Smart test-taking tips 1. MAKE YOUR PRACTICE TESTS FEEL REAL One essential part of SAT prep is taking realistic practice tests, like those in this book. When taking each practice SAT, try your best to replicate the experience of the actual test as much as possible: • If you can’t take the test in a proctored classroom, at least take it in some other “neutral” setting like a public library. If you absolutely must take it at home, take it at the dining room table and have a parent turn off the phones and time you on each section. • Start your practice test in the morning since you’ll probably start your official SAT between 8 and 9 am. • If you are timing yourself, use a stopwatch that will beep when your time is up on each section. • Take the test in one sitting, with only one or two 5-minute breaks. It may help to build your test-taking stamina slowly. The SAT is a long test; the practice tests in this book are just under 4 hours in length, but the real SAT will take you over 4 hours. Just as marathoners don’t start their training by running a full marathon, but instead work their way up to longer runs, you might want to take just a few sections at a time to start, building up gradually until, in the last few weeks before the SAT, you are taking full tests each week. 2. GET THE OXYGEN FLOWING—EXERCISE To stay sharp, your brain needs a good supply of oxygen. So, a good aerobic exercise regimen can help your SAT preparation tremendously. If you don’t already have a good exercise regime, get in the habit of doing at least 20 minutes of good aerobic exercise every day, preferably before you sit down to do your homework or take a practice test. This will get the oxygen flowing to your brain, relieve stress, and enhance your mental agility. But be careful—always check with your doctor before making dramatic changes in your physical activity level. 3. PREPARE YOUR STUDY AREA When taking a practice test or just studying, preparing the area is important. Most students work inefficiently because they don’t prepare their work space. Put yourself in a place where you can maintain mindful focus for an extended time. Do not study or take your tests on your bed. Your bed is a place for sleep, not study. When you recline, your brain becomes less alert. You can’t study well if one part of your brain is sending sleep signals to the other parts! Instead, sit in a quiet area. Sit in an upright chair at a table or desk with good lighting. This makes it easier for your brain to absorb new information and solve new problems. Also, make sure that all the tools you will need are within easy reach: the test booklet, a calculator, and pencils with erasers. 4. TAKE CONTROL OF THE TEST When you take the SAT, the test booklet is yours— mark it up freely. You get no points for neatness on the SAT. Jotting down notes, crossing off wrong answers, and marking up diagrams are essential to good test-takers. Within any SAT section except the reading portion, the questions are in roughly ascending order of difficulty. But you can skip around as necessary—difficulty is a matter of opinion! Remember, your objective is to accumulate as many “raw points” as you possibly can, so don’t get needlessly bogged down on any tough questions. Be careful, though: if you skip around, make sure you keep extra careful track of your answers on the answer sheet! 5. SET CLEAR GOALS Head into each test with a well-formulated strategy for attacking the test. Have clear score goals in mind, and know what percentage of questions you will need to answer correctly to achieve those goals. The score conversion table below will tell you this. Remember that answering every question is a bad strategy unless you have a very realistic shot at breaking 700 per section. As a rule of thumb, remember that you need to get only about 50% (or 1⁄2) of the questions right in order to break 500, about 67% (or 2⁄3) of the questions right in order to break 600, and about 87.5% (or 7⁄8) of the questions right in order to break 700. It’s best to focus the majority of your time on just that percentage of questions you will need to break your score goal. This strategy gives you more time to check your work on each question, and minimizes the chance of making careless errors. Use your PSAT scores or your Diagnostic Test scores as a starting point. Then decide what score will make you happy. You should know what the median SAT scores are for the schools you’d like to apply to. Set aggressive goals as you train (our students always expect to improve their scores by 100 points or so on each section) but pick a realistic goal as you get closer to the test date, based on your performance on the practice tests. If you’ve been getting 400s on all sections of your practice tests, don’t expect to get 600s on the real thing! 6. REVIEW INTELLIGENTLY After you take the practice tests, you may need to review particular academic skills. 7. PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE! Whatever strategies you want to use on the SAT, practice them on tests so that you don’t spend energy re-thinking strategy during the real SAT. Don’t get too focused on “point-counting” during the test. This will take your focus away from the real problems. 8. FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH THE TEST FORMAT AND INSTRUCTIONS One of the simplest ways to increase your chances of success on test day is to familiarize yourself with the format of the exam ahead of time. Know the format and instructions for each section of the SAT. This will save you time on the actual test. Why waste time reading the directions when you could memorize them beforehand? The rules won’t change. 9. KNOWWHEN TO GUESS The SAT is different from exams you take in the classroom because you get negative points for wrong answers. On a 100-question classroom math exam, if you answer 80 questions correctly and get 20 questions wrong, your score would be an 80. On the SAT, if you answer 80 questions correctly and get 20 questions wrong, your score would be a 75. Why? Because the ETS includes a “wrong-answer penalty” to discourage random guessing. For 5-question multiple-choice questions, a correct answer is worth 1 “raw” point, a wrong answer costs you 1⁄4 point, and an unanswered question costs you nothing. It’s better to leave a question blank than it is to get it wrong. If you can eliminate two or more choices, however, you should probably make an educated guess. Work on your guessing strategy as you practice. When you take a Practice Test, write a “G” on the test booklet next to questions you guess on (not on the answer sheet). After the exam, check to see how many of those guesses you got right. If you consistently get more than 20% (or 1⁄5) of your guesses right, you are “beating the odds,” and your guessing strategy is better than omitting those questions. By Dr. Ahmed Ali Ezzat SAT Math Instructor 01001600522
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 11:27:14 +0000
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