Master the Tricks of the S.A.T. E-Book

Michael Solis

• Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 31

Beschreibung

No high school student wants to do it, but just about all of them will find themselves staring directly into the beast. If there are three letters high school juniors hate most, they are S, A, and T. While this three-letter word is loathed by many and dreaded by most, it is a necessary component for anyone who wishes to attend an undergraduate college in the United States.

Leseprobe

Introduction

No high school student wants to do it, but just about all of them will find themselves staring directly into the beast. If there are three letters high school juniors hate most, they are S, A, and T. While this three-letter word is loathed by many and dreaded by most, it is a necessary component for anyone who wishes to attend an undergraduate college in the United States.

By now you are likely already aware that the SAT is a globally recognized college admission test that lets students show colleges what they know in certain subject areas, and how well they can apply that knowledge. It tests one’s knowledge of reading, writing and math — subjects that are taught every day in high school classrooms.

Still, even though people are aware of the subjects, before preparing for the SAT, it is important to know exactly what the SAT tests. Specifically, the SAT covers the following areas:

Critical Reading: Reading passages and sentence completions. Writing: A short essay and multiple-choice questions on identifying errors and improving grammar and usage. Mathematics: Arithmetic operations, algebra, geometry, statistics, and probability.

And that’s it! The SAT does not test anyone’s knowledge in history or the sciences, nor does it test logic or abstract reasoning.

The total amount of test time is 3 hours and 45 minutes, with the SAT being broken up into 10 sections: a 25-minute essay, six 25-miute sections (mathematics, critical reading, and writing), two 20-minute sections (mathematics, critical reading, and writing), and a 10-minute multiple choice writing section. Each SAT exam includes an extra 25-minute critical reading, mathematics or writing multiple-choice section that doesn’t count toward one’s score. In this section, the test tries out new questions to make sure that future exams are fair for students from different backgrounds. It also helps make sure that scores from students taking future exams can be compared to scores from students who took earlier versions of the test.

In terms of scoring, each section of the SAT (critical reading, mathematics, and writing) will be scored on a 200- to 800-point scale, for a possible total of 2400. Test-takers also get two “subscores” on the writing section: a multiple-choice score from 20 to 80, and an essay score from 2 to 12. To come up with the final score, the test adds points up for correct answers and subtracts a fraction of a point for wrong answers. Any questions that are skipped don’t count either for or against one’s score, and points aren’t taken away for wrong answers on the math questions where one has to enter the answer into a grid. The raw score is scaled into a score from 200-800 so it can be compared to the scores of other students.

This eBook presents a basic overview of what tricks SAT test-takers can learn to boost their scores in each of the testing sections. It dedicates one chapter to each of the testing sections: critical reading, writing, and mathematics, while giving sample problems that are based on SAT problems that have been seen on actual tests. The goal of this eBook is to help SAT test-takers learn the traps used to trick students, as well as ways to better prepare for each of the sections.

While this eBook can surely help improve one’s test score, students would also be wise to use other study tools to aid them. To most effectively prepare for the SAT, students could either take specialized courses or study independently with books. The Official SAT Study Guide, authored by the College Board, includes nearly 900 pages of pure SAT prep, including drills, strategies, test-taking advice, an expanded math section, a critical reading section, an essay section, and full-length practice tests. Other excellent guides are The Princeton Review Cracking the SAT and Kaplan SAT Premier Program