The SAT Prep Black Book(11)
4. WWMIR?
This abbreviation stands for “What Would Make It Right?” In this drill, you go through each answer choice in a question and ask yourself what would have to change about the question or the test for that answer choice to be the correct one. If a Math question asks for the area of a rectangle and one wrong answer is the perimeter, then the answer to “WWMIR” is something like “if the College Board had asked for perimeter instead of area here.” If the shortest answer choice in an Improving Sentences question isn’t correct, then the answer to “WWMIR” might be something like “if this noun had been singular instead of plural, or if the word ‘it’ had been ‘they.’” And so on. Forcing yourself to try to re-imagine the questions in ways that would make the wrong answers right will help reinforce your understanding of how right and wrong answers work for particular parts of the SAT.
Things To Think About For Scheduling
As I mentioned above, years of working with a wide variety of students have left me convinced that there is no single best schedule for every test-taker. In fact, I think it would be closer to the truth to say that no two test-takers would probably have the same optimal preparation schedule. So now that we’ve talked about general ideas to use in your preparation, let’s talk about the things you’ll need to think about when you schedule that preparation.
Do You Like To Get An Early Start, Or Are You An Adrenaline Junkie?
Imagine that you’re in a history class, and the teacher announces a massive research assignment that will be due in 2 months. There are two general reactions to a situation like this: some people rush home and start working on it right away, and some people already know that they’ll pull a couple of all-nighters right before it’s due and knock it out like that. I find that the same general tendencies exist when it comes to test prep. If you’d get started on a 2-month project when the due date is still 2 months away, then you should probably start as early as possible on your test preparation. If you’re more of a last-minute person, then you’re probably more of a last-minute prepper, too. I’ve seen both approaches work out very well tons of times, as long as the test-taker was comfortable with the particular approach.
How Long Can You Stand To Stare At The Same Page?
Some people have longer attention spans than others, and some are just naturally more interested in the SAT than others. If you really can’t coax more than 10 to 30 minutes of sustained attention to the test out of yourself, then you’ll probably want to do shorter and more frequent bouts of preparation. On the other hand, if you’re the kind of person who can easily spend 2 hours thinking about the SAT without wanting to scream, it may make more sense for you to do an hour or two each weekend and largely ignore the test during the week.
What Kind Of Score Increase Do You Need?
This one is probably obvious: the more points you need to score, the earlier you’ll probably want to start prepping.
How Much Free Time Do You Have?
Again, fairly obvious: the less free time you have in your schedule, the earlier you need to start prepping in order to accommodate a particular amount of prep time. (But one potential wrinkle in this part of the discussion is the fact that the actual amount of prep time you need may be significantly more or significantly less than you’d expect at the outset.)
How Many Questions/Sections/Tests Do You Need To Do?
It may come as a surprise, but there is no magic number of practice questions that will guarantee you hit your target score. Based on my fairly wide experience, I would say that over 99% of people do need to do some kind of actual practice work with the ideas in this book—it’s very rare that a person is able to implement the strategies on test day with full effectiveness after merely reading about them. So you will want to do some number of practice questions or sections. The operative question is how many.
And the issue is one of quality, not quantity. Most people will assume (very incorrectly) that if they simply do a certain number of questions they’re guaranteed to improve. But that really isn’t the case, because of the unique way in which standardized tests are designed. It’s much more important to try to understand a representative sample of questions than it is to crank out a million repetitions simply for its own sake. If you can look at a single real SAT and really, thoroughly understand what the College Board is doing in that test, and why, and how you can use the strategies in this book to beat it, then you’re ready.
Do You Even Need A Schedule?