Getting Better At The SAT
We should think of the SAT as a test that asks us to do basically the same things over and over again.
And over again.
And over again, again.
For this reason, once you have a handle on the concepts spelled out in this book, getting better at the SAT isn’t a matter of learning anything further—it’s a matter of improving your accuracy in the application of principles you already know.
So it’s a bit like improving your free-throws in basketball, or practicing for a piano recital, or even getting better at a video game. It’s more an exercise in improving your technical execution, and less an exercise in broadening your intellect.
(Of course, this metaphor doesn’t hold up completely. There are some parts of the SAT—most notably the Math section and the Sentence Completion questions—in which you’ll have to think a bit creatively. But the way we attack the test should always rely on the basic concepts and strategies described in this book. The simple fact remains that the difference between a 600 and an 800 on a given section always comes down to strategy, execution, and accuracy, and not to knowledge or intelligence.)
How To Set Goals
The most popular way to set an SAT goal is usually to target a particular score. That can work fine, of course, but it’s not the way I like to do it.
Instead, I recommend that you target particular levels of accuracy in particular skillsets, and then let the scores rise on their own as a consequence of your improved abilities.
In other words, rather than say, “I want to try to get a 600 in Critical Reading on my next practice test,” say something like, “I want to go an entire section without missing a single question in which I know the meanings of all the words.” Then try to achieve that standard of execution (which, by the way, would lead to a score much higher than 600 for most test-takers). Or, in the Math section, set a goal like “I want to go an entire practice test without making a ‘careless’ mental error,” or “I want to make sure I understand at least one wrong answer choice with each question that I answer,” and so on.
If you set these kinds of task-based goals, rather than score-based goals, your improvement will generally be more meaningful and lasting, and it will come more quickly and easily.
But Wait—Is It Even Worth It?
Remember when I said that there were some complicating issues surrounding the idea of improving your score? A lot of that stuff has to do with the question of whether a higher score is even likely to help you significantly in your admissions campaign. (After all, we should never lose sight of the fact that the only reason to care about the SAT is that it can help improve your chances at your target schools.)
I made you a video presentation to help explain some of the factors involved in your SAT goal-setting. You can find it on the fan page for my company, Testing Is Easy: http://bit.ly/college-planning.
How To Train For The SAT—Mastering The Ideas In This Book
“Under duress, we do not rise to our expectations—we fall to the level of our training.”
- Bruce Lee
After questions about the structure of the test itself, the most common question I get has to do with the right way to “study” for the SAT. People want to know what order they should tackle the different parts of the test in, what kind of schedule they should follow, whether they should take a practice test on the last day before the real test—all kinds of stuff.
The short answer to all of these questions is that there really is no single best way to tackle the material in this book, because no two students will have the same exact needs when it comes to prepping. Different people will have different strengths and weaknesses, different schedules, different target scores, different starting points, different attention spans, and so on. So I’m not going to tell you exactly how to manage your preparation schedule. Instead, I’m going to give you guidelines to follow and things to make sure you consider, and then it’s going to be up to you to figure out how you piece those things together in a way that works best for you.
So we’ll handle it in this order:
ogeneral concepts to govern your preparation
oguidelines for the order in which you tackle different parts of the test
oideas for drills and exercises
ogeneral notes on scheduling
Let’s get started.
The Recommended Progression
Most people measure their progress by the scores they make on practice tests, but I don’t advise that, at least not in the beginning. I’d rather see you measure your progress in terms of your overall understanding of the test. This is a subjective measurement, to be sure, but it’s actually a lot more reliable than practice test results, because those can be heavily influenced by luck and other external factors.