How to Improve Your SAT Score: A Comprehensive Guide

Are you looking to increase your SAT score? Getting your best score on the SAT can significantly improve your college options or even help you earn additional scholarships. Standardized test scores, along with your grades and the rigor of your high school classes, are among the most important components of your college application. It might seem unfair that a little less than four hours on a single Saturday morning counts as much as four years of hard work. But don't worry, this guide is here to help you navigate the process and achieve your target score.

Why Retake the SAT?

Most students who take the SAT again improve their scores. It's common for students to take the SAT twice-once in the spring of their junior year and once in the fall of their senior year. The SAT is offered many times during the school year, allowing you to choose the dates that work best for you.

Setting the Stage for Success

1. Establish Clear Goals

Before taking (or retaking) the SAT, it's crucial to establish a target score. Consider the average SAT range of the colleges on your list-including those that are test-optional-or the application requirements for scholarships. This will help in setting a realistic goal.

2. Plan and Register Strategically

Identifying the right time to take the SAT is crucial. Make sure the date you select allows enough time for preparation and coincides with the deadline for your college applications. Certain test dates are highly sought after, so registering early is essential. You can also ask your counselor if your school offers the SAT on a school day.

Mastering the Test-Taking Process

1. Reflect on Your Previous Test

In an ideal world, as soon as you’re done taking the SAT and your materials have been collected by the test proctor, you begin to write as much down as you remember from the test. Take notes on what confused you, questions that you found difficult, and concepts or sections that were harder than you anticipated. But don’t worry, if your test is over and you didn’t write anything down afterwards, it isn’t too late. Set aside some time to think carefully about the test that you took, and see if you can recall any of the specifics from above. Do you remember a question that was so hard you didn’t even know where to start? Which sections of the test felt easy and which felt difficult? Were there sections that seemed completely foreign?

Read also: Comprehensive SAT Guide

2. Analyze Your Score Report

There is a ton of valuable information in your score report. Once you’ve recovered from the initial excitement, take a few moments to review it. In particular, pay attention to your subscores. Try to identify areas in which your performance could be improved. Your goal is to get as specific as possible.

3. Set a Realistic Target Score

A good way to determine how much work is in front of you is to set a target score. First, you’ll need to consider where you’re starting from. The good news is, the lower your score, the more room there is for improvement. However, improvement won’t come without hard work. You will need to set a target that maximizes your potential while remaining realistic. Generally, if you have a score below 500, an improvement of 200 points is a feasible target. The other factor to consider when setting a target score is the list of schools to which you intend to apply. You should take into account the middle 50% score ranges of admitted students at those schools when setting your goal score. The middle 50% indicates where 50% of accepted students scored. Take Princeton’s middle 50% range of 1460-1590: this means 25% of students scored below 1460, 50% scored between 1460 and 1590, and 25% of students scored above 1570. To be most competitive, you should aim to be in the upper end of the range, or even above it. Washington University in St.

4. Identify Your Weaknesses

While your score report will indicate which content areas are most in need of improvement, they will not reveal the specific kinds of error to which you’re most susceptible. If your score on your practice test is dramatically higher than your score on the actual SAT, you probably fell victim to test anxiety. There are many ways to conquer this, but the good news is that test anxiety generally diminishes on its own with subsequent testing experiences. The more you take the SAT, the more familiar you’ll be with the format, and the less you will be affected by test anxiety. If your score is similar on the practice test, you will need to evaluate your mistakes. Careless mistakes are the ones that seem obvious as soon as you review the question. Content knowledge gaps occur when you are lacking some of the basic skills or knowledge to understand the questions at hand.

5. Consider Forming a Study Group

You aren’t the only one studying for the SAT, so why go at it alone? Having regular study dates with a consistent group of classmates can be a great way to set goals, share strategies, and hold one another accountable. You can check with your high school, local library, or even a local community college to find a study group. If you can’t locate an existing study group, it’s also possible to form your own.

Effective Preparation Strategies

1. Take Challenging Courses

Because the SAT focuses on skills and knowledge you gain every day in the classroom, one of the ways to prepare and perform your best is simply to take the most challenging courses you can. This can include honors and advanced classes at your school or any Advanced Placement® (AP®) available to you. If you took a PSAT-related assessment, your score report provides you with information about which AP courses you’re likely to do well in.

Read also: SAT Essay Score Explained

2. Prioritize Prep and Practice

The best way to practice for the digital SAT is free. Use your time productively by following personalized practice suggestions, taking full-length practice tests and continuously leveling up your skills. Adapt your study techniques based on your areas of weakness, needs and when you’ll take the test.

3. Utilize Free Resources

There are tons of free study materials available to help with SAT studying and preparation, but knowing where to look for high-quality materials is important. Many study guides have been self-published online by students with little more experience than you. No matter how much content knowledge you study, you need to know the format of the test and how it assesses this knowledge in order to be successful. The best place to start is Khan Academy, the official College Board SAT practice partner, which is totally free. There are also many free study guides available online.

4. Consider Tutoring Options

You might perceive SAT tutors as a privilege that not everyone can afford, but there are options out there to suit almost any budget. Sometimes, an SAT tutor can simply be a mentor, teacher, or guidance counselor who has helped to coach other students through the SAT in the past. You can also find paid tutoring services available locally, or online. If cost is a concern for you, you may be able to find pro bono tutoring services in your area, or apply for a scholarship with a larger tutoring company. Alternatively, some local tutoring companies also offer pro bono tutoring services to students who qualify. You can search for opportunities near you by conducting an online query with the terms “pro bono SAT tutor” and your city name.

5. Reinforce Content Knowledge

The SAT consists, in large part, of abstract skills that can be quite difficult to study in isolation. That being said, there is a pool of content knowledge necessary for success on the test, and if content knowledge was a weakness on your practice or diagnostic SAT, you should be certain that you’re reinforcing it before you take the test again. Key areas to focus on include:

Heart of Algebra: Linear equations, systems of linear equations, and the relationships between them. Linear equations always involve two variables that change according to a consistent pattern.
Problem Solving and Data Analysis: Application of ratios, percentages, and proportional reasoning. For these questions, you’ll need to demonstrate your ability to create and use a model and to understand the distinction between the model predictions and data collected.
Passport to Advanced Math: Complex equations and functions typically needed in STEM-based careers.

Test-Taking Strategies

1. Educated Guessing

No matter how difficult any question on the SAT is, you will have a 50% chance of getting it right if you can eliminate two of the answer choices. It’s likely that, all studying aside, you will encounter at least one or two questions where you will need to make an educated guess during the test. If you really have no clue about how to solve a problem, try working backwards from the answers. See if there are any answer choices that you can immediately rule out. Think of it this way: A completely random guess of the four answer choices has a 25% chance of being correct. If you can eliminate one more answer choice, you suddenly have a 33.3% chance of guessing correctly. And if you can eliminate yet another choice, you’ll be up to a 50% chance of guessing correctly. If you have absolutely no idea at all, use the “Answer of the Day” strategy: just pick a random letter, like “B,” and consistently put that down for questions where you can’t eliminate any answers.

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2. Practice Makes Perfect

The SAT is one of those tests where the best preparation is the test itself. Start by taking untimed practice tests, one section at a time. Identify your weaknesses and work to improve in those areas. Gradually, as your skills grow, begin to take each section of the test with time constraints. You can find seven official SAT practice tests available at Khan Academy.

3. Understand the Academic Index

Selective colleges use a metric called the Academic Index (AI) to represent the strength of applicants’ grades and test scores. If your AI is too low, a school may not even review the rest of your application. That’s why it’s so crucial to have a strong academic profile. You can use an Admissions Chances Calculator to clearly understand the impact of your SAT scores on your application. This calculator will let you know how your score stacks up against other applicants’ and let you know whether or not you should apply test-optional.

Additional Tips and Tricks

General Strategies

Simulate the Test Environment: Take a practice test and take it seriously. Mimic the test environment to the best of your ability-do each section in order and time yourself. Take a short break if you need to, but don't stop for lunch. Consider that score your baseline. This is the score you would earn if you showed up at the exam site today.
Compare Your Score to Target Schools: Compare your practice test score with the average scores of the most recent incoming class. Unless your score far exceeds the average at all of your prospective schools, you'll want to dedicate some time to prepping before you take an official test.
Analyze Your Mistakes: Did you miss questions because you didn't read carefully? Did you miss questions because you ran out of time? Did you miss questions because you had no idea how to answer?

Improving Your Score

Focus on Weaknesses: The most efficient way for you to improve will be to identify and understand your weaknesses - and learn from them. Don’t just buy an SAT book and read it cover to cover. Take a practice test. After the test, grade yourself. If you do this, you will start to see patterns in what kinds of questions you’re missing…and learn how to stop missing them!
Develop a Positive Attitude: To ward off fear and stress, work on developing a more positive attitude towards the SAT. It sounds corny, but learn to treat every mistake as a learning opportunity. The SAT can be intimidating, but once you understand that you can do well on it if you study, it can start to look a bit more like an opportunity to show everyone what that you have what it takes to work hard.
Aim for the Harder Module: If, like most students, you’re taking the digital SAT now, you won’t be able to achieve a section score higher than 700 unless you are get the harder second module of the adaptive test. So if your goal SAT score is over 1400, you’ll need to break the barrier into the harder module. In order to get served the harder module, you need to get around 2/3rds of the questions right in the first module, so as you are practicing, work on your pacing and accuracy to comfortably hit this mark.

Reading & Writing Section

Improve Reading Comprehension: Students who score poorly on the SAT Reading section typically aren’t comfortable with the types of reading passages that appear on the SAT. I would suggest reading The New Yorker magazine and Scientific American on a weekly basis.
Master Grammar Rules: For the Writing questions, know your grammar rules! Our free guide to grammar and punctuation on the SAT can help.
Prioritize Easier Questions: While Reading & Writing questions are not ordered from easy to hard in the entire section, they ARE ordered by difficulty within each of the four question types (Craft and Structure, Information and Ideas, Standard English Conventions, and Expression of Ideas). As you practice, you’ll get familiar with these question subsections, and know that the easier questions come first. Since easy questions are worth exactly the same number of points as hard questions, you don’t want to get bogged down with the hard stuff and end up running out of time before you get to some questions that you could have breezed right through.
Don't Leave Questions Blank: The SAT does not have a wrong answer penalty, which is a big deal! Since there is no penalty for getting a wrong answer, there’s absolutely no reason to be leaving questions blank. Remember that if you can eliminate even one answer choice on a question you’re not sure about, your chances of guessing correctly go way up.

Math Section

Multiple Choice Advantage: The SAT Math exam is multiple choice. Which means the truth is out there! One of the answers you’re looking at is definitely correct…you just need to narrow things down.
Estimate: Estimating is a great strategy when you’re dealing with problems that ask you to draw or interpret a diagram, because you’ll be able to visually see that you’re in the ballpark.
Practice with a Timer: The SAT Math section is ordered according to difficulty from start to finish. The hardest questions will always be at the end of each module.
Calculator Use: A calculator is allowed on both modules of SAT Math, and you can choose to use your own calculator or an on-screen Desmos graphing calculator. If you choose to use the Desmos calculator, it takes some getting used to, so make sure to practice with it before test day. Knowing how to use all functions of the calculator can save you time on test day, but don’t automatically assume using a calculator will save you time. On many questions, using skills like estimating, mental math, and paper-and-pencil calculations will serve you better, so get good at analyzing each question type and deciding if you should use a calculator or not.

Test Day and Beyond

After ample preparation, clear your mind, get a good night’s rest, and know that you’re ready. Know what to bring on test day and what to expect. If you’ve already taken the SAT and aren’t 100% satisfied with your score, don’t sweat it. Most students end up taking the test more than once.

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