Ace the SAT: A Comprehensive Guide to Preparation

The SAT is a crucial step in the college application process for many students. Adequate preparation can significantly improve your score and increase your chances of getting into your dream school. This article provides a comprehensive guide to help you prepare effectively for the SAT, covering everything from study strategies to test-taking tips.

The Importance of Practice Tests

Taking practice tests is one of the most effective ways to improve your SAT score. Students who complete one, two, or three or more full-length practice tests score on average about 25, 45, and 60 points higher, respectively, than students who don't take any. The benefits are even greater for students who have lower PSAT scores. No matter your background or starting point, practicing with resources like Bluebook can help you feel more confident and perform better on test day.

Utilizing Practice Scores for Effective Study

Once you've completed a practice test, it's essential to analyze your scores to identify areas for improvement. There are two primary ways your practice scores can guide your study efforts:

Practice Specific Questions

From your dashboard or your Score Details page, you'll find a button for "Practice Specific Questions." This feature generates a custom set of questions based on your performance on the practice test, helping you review skills that need improvement. You can also see the associated domains for each question, allowing you to do further review in the Student Question Bank.

Reviewing Your Answers

Click "Score Details" to see every question on the test, the answer you submitted, and the correct answer. Click "Review" next to your answer to read through the question and answer explanation. Keep track of the questions you missed and pay attention to any patterns you notice about the question content and the skills involved. Then head over to the Student Question Bank to try more practice questions covering those skills.

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Setting a Target Score

With insights about your knowledge and skills, you can set your own SAT Target Score. This is your personal goal and gives you more ownership of the outcome, rather than striving for what you may perceive as a “good’ score. Here are a few simple steps to setting your target score:

Create Your College List: Researching the colleges that interest you can help you identify the score range you should aim for. The SAT score range listed is a good place to start. This will help you create your college list.
Understand Your Most Recent Test Score: If you took the PSAT/NMSQT or a practice SAT, you’ve already established your baseline. Now you can dig into your score report to understand how your score compares to others and what areas you should focus on to practice and improve.
Analyze Incorrect Answers: Look at the number and types of questions you got wrong. See how many more of those questions you would need to answer correctly to raise your score.
Determine a Realistic Target Score: Based on where you are now and where you want to end up, you can decide your own goal.

Leveraging Official SAT Prep with Khan Academy

The College Board has partnered with Khan Academy to create Official SAT Prep. This resource is free to all students and provides personalized practice that identifies your strengths and weaknesses.

Essential Test-Taking Tips

Having the right strategies can instill you with confidence as you approach test day. Here are some test-taking tips to help you navigate the assessment and maximize your score:

Prioritize Rest: Avoid cramming or partying the night before the test. Get plenty of sleep to ensure you're well-rested.
Prepare Your Supplies: Pack your belongings the night before so you don’t risk forgetting something in the morning.
- #2 Pencils - Bring 5 pencils just in case.
- Calculator - While calculators are not required, they are permitted and will be a big help on the calculator math section.
- Watch - It’s a good idea to wear a watch. While testing rooms usually have a clock, sometimes they may not, or the clock may not be working. It’s best to wear your own watch so you can keep track of the time no matter what. Digital watches are fine, but just make sure they aren’t going to beep during the test.
- Jacket - No matter what time of year you’re taking the test, it’s a good idea to dress in layers.
What Not to Bring:
- Cell Phone - It’s best to leave cell phones at home or in your car.
- Any Other Electronics - Be sure to leave any smart watches or electronic fitness devices at home.
Wake Up Early and Prepare: Allow yourself plenty of time to get up and get ready before you have to leave. Take a shower to help yourself wake up completely.
Exercise: It’s a great idea to do a little exercise before you leave home on test day. Exercising gets your heart pumping, which in turn will send oxygen to your brain. The better shape your brain is in, the better you will do on the test!
Eat a Nutritious Breakfast: Reach for a bowl of oatmeal, fruit, or granola instead of a doughnut or sugary cereal.
Maintain Your Routine: If you normally drink coffee or tea before school, it’s okay to have your usual amount before the test. However, if it’s not a normal part of your routine, don’t try it out on test day. Caffeine can affect people differently, and you don’t want to risk feeling sick or jittery.
Arrive Early: Allow plenty of time to get to the testing center. If it’s somewhere you’ve never been before, it may be a good idea to drive there in the days before the test so you know where it is. However, check your admission ticket to be sure.
Understand the Proctor's Role: Your testing room will have a proctor whose job it is to hand out and collect tests, keep track of time, and make sure all rules are being followed. It’s best to be familiar with the instructions for the test before going in so that this isn’t left to chance. Proctors often give 5-minute warnings near the end of every section, but this doesn’t always happen. That’s why it’s best to use your own watch.
Utilize Breaks: You’ll get a 10-minute break and a 5-minute break. Use them to your advantage! Don’t be the person who just sits in the testing room waiting for the test to start again. Go out in the hallway, go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, eat your snack, socialize with your friends (but don’t talk about the test). You want to come in feeling refreshed and ready to move on to the next section.
Avoid Cheating: This includes going back to previous sections or moving ahead to the next section before you’re allowed to, as well as communicating with other students about the test.
Manage Distractions: You can expect that the testing room may not be the most comfortable environment. If the distraction becomes severe, report it to your proctor to see whether anything can be done.
Guess Strategically: Every answer choice appears about ¼ of the time on the test, so C isn’t any more likely to be correct than any other option. It is a good strategy to guess the same letter for all the questions you don’t have time to do.
Keep Perspective: Standardized test scores are just one aspect of your college application. So try your best not to stress about the test. It’s just one part of your college application, and it doesn’t assess your intelligence or worth as a person.

Self-Study vs. Tutoring

Choosing between self-study and a tutoring academy depends on your individual learning style, budget, and time constraints. Self-study with resources like Khan Academy can be effective, especially if you are disciplined and perform well in school. Khan Academy is good, but I discovered Strategic Prep Test has 2 excellent digital workbooks (as well as an app called Preptly) with tons of practice questions, which is what I personally needed. They give you strategies, and then you practice them. STP has a Youtube channel with helpful videos as well.

Tailoring Your Study Plan

As someone whose been tutoring the SAT for almost 20 years, I can say that A) each tutoring plan is unique to each student, and B) all tutoring plans have some common features. But what those common features should be, and how and why to individualize them, can feel a little nebulous.

To build your study plan, first ask yourself …So … Who are You? I’m A Self-Starting Engine! Motivation City, population ME! You’ve got a five year … nay! A ten year … nay! A thirty year plan! Because you know that Supreme Court justices who also find the cure for cancer AND solve climate change, all while writing that best-selling novel (while playing pro ball?! My god! Who are you?!), don’t just happen! You’ve gotta have a plan! I’m A Go-With-The-Flow-Hakuna-Matata Type, Baby! Perhaps you are a “no worries ride the vibe” surfer of life’s thrillingly gnarly waves. Plans are for suckers, right? Cuz isn’t life just going to do what it’s going to do? Um … I’m neither? Or sometimes both? Or, perhaps, your worldview and natural orientation fall somewhere in-between. Perhaps you’re motivated but not sure where to start. Or you know where to start, but you just need a little motivation and some accountability to make it work. Any mindset and set of circumstances that brought you to this sentence are valid, and just as there is no one path that led each person here, there is no one “right” way to study for the SAT!

The most important thing you need to do, right here right now, is to begin to figure out what is the best way forward for you. Some students will find repetition and rigidity helpful and clarifying, while other students thrive in a more improvisational, flexible environment. Neither is better or worse, and the sweet spot often contains elements of both structure AND flexibility. However, the probable success or failure of a study plan will likely be less about the structure of the plan itself than about how fully the plan aligns with the way you work best.

Understanding Your Learning Style

Your first assignment is to do a little dive into your past and think about who you are, why you’re here, and what kinds of work structures best help you stay motivated and accountable. A few years ago, I decided to get serious about working out. I have always been athletic, but it had been awhile since I had been on a sports team, and I realized how much I missed being as active as I had then. Still, getting back into a groove was hard. I was out of practice. I was not as strong as I’d once been. And-I had to be real with myself-conditioning was always my least favorite part of playing sports. Now I was asking myself to get excited about essentially all conditioning and no play? It was a tough sell.

My first plan (which I don’t think was ever intentionally a plan, just an instinct that I ran with), was drill-sergeant-level tough love. That’s right! If I needed to motivate myself, I’d just do what my most demanding, scream-in-your-face coach back in the day would do! Did it matter that he was my least favorite coach who actually just made me feel more scared than motivated? Nope! Cuz we needed to get in shape, and so demanding and screamy must be the way to go! I basically invented a mental trainer for myself, and the trainer I invented showed no mercy and pretty much hated me. Needless to say, for me, this plan was a disaster. All the impossible standards, the inner screaming and shame … just made me feel like crap. That caused my inner protector/guard dog to start barking its head off with its own message: we don’t need any of this! Rebel! Rebel! Now, my inner rebel needs no convincing to show up to a party; she’s pretty much always ready with a crazed look in her eye and a box of matches. And thus … the plan started to unravel. It turns out fear, shame, and rigidity tend to make me do the OPPOSITE of what I’m supposed to do, so for me this workout plan was never going to, well, work out.

However, failure was also a great teacher! NOW I had some information about myself, which meant NOW I could make an intentional plan taking all I had learned into account. Okay! So structure good but rigidity bad! From this nugget of self-knowledge I created a new plan, which I called the 1-2-3 Plan. For the structural tentpoles, I gave myself a weekly goal of 10 points. An “easy” workout counted for 1 point, a “medium” workout was a 2, and a “hard” workout was a 3. However, I decided that how I achieved those 10 points each week was entirely up to me. I could go “slow and low” 6-7 days a week, or do a few high intensity workouts 3-4 days a week. I also knew that the greater variety I allowed myself (yoga, dance, tennis, lifting, cardio), the more likely I would be to stick to the plan. This combination of tentpole structure with built-in flexibility and variety was exactly what I needed to set myself up for success, and … the plan worked! I shall now pat myself on the back with my strong, strong arms.

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Key Elements of SAT Preparation

Before we get into self-study models themselves, let’s talk about the 3 types of work you’ll need to do to be fully prepared for the SAT:

Memorization

While the SAT provides some geometry formulas on the test itself, you still will need to have a short list of math formulas and grammar rules memorized. Memorization work is usually best achieved through rote repetition, which requires frequent interaction with the material over time. There are many ways to memorize, some quite creative like generating a mnemonic device or even putting something to music. Still, there’s often no better way to straight up memorize than good ole’ flashcards that you go through at least once a day until the information is really absorbed.

Learning

While most if not all of the concepts on the SAT will be ones with which you have some familiarity, you’re gonna need to do a little content learning and a little strategy learning for all four sections. Real absorption and learning takes a deeper level of engagement than simple memorization, especially when it comes to implementing strategies for the test. This is all to say … please don’t give yourself a week to prep for this thing and think you’re gonna master it! Give yourself the time to really let these concepts and strategies sink in.

Practice

Obviously, the best way to do that is … practice! Not only will you want to practice implementing content knowledge and strategy, you’ll want to practice performance skills like timing, stamina, and anxiety management.

Self-Study Plan Models

Here are two self-study plan models to consider:

1. The Marathoner

Who is this for?
- Students who have more than 6 weeks of prep time
- Students who work better in less intensive, longer-term environments
- Students who do not have much time per week do devote to prep
- Students who prefer to work more slowly

The Marathoner is the approach I’d advocate for most students, most of the time. Why? Firstly, most students need at least 6 weeks (and ideally up to 3 months before the first test sitting) of prep and practice for SAT concepts and strategy to become second nature. The more time you have taken to really get “under the hood” of this test, figure out how it works, and practice until there’s very little the SAT can throw at you on test day you haven’t seen before … the better! Secondly, most students I have worked with are simply too busy with schoolwork, extracurriculars, and the everyday business of life to devote the time per week it takes to really master this stuff quickly. This is not to say The Sprinter model (see below) can’t work. It can, given the right personality type, knowledge base, and set of circumstances! (For example, if you scored a 1490 with no prep … see The Sprinter.) However, for most of us, it takes a bit longer to prep for the SAT because we just don’t have the time to make the SAT the #1 focus in our lives.

The Marathoner is based largely on what a 3-ish-month tutoring program would look like. Here is a proposed scaffolding of that plan with self-study tips and adaptations included:

The Plan:
- 1x weekly 90-minute tutoring session (for self-study, this could be time with a study buddy, or dedicated time to “teach” yourself new concepts, look up explanations to questions you don’t understand, etc.)
- 1-4 hours homework in between tutoring sessions (ramping up over time from small assignments to full practice tests) (#1 + #2 = 2.5-5.5 hours weekly)
- At least 2-4 full, timed practice tests before sitting for the real exam
- Use both untimed practice to master concepts/strategy and timed practice to master performance skills/stamina

This type of plan is generally comprised of 4 “phases”:

Phase 1: Develop a fundamental understanding of each section of the test-how each one is set up, timed, and scored; what concepts are and are not on the test; overall and concept-specific strategies for each section.
Phase 2: Do a deep dive into concepts unfamiliar to you or those you need greater mastery of. This is the “content learning phase”-always with an eye toward strategy when applicable.
Phase 3: Maintain a focus on content/strategy (as opposed to performance), but now add in bite-sized timing/performance elements. Timed passages as opposed to sections.
Phase 4: Put it all together! Bring together concept, strategy, and performance elements by timing full sections. Finally, complete full timed practice tests and review these tests afterward.

2. The Sprinter

Who is this for?
- Students who have 6 weeks or less to prep
- Students who work better in short-burst, intensive environments
- Students who have a lot of time (within a short time span) to devote to prep
- Students who prefer to work quickly

This plan is for the adrenaline junkies out there, the students with a pretty open schedule within a small (6 weeks or less) time frame, those who are close to their goal score without prep, and those who just work better in small, concentrated bursts. Caution: this is rarely the right path for students who find there are significant content areas they are learning for the first time. As mentioned above, the “learning” portion of this work takes the most time, so the more content you need to learn from scratch, the longer it will take (and the less likely this model of self-study will bear fruit). However, if you find yourself looking at this model because it’s 3 weeks before the test and you didn’t actually think you would even take it but now you realize you need to take it and … oh geez … you are cramming and stressing and “the sprinter” model is the only one still available because … oh god! Is it too late for me?! To you we also say: welcome. Doesn’t matter how you got here. Come rest your weary bones by the fire.

The Plan:
- Phase 1 (Weeks 1 & 2): Know what you know, and what you don’t know. Look at a comprehensive list of test concepts and content, mark unfamiliar or “brush up” concepts. Label these concepts as either A (don’t know but somewhat familiar/looks doable) or B (don’t know and not at all familiar/looks NOT doable). Cross-reference this list with “most important” content areas. Refine your list in order of priority:
  - A’s deemed important content
  - B’s deemed important content
  - A’s deemed less important content
  - B’s deemed less important content

Based on the time you have, work on as many content areas as you can based on this order of priority. Note: if you have a long list and a short timeframe, it’s okay to ignore #4 entirely in order to focus on more accessible/more important content.

Phase 2 (Weeks 2 & 3): Start timing yourself pretty quickly. If you have 4-6 weeks to prep, start by timing individual passages, next time full sections, and then full practice tests. If you have fewer than 4 weeks until your SAT, do full sections timed, understanding that the more comprehensive your mastery of content and strategy, the better you’ll be at pacing.
Phase 3 (Weeks 4-6, but possibly woven in earlier): Full practice tests and practice test review. For The Sprinter model, you can and perhaps should start taking full practice tests after the first week of prep, even if you don’t feel fully ready. You’ll still get good information from the attempt because the best way to know how you’ll do on an SAT is to, ya know, take a full SAT. This will give you great information about where you need to focus moving forward: Do you need a deeper foundation of content knowledge? Are you good on the concepts, but having issues with timing and fatigue? Perhaps you’re continuing to overthink easy problems, second guessing yourself, or racing through sections only to make a bunch of careless errors, in which case it’s likely SAT strategy that you need to spend more time on. Whatever it is, starting to take full practice tests once a week can be really useful, as The Sprinter model has no time to waste.

Additional Tips for Effective Studying

Focus on Your Weaknesses: Based on past scores, I recommend studying 3/5 in math and 2/5 in English (this is very adjustable). Particularly for English, I recommend studying standard English conventions, independent/dependent clauses, and sentence boundaries.
Mimic Test Conditions: Complete as many 30-question unit tests as possible and set a timer to mimic test conditions.
Analyze Mistakes: I hate taking practice tests, and I found the instant feedback (knowing the correct answer after every question) of the unit tests to help me analyze and fix my mistakes quickly and easily.
Explore Different Resources: Each person has preferences for study strategies, so I recommend trying a few free preps and taking some practice tests to see what best fits your style.

Free Resources

There are tons of free resources available, but here are a few to get you started:

A bunch of free SAT practice tests
Khan Academy has partnered with the College Board to offer free async test prep
Strategies and hacks for raising your SAT score

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