So that’s it—the only two places you should look to when you want to confirm something about the SAT are (1) the actual SAT, and (2) the schools you’re interested in attending. That’s it.
Notice who’s not on that list: guidance counselors, friends, students and alumni of your target schools, even your parents. I’m not saying that all of these sources will be wrong all the time—I’m simply pointing out that these sources are never the final authority on the SAT. They might give you good information, but you’ll never know for sure if it’s good until you verify it with the actual test or with the schools you want to attend.
Now that we’ve established how to test all SAT-related advice, let’s talk about some of the bad information that’s out there.
Misinformation From The College Board
We’ve already talked about how to use the College Board’s resources. As you’ll see if you look at that section of the manual, much of the College Board’s advice about taking the SAT is based on what can only be called a set of illusions about what the SAT really is and what it really does. (What’s the rest of it based on? I can’t tell, but most of it still isn’t any good.) Let’s take a look.
SAT Misconception 1: The SAT tests the skills that a good college student needs.
This is the major gimmick of the College Board. I explain what’s wrong with this idea in almost every section of this manual: basically, there’s no way that a standardized test can possibly measure a student’s ability to perform in college, because college is a non-standardized environment.
This particular idea—the idea that the SAT actually measures something besides how well you do on the SAT—is very dangerous to SAT-takers. Since you’re an SAT-taker, I want you to know the truth.
I can’t tell you how many times a well-meaning student has told me that he wants to turn the SAT into a real intellectual challenge. He’s going to take advanced calculus as a junior so he’ll know enough math; he’s going to read Cicero over the summer in the original Latin to learn how to craft a sentence; he’s going to volunteer twenty hours a week tutoring young children to sharpen his mind and purify his soul.
Now, all of those things are great. They’ll make you a more intelligent person and a more attractive candidate in the admissions process. But they absolutely will NOT help you on the SAT, because the SAT is NOT an indication of how intelligent or well-rounded you are. The SAT is basically an indication of how well you can read one sheet of paper and fill in the right bubbles on another sheet of paper that gets fed into a machine.
So, then, what’s the best way to get ready for the SAT? By attacking it on a technical level. By pulling it apart and finding all the hidden rules and patterns that dictate how the questions are written. Establish processes that let you attack every single question like a machine. Master the small list of skills that are tested over and over again. In other words, do the stuff I teach you to do in this Black Book.
Give up the idea that the SAT tests college-related skills. We’d all like it to do that, but that isn’t what it does. Read Cicero if you want to, but it won’t help on the SAT much more than watching Sesame Street every morning.
Fact: The SAT is NOT a test of the skills you’ll need in college. The best way to approach the SAT is to attack it on a technical level and turn yourself into an SAT machine.
SAT Misconception 2: “Educated” guessing is a good idea.
I’ve already covered this one in some depth. In case you missed it, though, check out the section on guessing.
Fact: Guessing on the SAT is NOT a good idea.
SAT Misconception 3: Hard questions appear at the end of each group of questions.
On page 14 of The Official SAT Study Guide, this sentence appears:
Within a group of questions, . . . the easier ones come first and the questions become more difficult as you move along.
This is another one of those things everybody knows about the SAT that isn’t actually true. The College Board tells you it’s true. So do most major test-prep companies. But it isn’t—at least, it’s not always true, and it’s not true for every test-taker.
There are two ways I can prove that you won’t necessarily find the tenth question in a group more difficult than the first question. First, turn to any answer key page in the Official SAT Study Guide (the Blue Book) to see the difficulty levels that the College Board has assigned to all the questions for that sample test. You’ll see that it’s absolutely not true that every question is at least as difficult as the one before it. So that’s one way to disprove this misconception.