.
11. One last tip: if in the starting or while during your exam you skipped a lot of questions and now you don’t have time to solve them, then choose any of the answer choices that you believe would be correct. The SAT exam does not have any negative marking for incorrect answers, so guess work (or eeny, meeny, miney, moe, for that matter) might seem like a smart option.
Good Luck for your SAT Preparation!
