25 Tips and Tricks for the SAT

The SAT remains an important aspect for most college admissions processes. Schools use it as one factor to determine a student’s college readiness, and it can even help students qualify for merit scholarships. There are a lot of reasons why you should do your best on this test, so we’ve compiled some of our expert advice to help you improve your score.

When Should Students Prepare for the SAT?

Most students take the SAT in their junior and senior year of high school, but you can start preparing for it earlier than that. Although they aren’t the exact same test, preparing for the PSAT can go a long way in helping you be more prepared for the SAT.

Generally speaking, we suggest that students take the SAT as early as possible in their junior year. That way, you can compare your score to the average scores of admitted students on your college list and see if you want to retake the test to improve your score.

Whether you’ve never taken the SAT or you’re planning to retake it, you should definitely spend some time preparing for the test. But how much time should you spend? The answer, although you may not like it, is that it depends.

There is no wrong amount of time to spend preparing for the SAT. Some students spend months, while others cram their studying in to a couple of weeks. To gauge how long you need, it’s a good idea to take a free practice test available from the College Board and score it. Compare your scores—the total score and your section scores—to the scores of the schools you plan on applying to. The lower your score is compared to the school scores, the more time you should allot for studying and preparing.

Of course, strategy matters when it comes to making the most of your test prep. That’s why we’ve included a few tips and tricks to help you get started.

General Tips

There are some tips that apply to the SAT as a whole. These have to do with your approach to the test and how you study in general.

1. Some anxiety is normal.

Some students think that if they experience any test anxiety, then they are doomed to a poor test performance. But it’s normal to experience some level of anxiety. Anxiety is a part of the fight-or-flight response which allows you to focus and think more quickly—both good for a testing situation. Instead of trying to get rid of your anxiety, keep a more balanced approach; don’t let the anxiety get to the point of panic, but there’s also no need to overly control your emotions. For more advice about how to manage your test anxiety, check out our post 10 Ways to Overcome Test Taking Anxiety

2. Have a plan for each section.

The Reading Test, Writing and Language Test, and the two parts of the Math Test each have their nuances. While some strategies overlap across tests, you also want to develop ones that are unique for each section. Maybe you struggle with motivation when you reach the last section, which is the Math Test, or maybe you have trouble gearing up to start the test with Reading. We’ll give some specific advice in the sections below.

3. Don’t do the questions in order.

This is my favorite strategy, but it takes some practice to get used to. In order to build up your confidence and avoid any test panics, answer all of the easy questions first, and then go back to answer increasingly difficult questions. Decide quickly, after reading a question, whether you will solve it or skip it. You’ll find that when you go back to take on “hard” questions, some of them will be easier because you’ve warmed up through the easy questions.

4. Know what it takes to achieve your goals.

You should have some idea of what kind of a score you’d like to achieve before you start studying. But beyond that, use the free SAT practice test scoring guides to give you even greater insight. For example, if you’re aiming for a 650 on the SAT Math, you’ll need to get around 41 questions right out of 58. This can help you prioritize which questions you answer (with Tip #3) to make sure you get to at least 41 that you actually attempted and are confident in your choice.

5. Don’t study everything at once.

If you’re like most students at the start of their test prep journey, then you have a lot of different areas you could improve in. However, you’re better off zeroing in on a few key concepts and mastering them, rather than trying to hit a little bit of everything. By progressing through concepts one at a time, you’ll see more improvements in your score than if you spread your efforts thin.

Reading Test

Some of these tips overlap with the Writing and Language Test, but for the most part they are especially applicable to the Reading Test.

6. Reorder the passages.

While I don’t mean this literally, I do mean that you should do the passages out of order. It’ll take some practice for you to figure out the best order based on subject and skimming for complex language, but it’s important that you do the passages in the order you want. The Reading Test is the first test on the SAT, so starting this test strong can set the tone for your entire testing experience. Note: while I suggested doing the questions out of order in #3, you should complete all of the questions regarding a passage before moving on to the next set of questions in the Reading and Writing & Language test.

7. Read the passage introductions.

The SAT includes a one- or two-sentence introduction before each passage in italics. These introductions often tell you who wrote the passage, when it was written, and where the passage comes from. This contextual information can help you make sense of the passage and more easily answer author-based questions. It also is the biggest key in deciding which passage to attempt first.

8. Come up with your own answer.

Just as you would solve the Math Test questions and find the answer that best fits your own, you should come up with your own answer for the Reading Test questions before looking at the choices. As practice, you may want to do a sample Reading Test untimed to write your own answers to questions and then choose the answer choice based on which is closest to your own. While you may be stumped on some questions (which is totally normal!) this can help you avoid any confusion from long, partially-true answer choices.

9. Identify the “rhetoric” questions.

A little less than half of the SAT Reading Test questions fall under a category the College Board calls “Rhetoric,” which has to do with the structure and development of the passage rather than the ideas and information. These questions should be approached differently, since many ask about the role that different literary elements play, or about the author’s choices. Instead of working with the ideas in the passage, think about how the writing accomplishes the author’s purpose.

10. Refer back to the passage.

To answer most of the Reading Test questions, you should refer back to the passage rather than relying on your memory of the passage itself. There’s no need to base your answers entirely on memory, since this portion of the SAT is structured like an open-book test. In fact, if you do this along with answering the questions from easiest to hardest, then you’ll actually develop a deeper understanding of the passage relatively quickly and feel more confident answering those tough questions.

Writing & Language Test

These tips really focus on pitfalls students make on the Writing & Language Test. Working on this and the Reading Test will boost your Evidence-Based Reading and Writing section score.

11. Brush up on grammar.

The Writing & Language Test doesn’t just test your knowledge of grammar, but it makes up a big portion of it. The Standard English Conventions subscore is based on 20 out of 44 questions, or about 5 questions per passage, and I find it is the easier of the two subscores to work on. There are plenty of short books available at public libraries, or you can find grammar lessons online. This is a broad tip, so I’ve included some of the common errors below.

12. Watch out for agreement.

Errors in subject-verb or pronoun-antecedent agreement are difficult for students to catch. Often, the sentence separates the two related parts using prepositional phrases, parentheticals, or appositives. If there is a pronoun or a verb in the underlined portion, find the antecedent or subject it corresponds to and makes sure it matches.

For example: When any one of these changes occur, it is likely the result of careful analysis conducted by transportation planners.

The verb “occur” corresponds to the subject “one”, so it should be changed to “occurs.” The pronoun “it” has the antecedent “one,” so this agrees and should be left alone. Some students would be tempted to choose an answer with “they are” instead of “it is” because the noun “changes” is closer to the pronoun and is plural, but pay attention to the meaning of the sentence.