The SAT — Let’s Rock This Game

The SAT isn’t as important, fair, or hard as you think it is.

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I wrote the SAT this May, and scored a 1600. And if you think I’m an authority on the subject — that’s quite untrue.

For what it’s worth, however, I thought I’d compile advice that I felt not enough people were saying on the internet.

A few quick facts about me: I’m a CBSE student in India, my native language is Tamil, and functionally nobody else I knew had written the SAT before me.

Relax

Here’s the first thing I must tell you: take a deep breath. It’s okay.

The SAT isn’t a huge factor in college admissions. The main thing is to check if you will be able to handle the academic rigor of the institution you’re applying to. This can be demonstrated in multiple ways. The US doesn’t have a centralized method of comparing students, which is why the SAT was implemented. In India or the UK, for example, we have standardized exams in 10th grade. Those are likely more important. Put in another way, if you won a research award or attended a prestigious math camp, colleges don’t care much if you score relatively low on the SAT — they know that you can handle rigor.

Here are some cold facts to back up my claim: Yale’s Common Data Set actively marks the score as considered, instead of very important. To quote from Yale Admissions, “While there is no hard and fast rule, it is safe to say that performance in school is more important than testing. A very strong performance in a demanding college preparatory program may compensate for modest standardized test scores, but it is unlikely that high standardized test scores will persuade the admissions committee to disregard an undistinguished secondary-school record”. Put simply, school is more important than test scores — and this is especially true if you’re international and have other standardized scores.

Yale’s CDS — you should read this before you apply to a college, by the way.

You can always rewrite the exam if the first attempt doesn’t go your way — while for international low-income students like myself, the cost would be prohibitive, US citizens and residents can qualify for fee waivers. (Side note: don’t be ashamed to use scholarships or waivers anytime in the college process. Just don’t.)

Furthermore, the SAT, particularly the math section, isn’t a very hard test from a syllabus point of view — it’s mostly high school. I’d say time management and practice are more important to scoring than anything else.

Finally, keep in mind that the exact score is largely luck — the difference between a 1550 and a 1600 is (mostly) meaningless from the admissions perspective. Heck, even the College Board says that my score range — the “range of scores you might expect to get if you took the SAT multiple times on different days” — was 1560 to 1600. So it really is luck, I’d argue (unless you’ve put in the thousands of hours to ensure that it’s not luck, which is something you should not have done).

As I said shortly after results, “I just had a good day on the 5th. Colleges don’t really care, it’s mostly an ego thing”.

After that mandatory disclosure, let’s get into the meat of this article — how you can game this stupid, erratic, test.

Preparation

I had three weeks of actual preparation — and people go wow, that’s crazy when they hear that I scored a 1600 with less than a month of prep. This is quite misleading, though — I’d been prepping for years, both directly and indirectly.

The direct prep is fairly obvious — I’d head over to Khan Academy and just do stuff. I enjoyed the SAT’s questions, especially in EBRW (Evidence-Based Reading and Writing, the “English section”), so I did it for fun.

This is an important principle that I’ll speak about more later: doing things for fun, spontaneously, is significantly better than concentrated preparation. We definitely need the latter to score well, but everybody seems to forget how powerful the former is. If you can combine both well, you’re unstoppable.

Here’s the general strategy you should follow: take KA section tests to get a feel of how you’re good at each subject, domain, or skill. At this introductory stage, you’re trying to get a rough idea of your strong spots and your weak ones.

Next, read the darn syllabus. It’s crazy how most students don’t do this. It a) helps you gain a strong picture of the game you’re playing, which in turn allows you to play it better, b) offers some nice tips that other students don’t realize — like how the math sections are arranged from easiest to hardest, or the order of the EBRW skills in the test.

Call this the first phase of the introductory stage (I like formal codes, so excuse me: S1P1). You next read — try to learn, but not too painstakingly — the entire content at KA. Again, relax. You don’t have to know it all in the first read — and you ideally never should, if I was being honest, because it indicates that you’re probably spending too much time on the teaching content. One of the worst ways to study for the SAT is to go over the content again and again — it’s passive (as opposed to active learning, read more on general learning strategies in this post of mine), and you’ll definitely forget most of it. Learn by doing.

This is phase 2 (S1P2). Do a few questions from each skill, and try to practice your weak skills a little. When you’re feeling moderately confident — when you’re getting, say, 4 out of 5 (excluding careless mistakes) questions correct in the tests you’re doing, you move on to phase 3 — S1P3.

You start with a complete section test of EBRW and Math in Khan Academy. And then — heads up, this is questionable advice — do an official sample test in Bluebook. There are only six, for now, so take this bit with a pinch of salt — if you have more than three months before Test Day, you probably don’t want to start doing official tests so early.

Should you take the sample test, I’ll cover what you should do with it below. For now, however, proceed to the medium stage: S2. There are no substages here — just practice. Exhaust Khan Academy, head over to SAT Suite Question Bank. Some specific pieces of advice here:

1. In the beginning, don’t be equal in your preparation. You should have a fairly good idea of your weak skills now: focus a lot more on them now. After your fluency across skills evens out, modify your prep accordingly (that’s a fancy way of saying that when you become more or less equally good at all the skills, you may then practice them equally. Sorry, I liked the sentence.)
2. Crucially, store every mistake you make. It doesn’t really matter how you do this — I had a file (for each subject) where I pasted a screenshot of a question I’d messed up, and wrote down the correct answer next to it. Sometimes, I’d write down a short sentence explaining why I messed up. I only did this for “real” mistakes, as opposed to careless ones, which is a bit vague.
   The principle here is simple, though: could you make that mistake again? If it’s fairly possible, store it. I, in fact, even stored a couple of questions that I struggled with, even if I got them right.
   Closer to Test Day, you’ll review all of these.
3. Similarly, write down any general ideas — “tips” — that you want to remember but often forget. This can be something from the internet, something you’ve realized during questions or a test, or a mistake you make very often. I didn’t use this for EBRW, but you might want to.
4. Nearer to the end of the stage, search online for tough questions and try solving them.

My personal tips for the math section — some of them might seem dumb, but they’re for me.

That’s the general advice — a little on each subject, then.

Mathematics

Here’s the good news: the math section is far more game-able than EBRW, which relies more on “natural talent” (which really only means more years of more natural preparation). In math, you practice well, that 800 is well within your grasp (though, as discussed in the beginning, this is worthy as a goal but stupid as a requirement).

I’m hard-pressed to offer much advice other than practice. The skills genuinely aren’t that difficult for high schoolers. Again, prepare with questions related to skills you’re underperforming in.

One important thing is careless mistakes. Careless mistakes and I have history. Through almost every test in middle school and high school, I’d make one or two “silly mistakes”, losing the perfect mark. I had functionally given up at this point, and was quite sure that I was going to lose it in this one too.

However, a major academic change in the past few months is how much better I’ve become at reducing — indeed, largely eliminating — careless errors. I confess that I’m not entirely clear why this has happened. One reason, I’m sure, is far better time management — this gives me more time at the end, and more time per question, to check my work. I like to think that my general test-taking technique (more on that below) has improved, making me less susceptible to careless errors.

Some ideas, though: write on paper, fast but neatly — doing stuff in your head is quite risky. Do a (very) quick cross-check in your head as soon as you complete a question — not more than couple seconds, mind you.

When you use the calculator — and I absolutely did, despite others’ opinion that it makes you more liable to careless errors — double-check — literally, turn your eyes away and bring them back — to ensure you haven’t messed up. Calculation errors will generally be caught, though — mostly because as it’s an MCQ test, if you mess up, you’ll hopefully get an answer that isn’t in the options. Also, when you come back at the end of the test (which you must, more below) and recheck these values, you’ll find out — it’s unlikely that you’ll make the same mistake twice. Practice with both your calculator and Desmos from Official Test 1, though.

Evidence-Based Reading and Writing

The best way to prepare for EBRW is naturally: by being a word-addict, a reader. I understand that most students aren’t like this, and I am genuinely sorry that the SAT tests something that isn’t in your natural interest/talent intersection zone (Yale’s test-flexible policy is great, as you can now perform in your strong areas, and I hope more universities implement something like that). Nonetheless, I strongly suggest you read in areas that interest you — it makes you a more interesting human being and opens up doors that you wouldn’t know existed.

Even without being a reader, I think a 700 and higher is very much achievable, and a 750 possible (yes, I don’t think an 800 is possible by pure last-couple-months strategy, unlike in math).

In EBRW, the skills are varied. Some of them are almost just memorization — the grammar section, notably. Unlike in math, where I’d suggest drilling down on all weak skills first, I think that in EBRW, you should focus on solidifying your strong areas first — that should mostly be grammar.

What about vocabulary? Here are my two cents: don’t spend too much time on vocab. Recent changes have reduced importance, and it’s very, very, hard to learn all the vocab that might come on the test. That time is just better spent elsewhere. Instead, consider using some list of frequent words, like this one. For each of these words, you don’t know well, make flashcards and review them, ideally using spaced repetition (if you’re new to SR, use an app like Mochi so that you don’t have to spend time setting things up — don’t use Anki shudders).

Notably, when learning vocab, ensure you understand the many contexts a word is used. The fancy words that the SAT uses almost always have multiple meanings, depending on how and where a word is used.

Again, the best way to develop vocabulary… is by reading.

Alongside preparation, you need to take mocks regularly — let’s go.

Mocks

There are, as of now, six Official Tests that the College Board provides in Bluebook. It isn’t a lot, so you want to squeeze as much value as you can from each test.

Here are a couple things I did:

• Simulate Test Day: this is surprisingly effective in reducing stress on test day. Do everything as exactly as possible on Test Day. Obviously, a quiet environment, without internet/other app access is one thing — but I went as far as to have the same break routine (jog around the space, ideally up and down a floor of stairs), and the same snack during the break (an apple — haha). This sounds ridiculous, I know, but try it.
• Aggressively find faults: after you see the score of a test, take a while to calm down and return to a rational state. (Freaked out after a bad performance? Been there, my friend.) After that, figure out, and write down, what went well and what didn’t. Time management? Mood? Skills? Write it all down, and before you do the next test, see the list to ensure you aren’t making the same mistakes again.
• Space out: don’t do all the tests in the last week before Test Day. Similarly, don’t finish them all with a month left. It really depends on your own schedule, but you must have one in the last week — your dress rehearsal. I scheduled mine two days before Test Day. In general, one per week or two weeks is good.
• Make notes during the test: you don’t want to waste time, but just quickly jot down, on your rough sheet, the number of questions that you found tricky. Keep them safe — you’ll return to these questions as part of your final prep.
• Keep in mind that the primary purpose of the mocks is to figure out time management and other test-related strategies, not to practice question types. Knowing is what you prepare for out of mocks. Test-taking is what you prepare for during them.

Time Management and Test Taking

I think time management strategies vary widely between people. I’m just going to share mine here.

In EBRW, I knew that the first few English questions — related to vocab — could swing either way: they could boost or crash me depending on whether I knew the word or not. I knew that the data interpretation questions around the middle were the questions for me.

Therefore, for me, it made sense to start at around Q15 and run until the end of the paper, a reliable section that I knew I would always score in, often in 7 minutes (practice, practice, practice). With close to half the paper over, and confidence levels high, I would test out the waters of vocab, and I’d tackle it down. If it went well, so good — if not, it wouldn’t affect me as much as it would have, had I seen it at the beginning. Finally, I’d do the hard questions in the middle — that I know I can solve but I need time. I’d then speedily check the entire paper, and boom.

For math, my approach was almost the opposite: after a few mocks, I realized that I consistently got the last question of the second module wrong, because my timing wasn’t good.

For the first module, I didn’t require time management strategies — I always finished well under time, checking included. For the second module, however, I needed to devise a plan. Thus, I started with the last question — the hardest one, in math — and worked my way backwards, skipping questions if they took more than 30 seconds. At around Q17, when I’d need a burst of motivation, I’d flip to Q1 and burn through a few questions. Then, I’d do the middle ones.

Notice how I emphasize focus and motivation — both wane through the test, and you have to ensure that the difficulty of the questions you’re doing matches with those.

It really is less about logic and more about what works for you — be bold in experimentation, or you might pay for it on Test Day.

Silly as it sounds, ensure that you’re breathing. Force yourself every minute or so. If you can get away with it: waggle your hands and legs a bit every five minutes, and have the audacity to stare away from the screen for a couple of seconds. I realize it sounds crazy, but it really helped me: not only did the distraction help refresh my brain, I tricked myself into thinking that I was calm in a sea of panicky wide-eyed students (this is only on Test Day), which is insanely good for — you got it — motivation.

In the final two days before your exam, after you’ve done your “dress rehearsal”, go over all your mistakes list, mistakes and tough questions from mocks, and the KA teaching content for one last time. Do not study close to the test. I enforced a 20H lockdown — you can do what works for you, but I definitely would advise against studying after 5 pm the day before Test Day. On my last day, after I wrapped up final prep at 11 AM, I watched a movie, went to the beach, called a couple friends, had a warm bath, and went to bed early. You get the idea? Relax. Now, the primary motivation is not to prepare, but to make sure you’re in the best state mentally to take the test.

It’s natural to feel anxious, but if you take away one thing from this article, it should be this: with smart work, the SAT is a fairly easy game to win.

Here’s the first thing I must tell you: take a deep breath. It’s okay.

I realize that it’s easy for me to say this, after taking the test and doing well. In all honesty, I was fairly petrified in the days leading up to the 5th of May. I guess I’m trying to be motivating?

Genuine advice is a lot more helpful than bland rhetoric, and I hope this article helped you and provided concrete ideas for you to do well in this game.

Repeat that to yourself. Game. Game. Game.