If you’re anything like I was before I took the SAT in high school,you’re a little anxious.  It’s probably the most important test you’ve ever taken; you know how important numbers are, and while you’ve had years to work on your GPA, the SAT only takes a few hours.  So you may be wondering: at what schools will your SAT scores matter the most?

Unfortunately, you’ll be hard pressed to find a school admitting that SAT scores are more important there than at other schools.  Rather, they prefer to talk about how many other things they consider: leadership experience, special talents, foreign language skills, community involvement, diversity, etc.  College admissions is getting less and less transparent, and emphasizing SAT scores is quite unfashionable for admissions committees nowadays.  Some large public schools, such as the excellent University of California system, do make admissions calculators available that will determine your eligibility for admission based on the numbers.  But eligibility is far from a guarantee of acceptance. Read more…

In previous post SAT passage reading, I had explored some critical reading tips. Now, I will focus on the sentence completions section of the critical reading.

The sentence completions consist of about 5 or 6 questions at the beginning of the section, in which the test provides you with a sentence with one or two blanks and you have to choose which answer choices fill those blanks most correctly. In general, you shouldn’t spend more than half a minute on each of these, simply because your time would be better spent trying to decipher the passage questions, where you will have more of a chance of picking up more points. For a lot of sentence completions, the correct answer will be uncomplicated to figure out, provided you know the words.

This is why it is so important to build up your vocabulary in preparation for the test. Sentence completions are easy points for you to rack up. You just need to make sure that well in advance of the exam, such as a couple of months, you start reviewing words that you did not know that may show up on the exam. A comprehensive list of these words can be found at the back of any respectable SAT guide, as well as here: http://www.freevocabulary.com/. Make flashcards. Read them over 10 times. Make it a rule that you must use a word in your daily language a certain number of times. Do whatever it takes to know these words inside out. If you do, you will not be sitting in front of your test on test day, scratching your head and wondering what in the world “halcyon” means (in case you’re wondering, it means calm, which is how you will be if you start preparing in ADVANCE). Read more…

In my last post How to Ace SAT maths section , I discussed some general tips to help you on the math section of the SAT. Now, let’s dive in a little deeper together and see how else we can ensure a good score on this section.

The SAT is a multiple choice test! Use that to your advantage! One of the five answers in front of you is the correct one. This can be especially useful in the math section. If you have to solve a problem involving a variable, and the algebra is too complicated or for some reason you are having difficulty, plug the answer choices back into the problem! This method might even end up saving you a lot of time, instead of solving endless equations that you might get wrong in any case. Working backwards is a smart technique for the savvy SAT test taker. Read more…

Is SAT losing ts charm ? Will the colleges stop relying on SAT ?

Some people like president of the University of California, who announced several months ago that he would like to abolish the test as a requirement for admission to the school. (He would retain the SAT II, which measures achievement within particular disciplines.

Check out Do SAT Scores Really Predict Success?

Want to prepare for SAT in the lap of mother nature ?

Check out this SAT Preparation Camp in Maine

With my last post Writing a Good SAT Essay, I discussed some insider tips to acing the SAT essay. In another post
Critical Reading in SAT , we had discussed about how to prepare for critical reading.

Now, we move on to the passage reading/questions part of the critical reading section. This portion of the SAT has traditionally stumped students, given its long, generally boring passages and difficult questions. This section is what gives students confidence that the SAT is not their friend. And it is not. It is designed to trick you and weed out the poor analyzers of literature. Well, poor analyzer or not, given the right advice, anyone can beat the SAT test makers at their own game. Read more…

You took the SAT test. And you did pretty well, got a couple of questions wrong, but overall you’re feeling pretty confident. Something called the SAT curve can potentially make or break your score.

The curve is designed to account for the outlier questions on the test: the ones that were a little funky, which potentially threw the scores off. The curve is what generates your scaled score (200-800) from your raw score (the number of questions you got right minus 1/4^th of a point for each question you got wrong). Depending on which test you take, a certain raw score could give you a higher or lower scaled score. If the test administered was a little difficult compared to an average SAT, then you will be curved higher (therefore getting a better score than if you had taken an easier test and gotten the same number of questions right). Basically, the test makers want to make sure that all the small differences between the tests that might make one a little harder or easier are considered, so that all tests are equally fair. Read more…

If you are a student who plans to take the SAT this year. It is important to know the important dates regarding the test, especially the registration dates. Knowing the dates of the exam can largely help in your preparation for the big day. You can take the SAT as often as you like as long as you will be willing to pay $45.

Knowing the deadlines of registration and SAT test dates will help you keep in track of your review and will keep you ready for the test. Moreover, it will waive you to applicable fines for late registration. Below is the schedule of the registration and testing dates for students testing within the United States and outside the United States for the year 2009-2010.

U.S. registration dates and deadlines

Read more…

So you’re not a voracious reader and you often used SparkNotes for your reading projects and book reports in your English or Literature class. You are not familiar with Leo Tolstoy and his marvelous works and been snoring when talking about Shakespeare. Then you are in quite trouble for the critical reading part or section of the SAT. Before you panic and start reading a year’s worth of relevant literature. Read the rest of the article for all the necessary information that might need for the critical reading section of the SAT that will be really helpful when you take the exam.

SAT: Critical Reading

The Scholastic Aptitude Test is one of the most crucial tests that is taken in a person’s lifetime. College admission heavily rely on passing the test. The good and proper preparation for SAT is to focus on the two aforementioned areas: subject matter and test-taking skills. A student must be well-motivated upon taking the test. You should also need ample time to absorb the lessons. Enriching your vocabulary is a helpful tool in taking the test in order to fully understand each question. You can enrich your vocabulary by constantly exposing yourself to different words through reading. Highly intellectual newspapers and magazines are good reads since they often use erudite words. Read more…

In the last post How To Ace the SAT Math Section, I had touched on some helpful things you can do to raise your math score. I will be coming back to the math section later on, but I’d really like to take a look at one of the most feared parts of the SAT: the essay.

Essay is the only subjective part of the exam. It is worth about 10% of your entire exam. That’s a lot of points!! You want to make sure you do your best on it. It is graded by two college/high school teachers, who will each give it a score out of 6. This means that the maximum that you can score is a 12 and the minimum is a 2 (you can only get a 0 if you write off-topic). How can you ensure that you get a 12? With some insider tips. Read more…