As someone who has dedicated way to much of my time to trying to figure out this stupid test and who has no younger siblings or friends to pass my tips along to, I’m just going to leave some studying tips here so feel free to look at em if you’d like.
First of all, take a practice test to gauge where you’re at. Take note of the types of questions you missed and why you missed them. Also take note of if you’re struggling with time or not.
Really the only way to improve time is to keep practicing with a timer. Maybe even set a timer for less than the amount of time you would actually be given.
But don’t worry about time right off the bat if you’ve never taken the SAT before. At first just take as much time as you need to get used to the questions.
What I’d recommend to improve your reading score is really just to take more and more practice tests. The important part is to read the answer explanations on the ones you miss or that you struggled with. Try to recognize patterns - is there a certain type of question you miss the most? How does their answer differ from yours? Figure out why theirs is right in a way that makes sense to you.
Remember that there’s always evidence for every answer. If you think something is implied or you’re pretty sure but you don’t feel like you actually read it in the passage, or if you use outside knowledge, that probably ain’t it.
I’ve heard a lot of people say you should summarize the passage to yourself before you try to answer the questions but at least in my experience, the whole time stress thing makes you forget to do that.
If you’re struggling a lot with time it’s a good idea to get used to speed reading, at least to some extent. I took a course on it and the main take away from that was to just guide your eyes by moving your finger or a pen along underneath the words you’re reading. Just try doing that and try to do it faster and faster while still making sure you’re comprehending what you’re reading. Also here’s a free speed reading course I found.
I’m sure you’ve already heard this but Khan academy has timed and not timed reading sections you can use for practice + explanations. They also have videos and stuff with tips for the SAT overall and how-to videos on the different types of questions you’ll come across.
Pretty similar to the reading section - make sure you recognize the types of questions you typically miss and make sure you really understand why your answer wasn’t what they were looking for.
There are some more hard and fast rules you can study when it comes to writing, which is nice. IE punctuation rules - especially semicolons.
They also do this trick question where they give you the subject of a sentence and then they put a few words and then they ask you for the correct form of the verb. They also do one where the subject is singular/plural but it sounds like it might be plural/singular. Maybe it’s a name of a group or something - They’re trying to throw you off on the number of the verb, and sometimes even if it’s past/present/future etc.
My main tip for time on the writing portion is you do NOT have to read every word of every passage. Unless they’re asking you to move a sentence within a paragraph then you only have to read the underlined portions of the paragraph and sometimes the rest of the sentence that precedes it. Unless they ask you a question that pertains to the main focus of the passage, you do not have to get a real understanding of what the passage is talking about. Remembering this has saved me so much time.
Khan academy also has some practice for the writing, but if I recall correctly they don’t have quite as much material as they do for the reading.
Okay so math was my worst section until just this year.
First of all, same rule applies - take lots of practice tests and make sure you understand why you missed the questions you did. As you’re going over your answers + the explanations, make a few sheets in a notebook with reminders or rules or tips or a few common formulas that you usually forget. If there’s one certain concept (for example, parabolas) you can n o t understand - really take the time to sit down and try to understand everything you can about that concept. Write it all down on a dedicated sheet of paper in a way that you can easily look over later.
Some formulas I think it’s important to understand are the graph of a circle, the vertex form of a parabola, standard form of a parabola and slope-intercept form of a line. There’s a few more but those are the main ones off the top of my head.
For math, you can definitely start at Khan academy - they obviously have tons of content for SAT math and math in general. For some people that’s all they use and they get really good scores. For me though, I could only get so far with it.
One thing about Khan academy is they usually just show you the longer, math-y way to do a problem (from what I recall. I could be totally wrong on this cause it’s been a while) when a lot of times on the SAT there’s a really easy and obvious way to get an answer in seconds without doing lots of calculation - if you know where to look for it.
I found this youtube playlist rather helpful when it comes to getting the math questions done the quick and effective way. Most of the time you really don’t have to solve out every problem or answer. The guy doesn’t talk in all the videos but there’s a good number of them where he explains what he’s doing and gives several examples. I’m pretty sure he always writes out all the steps of how he solves the problems.
Honestly just watching him do the problems so quickly gave me a lot of confidence because it made sense how he did it. “If he can do that that fast then so can I!”
One thing is, if you do use the ‘don’t solve out every detail’ way and you have time left over at the end, definitely go back and check over ones that you weren’t so sure about or that seemed like they might have been trick questions. This really applies to all the sections.
College board also has their own study guide. It’s organized by three overall sections: “getting ready for the SAT”, english and math. English and math are both broken down by every type of question they have on the test, so you can only download the sections that you need to work on. I’d say just search the PDF for the specific concept you’re struggling with, but I guess you could read the whole guide if you want to and have the time.
Supertutortv is a youtube channel with lots of tips and stuff.
Growing up I was always told that the SAT is about ✨logic✨and I guess that’s still true. They’re less testing you on what you know and more so testing you on if you know what to do. Problem solving and analysis.
Finally, if/when you take the test for real, try to be as chill as possible about it. Don’t be stressed about how you’re going to do or what you’re going to do. Be confident in the fact that you prepared or in the fact that you didn’t want to do much prep and that that was the best choice for you. Don’t think about college or your future or what your parents or whoever is in your life is going to think. Don’t think ahead at all. Just focus on what you’re doing at that moment.
Feel free to send me an ask or DM and I’d love to answer any questions or provide more resources or do anything else I can to help anyone who happens across this post.
