Sitting for the SAT can be daunting! After all, your score on this exam can affect your admission chances at many colleges and universities across the United States. If you have an SAT date on the horizon, here are some helpful tips for taking the SAT.
10 SAT Study and Test Taking Tips
1. Use Study Tools
- High school SAT study club
- Work with a tutor
- Use official SAT prep tools from the College Board
- Khan Academy
- Official SAT books and flashcards
- SAT prep apps
2. Take Timed Practice Tests
This is probably among the most important things you can do other than studying. Take practice exams while enforcing strict timelines to try to simulate the test environment as much as you can. While you can’t actually recreate the intensity and nerves you feel while taking a real SAT, you can get pretty close. These mock exams help you understand how to manage your time and get acquainted with the various types of questions you can expect to see in the exam.
3. Use The Process of Elimination (and Guess if You Don’t Know)
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This is one of the most important rules to remember. On the SAT test, every question has only one correct answer. There can never be two correct answers. If you don’t know the correct answer, start by eliminating the improbable options based on your knowledge. The answer may become obvious using this method or you might find you have at least a 50/50 chance of getting it right.
You also won’t be penalized for guessing incorrectly. It’s much better to guess than to leave a question blank on the SAT!
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4. Understand Your Mistakes And Learn From Them
After you take your practice SAT tests, it’s time to review your mistakes. However, it’s not enough to simply grade the exam and move onto the next. You truly want to understand why you made the error and what you can do to improve the next time.
Grading your SAT tests will also give you insight into your strengths and weaknesses on the exam, pointing you to which subjects and questions need additional study time. If you ran out of time on certain sections of the SAT, you’ll also be able to see why you ran out of time and focus on your test-taking skills going forward.
5. Read Strategically
Reading passages can take up a lot of time. Did you know that it’s a good idea to skim the passage first and then give it a full read? By skimming first, you allow yourself to get the main idea of the writing and likely won’t have to give it a second full read later on. When you need to check details to answer questions, you’ll likely know exactly where to find it after your skim and full read.
Unless you’re pressed for time, never answer the questions based on skimming, however. Many questions are designed to have answers that look correct on the surface, but are actually incorrect once you truly understand the text.
6. Learn To Identify Connotation and Context
This is an extension of the previous step. Once you learn to skim through the passages, learn to identify words like ‘however’, ‘rather than’, ‘except’ etc. and other strong adjectives, which helps establish a negative connotation or context. The presence of these words can drastically alter the meaning of the next sentence, which, if read in isolation, can present a different picture entirely.
This is a great skill to have while answering the reading section and can single-handedly help you eliminate the most incorrect options.
7. Don’t Ignore Passage Introductions
Some people have a tendency to ignore the italicized sentences before the reading passage. These introductions contain important information about the setting or the context of the passage which can help save valuable time in understanding the passage and answering questions. It is always better to spend a couple of seconds on this rather than going through the entire process once again when you realize that you are missing some information at the end of the passage.
8. Always Fill Content Gaps
No matter how many tips you utilize to improve your comprehension and speed up your work, if you lack subject knowledge, you may never see any major improvement. This is especially true when it comes to Math.
Try and identify the areas you have issues dealing with and focus on clearing up your concepts and learning these topics. Once this is done, you can focus on practicing your speed and comprehension.
9. Mark Key Points in Questions
Sometimes, the questions in your SAT can have multiple subsections or even convoluted questions spanning several lines. Make it a point to highlight which value you need to solve for or any part of the question which indicates what you need to find. This helps you keep track of the process and ensures that you don’t waste time-solving for the wrong value or repeatedly having to read a large question to understand it.
10. Take the SAT More than Once
It’s not “Take the SAT test once and that’s the score you get!” You are welcome to take the SAT as many times as you would like (or can fit in before your college applications are due). In fact, it’s recommended that you take it more than once. This will help you calm your nerves and improve your score each time you take it.
If you want to score well on the SAT, it is going to require time, effort, and dedication. Most students aren’t going to score high without proper preparation and studying. Taking practice tests, studying, and learning from your mistakes are among the best ways to improve your SAT score.
Many colleges and universities in the United States look for certain SAT and ACT scores from their students. Knowing this number can give you direction on your own SAT prep. See how you stack up against accepted students using College Match today.
