Common Sense Method to Prepare for the SAT

8/13/2019 Common Sense Method to Prepare for the SAT

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Common Sense Method to Preparing for the SAT

The method is mostly based on common sense. After all, how hard is it for anyone to

figure out that the more one practices, the more one improves. However, there are a few

elements that seem to work better than others. Also, I may be able to point to certain

elements of a preparation that yield lesser results. For instance, I do not recommendspending huge amounts of time reading lists of words.

The study guides published by The College Board will be your best friend to get a

better score.

The older version was called 10 Real SATswhich contained copies of old SAT exams.

So what the method?

The program in a nutshell:

1. Take 1-2 tests without time limit and with open books. Take your time to read thequestions, answer them, and CHECK the answers, as you take the test. The idea is

to make sure to understand all the terms. The score is far from relevant.

2. Take the following 2-3 tests without time limit but close the books. Now, youreon your own. After taking the test, check the answers and make sure to checkALL your answers, including the correct ones.

3. Take the next 2-3 tests, within the allotted time.4. Take the last tests and try to shave a few minutes. Look for patterns, shortcuts.

Soon enough, you'll recognize problems in a few seconds. However, make sure

you READ all the questions. Trying to save 5 seconds in that part is NOT wise.Remember that you do NOT have to finish all the problems. As soon as you can

determine the BEST answer with certainty, you are DONE. Managing your time

wisely is the key to a great score. This comes from practice.


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5. I would also recommend that you work one section at a time. Spend about onehour on each section. Marathon sessions will not be as productive as repeatedshorter ones.

Who needs to "prep" for the SAT

Before answering that question, I should address another question. Who does LIKE to

prepare for the SAT? That one is easier to answer ... nobody in his or her right mind

would enjoy spending hours practicing the lost art of filling little oval bubbles! However,

there is so much at stake, that the sacrifice becomes bearable. One compromise might befound in the form of transforming the SAT into a game. In fact, there is a small amount of

satisfaction, if not pleasure, in finding ways to beat the SAT writers at their own game.

Back to the original question: the answer is that most everyone needs to prepare for the

SAT. While we hear occasional reports of a student acing the SAT without any

preparation, there is a good chance that the formidable test taker had some experience

with standardized tests or with some kind of intellectual competition. The reality is thatthe SAT is very different from most school exams or tests, and presents a very different

set of challenges.

Despite testing English and mathematical concepts, the SAT does not test much of the

material a typical student learns in high school. While experts are now battling to decide

if the SAT has indeed become an "achievement" test versus the "aptitude" test it wasbefore March 2005, I think that it makes little difference to the students who are facing

this animal. In order to tame this "beast," we need to respect it and learn as much as we

can about his behavior and idiosyncrasies. For some natural test takers, this would requirea simple review of a past test and a general understanding of the arcane presentation and

language. But, let's not fool ourselves ... those students are exceptions. Most of us meremortals have to face the simple truth that to do well on this grueling test, we will need to

practice.

Can brilliant students do poorly on the SAT?Yes, they CAN and they DO! The first thing to realize is that acing advanced calculus

won't do you much good on the SAT Math. The SAT is a different test that requires adifferent knowledge: the knowledge of the test itself. One usually gains that knowledge

by practicing on released tests. This is the best way to start understand the format and

recognize the type of questions. In a typical test, 90% of the questions are testing "old"

concepts and very few questions (maybe 3 to 5) are a bit newer and unfamiliar.

Getting a good score does not require a deep knowledge of mathnor a very largevocabulary. For example, you can solve most, if not all, of the problems without ever

using a calculator. So, what does it take? What is needed is the ability to recognize the

questions and patterns without much effort, and especially without wasting time. In otherwords, the key is to know how to solve the problems FAST. For most problems, it is

neither necessary nor advisable to work through all the steps to verify your answers. The

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SAT, unlike high school teachers, does not reward completeness and does not give partial

credit. The only thing that matters is the accuracy of your answers.

Why is it hard to start and stick to a self-preparation program?

Simple answer! Because there is so much stuff to read, and most of it is boring andsounds silly. Most of us have been there Mom and Dad announced that they had a

surprise for us. After a successful trip to Barnes and Noble, they slowly unveil the goods:

a collection of fat and colorful books printed on cheap paper. Faking some enthusiasm,

we grab the books and retreat to our room, hoping to find some peace. However, it isusually short lived as Mom and Dad announce that they expect us to take test Number

One on Saturday at 8AM. But why? Our strong objections are simply rebutted by a stern,

Because so and so told us at the bookstore that it was important to take the test just likethey do at the center. Oh well, lets see what the books contain. Very soon, we are

reading about strategies and tricks that ALL sound so simple. After a few pages, battling

the desire to fall asleep, we decide to just take one of those simple tests. After all, we are

not like Joe Blogg, that bumbling idiot who gets tripped so easily. We work our waythrough the test finding as sole motivation the promise of a great score. Yeah, Ill show

Mom and Dad that I know all this stuff.

A few hours later, despite having gone well over the time limits, we announce to our

unsuspecting parents that we may very well be done with the SAT. We give them our test

and tell them, Yep, go ahead, and score it. Mom, knowing better, passes the fat bookto dear dad. To your great surprise, you witness the fatidic (prophetic) apparition of more

crosses than check marks. No, no, that cant be. I am not Joe Blogg, the dummy from

Bubba High School in Burkburnett, Texas! How could I miss the third question? A level2 question! The verdict comes in at around 550 for the math and verbal sections. Smartly

enough, you did skip that insipid writing component. Dad does not seem too surprisedand simply whispers, Better luck next time. A short week later, after many

unsuccessful attempts to read more than twenty pages, the second test yields a similar

result. While you avoided the same mistakes, other problems surfaced. That silly ReadingComprehension section just killed you.

Is there an alternative?Yes, there is! As one would expect, Ill start with the importance of viewing the SAT as a

game to be defeated. For all sports, dedicated practices are extremely important.

Preparing for the SAT is no different from practicing for tennis or soccer: it's a game of

strategy and repetition. As I noted earlier, the material that will be tested on the SAT isnot that difficult, but the presentation and language is confusing for anyone who has not

done much testing or competitions.

In my opinion, there are two important phases in preparing successfully for the test:

1. The first phase includes building small blocks of confidence; and,2. The second one involves time management.

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That is why I recommend breaking the tests in smaller and manageable sections.

The general idea is to devote about thirty minutes to completing a test section and about

the same amount of time to review the answers proposed by The College Board. While

most students focus on the scores and check their wrong answers, much can be gained

from checking the correct answers. It is important to TRULY understand EVERY answerand to try to understand how the SAT questions are developed. To do this, one has to be

comfortable with the material tested.

It is for this reason that I recommend to start working with open books and without time

limits. Open books include the precise answers to the test. During this phase, studentsought to review the books that form their SAT library. On this subject, I have a simple

recommendation: buy as many SAT books as you can afford. There are no clear leaders

and most books share very similar strategies and tips. For math, Gruber's is the mostcomplete and should provide answers to most problems appearing on the SAT, with the

potential absence of problems specific to the post March 2005 test.

The other usual suspects are Princeton Review, Barrons, Kaplan, and McGraw Hill. Thestrategies and tips for math will be very similar among the books listed. The strategies for

the verbal components offer a few variances, which students should evaluate on an

individual basis.

With the advent of the new SAT, a number of new books have appeared. Those new

books such at the Rocket Review of Adam Robinson, the Maximum SAT of PeterEdwards, and the solution book by TestMaster(s) have raised the bar, and are in many

ways better than the books published by the former gorillas. However, the choice of

the source books is not that critical, and I did not try to prepare an exhaustive list of

books. There are a number of other books that contain advice and strategies. Myrecommendation stays the same: buy as many as you can and check the strategies to find

a few that apply to your individual taste. As you will say later, the best strategies will be

self-developed.

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This is the time to introduce a caveat. Under no circumstances should a student use teststhat are not published by The College Board. You may have noticed that I did not list the

Official Guide among the source books. It is, however, the must-have book since it

contains all the tests you'll need to prepare for the SAT. I will comment on the online

tools of The College Board in a later paragraph.

Are you now ready to get your X-ACTO knife out and rip that Official Guide in small

sections? Better stock up on manila folders ... you'll need them.

How long does self-preparing take and how does it work?

As you may expect, there is no universal answer to this question. For some, very little

time will be required. For others, the process will require a lengthy revision of concepts

and the development of an adequate strategy.

Normally, students who prepare for the SAT should have covered the concepts that willbe tested during their high school career. While the former SAT covered material up to

9th grade, the new test has introduced a few concepts from 10th or 11th grade. However,despite the changes, the need to study in ANTICIPATION of the test should still be

MINIMAL. In most cases, all that will be needed is to dust off concepts that may not

have been used for a couple of years, and become familiar with the format and the ratherarcane language of the SAT.

It is for this reason that I recommend to re-discover the material in the more interactiveprocess of learning or re-learning while practicing. It is also important to repeat that it

is not necessary to STUDY any of the source books I recommend at the end of this post.One of the reasons is that the knowledge that is needed to do well on the SAT is neither

extensive nor complicated. What separates most students from a great score is rarely a

lack of school knowledge, but a lack of familiarity with the test and a lack of time

management concepts. On this issue, I believe, with great conviction, that the best way toimprove ones test knowledge and learn how to manage time is through dedicated

practices. The number of practices that will be needed is, however, entirely dependent on

the background of the student.

Lets look at how this works! To begin, everyone should have the Official Study Guide.

The College Boardpublishes The Official SAT Study Guide: For the New SAT. It haseight new-SAT style practice tests. Yes, that is the fat Blue Book published by the

College Board. The book contains sections filled with generic and mostly vapid advice.

While reading the first 376 pages of the book can be instructive, it is NOT necessary toread them before getting to the real value of the book: the eight exams. In this regard, the

blue book is a bit different from its predecessors, since the tests are a mix of old and

newly developed questions. In fact, it requires a small leap of faith to believe that the

tests published will be as foretelling as in the past. This said, there are no knownsubstitutes to the material released by the College Board.

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So, what do we do with the eight tests. This is my recommendation:

1. Set aside 1 or 2 tests for the assessment and exploration phase. In this phase, Irecommend to get all your books out and start answering the questions without

any time limits. Whenever youre stumped, take a peek at the response or even at

the fully developed answers that are posted on The College Board site. The idea isto understand how ETS writes its questions and what makes certain questions

more difficult than others. It is in this phase that one will use the outside material

the most. This is when you will read about the process of elimination, working

backwards, and other techniques that are more common sense than any greatsecrets. It should not take more than a few hours to exhaust the strategies and

tips published in the source books. So, do not overestimate the time needed to

check the source books. Again, there is no need to read anything that was notcovered in a question. The index and table of contents should be your best friends.

2. For the second phase, youll need to answer the questions without open books,and with an eye on the clock. For the first test of this phase, you may cheat a bit

and go over the allotted time. However, by the fourth (or third) test, you should beable to stay well within the limits. If you constantly need more time, it means that

you are wasting time somewhere. This is where it is IMPORTANT to pay

attention to your correct responses, and see if some different methods could havesaved you precious time. For instance, spending 4-5 minutes on a single question

unless it the last one on a section- is ALWAYS a bad idea. You need to develop

the reflex to abandon questions that are known time-sinks, and develop your

ability to recognize the lengthy questions. It is important to know that TheCollege Board tests CAN be completed with time to spare. Not finishing a section

is the result of poor time management and lacking skills, and not because of ETStrickiness. Also, realize that finishing a section with MUCH time to spare is also

poor time management. Rushing through the test is never recommended!

3. The last phase involves taking one or more tests under testing conditions. Somepeople recommend to build up your stamina by working through a few 4-hour

ordeals. As usual, the more you do, the better your preparation will be.

While I do not subscribe to the theory that it is essential to take the test in a single

session, I would leave it as an individual choice! If you are worried about your resistance,by all means, take a few timed and complete tests. My personal view is that Id rather

keep the practice sessions as fun and painless as possible. The College Board has

published reports that indicate that high school students are able to take tests for about six

hours before showing signs of fatigue. Obviously, a grain of salt is sometimes necessary

to digest the official reports from the College Board.

Again, it is important to repeat that NOT everyone will have to take the eight tests. Forsome, the eight tests will be a major overkill. I do believe that anyone who goes through a

preparation that includes working on this many tests should be VERY CLOSE to his or

her expected maximum scores. At the end of the preparation, every possible SAT conceptshould have been covered and reviewed adequately. If a student made sure to verify all

the answers, look up and compare proposed answers and methods in the source books, he

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should encounter very few surprises on THE official test.

However, some students may require or desire more practice sessions. As time passes by,

more tests will become available through releases by The College Board. A subscription

to the online course of TCB gives access to six additional tests as well as access to the

grading system for essays. My recommendation is to sign up for the service, especially ifyou need more tests.

This brings us to the question about source books. While I recommend acquiring as manybooks as feasible, this does not mean that one has to buy and read ten to twenty books

cover to cover. For the old SAT, the recommended books composed a pretty short list.

For general strategies, most of the books published by Princeton Review, Kaplan, orBarrons represented a good start: the strategies for the math sections were pretty

interchangeable, but the verbal strategies offered a few variances. As usual, during the

preparation phases, a student should try the strategies that fit him or her better. I found

that concepts such as read the passage first or read the questions first were NOT as

important as the techniques needed to approach the sentence completions and readingcomprehension sections. Among the books, one deserves a special mention: and that is

Grubers. In general terms, Gruber went further and faster than the other authors, and itsmath section was deeper and better. Alas, Grubers also included many elements that

went beyond the scope of the old SAT. I am not sure if Gary Gruber intends to update his

book soon, but it is still a very good choice as a source book. Again, the source books areNOT meant to be studied cover-to-cover but are meant to be used as you would use an

encyclopedia. You look up concepts when needed, and not in anticipation of possible

questions. Let the practice tests guide what you need to review!

With the changes for the new SAT, we also witnessed the arrival of a few new books. Sofar, the books written by Adam Robinson (Rocket Review) and Pete Edwards (Maximum

SAT) have raised the bar considerably, especially in clarity and focus. I would highly

recommend making the books part of your library. However, this does not mean that

students should follow Adam Robinsons often pompous and grandiloquent-recommendations and subject themselves to his recommended game plan. Use

Robinsons book as a source to clarify a few blurry concepts, but again, let the practices

dictate what you need. In this regard, Maximum SAT provides a cleaner and more subtleapproach. Without the annoying and mostly unfounded- rhetoric of Robinson,

Maximum SAT is able deliver what it promises! In the same vein, the solutions book

published by the Houston-based Testmasters should be a very valuable tool for everyone,especially for developing a set of shortcuts and tools.

To round up your source books, I would also recommend to add a good grammar book aswell as the Grammatix guide. Guide books are different from source books that tend to

focus more on theoretical approaches and try to be more complete. Some people may notlike the more direct and shorter style of a guide book, or even doubt the effectiveness of

the methods. However, when it comes to the most challenging part of the SAT (critical

reading) I have yet to read a book that can help anyone as much as and as fast as theGrammatix guide. However, I view source books and guide books as being

complementary. Being able to cherry-pick the best from all sources is the key to a good

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self-preparation.

Lastly, as far as PSAT books, the books that were published last summer were mostly

equal in their mediocrity. My only recommendation is to wait for new books to surface

during the summer or simply use the SAT books and ignore the essay discussions.

Should you time yourself on the practice tests?

The answer is yes but only at the end of the preparation, and eventually at the onset if youdid not take an official test. In the past I have compared an SAT preparation to the

preparation for a marathon. It is not necessary to run 26 miles each day to prepare for a

race. It is better to prepare your body for the grueling race in smaller installments andbuild resistance and speed by repetition. I do not think that there is ANYTHING wrong in

trying to emulate the testing conditions by setting aside a few Saturdays at the kitchen

table. It is, however, not necessary, especially in the phase where you build knowledge,

confidence, and time management. I would recommend 10 installments of 30 minutes

over taking a 5-hour ordeal.One of the keys of a successful preparation is to establish anumber of intermediary targets. First, you want to make sure you understand the test and

its arcane language. Then, you want to test your current knowledge. After that, you wantto make sure you understand what The College Board considers correct answers. I even

recommend taking a test WITH the answers in front of you. Obviously that test would not

establish a valid yardstick score wise, but it will go a long way to build confidence inyour own ability and recognize the few traps that ETS uses.

On the issue of using released tests

When I started working on this issue, the world of the SAT was a bit easier. Since mostSAT books had gone through several revisions, the job of identifying the best books was

much simpler. For instance, nobody would confuse the Grubers anthology with the REA

books. An important consensus was also reached regarding the published tests, and the

differences between the official tests and the tests published by Princeton Review,Kaplan, Barrons, among others.

I started to use the term synthetic tests to describe the tests found in the books of PR,

Kaplan, and others. I even pushed the envelope by labeling them wannabe or fake tests.In simple terms, using the synthetic tests was a bad, a very bad idea. It was also

absolutely unnecessary: between the various publications of the 8 or 10 Real Tests and

the purchase of released tests from The College Board, one astute test taker could have

built up a collection of about 45 official tests. Enough to satisfy the appetite of the mostvoracious SAT candidate. I have to admit that I attempted to collect ALL of what was

available and that I did go through ALL the ones I purchased.

Alas, we know a lot less about the current SAT than we did about the old one. TheCollege Board no longer sells disclosed tests, except through a more restrictive Q&A

Service. ETS sells only past versions of the PSAT. The situation is even more

complicated for the current SAT.

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Based on past experience, we CANNOT trust the companies that have tried to write tests

for the new books. The issue is that most of the tests DO contain mistakes that can lead tostudents' confusion. As an example, the SAT book of Barron's contains good strategies

but the tests are mostly irrelevant as they do NOT match the difficulty of the test. It is

worth noting that it does NOT help to take a test that is more difficult than the real thing:

the extra difficulty does not help a student prepare for the SAT if the type of question willNEVER show up! It is a pure waste of time. It would be similar to using a book written

for the former SAT Math-IIC test to prepare for the SAT. While you'll learn something,

it wont be what you seek to learn. The same can be said for books such as the PrincetonReview 11 Tests for the New SAT. The book was rushed to capture last summers

market. Notwithstanding that Princeton Review had never been able to write a single test

that was valid for the old SAT, one had to question the integrity of PR to engage insuch broad speculation about the contents and format of the March 2005 tests.

However, the situation is not as bleak at it seems. The College Board DID release an

update to its must-have 10 Real Tests. At this time, I would encourage everyone to

purchase and read the Official Study book, as well as consider subscribing to The CollegeBoard online help. I think it is important to understand HOW the writers of ETS/TCB

think. Getting in the head" of the test writers makes a lot of difference. When readingthe solutions proposed by TCB, it is worth remembering that they usually offer lengthy

solutions which cover all bases. Again, an important part of your preparation work is to

devise shortcuts - some are available in the source books, but the best and most effectiveones will be your own.

Last, if you run into published test, do not hesitate to work with older tests. Obviously,youll have to discard the analogies and QCs sections, but the rest is still golden. Please

consider that ETS will have their hands full with creating new content for Algebra II orWriting that they wont consider throwing out their older questions for A LONG TIME.

The conclusion is rather simple: there is no reason to use any of the non-official tests.

Should you read any of the famous lists of words?

Studying selected lists of words can be helpful, but in very limited occasions. For the

overwhelming majority of students, lumbering through the list will provide a false senseof accomplishment and yield few positive results. I offered this opinion when analogies

were on the test: you can safely assume that the removal of one of my favorite parts has

done little to change my mind about the effectiveness of spending much time memorizingwords out of their natural context.

In preparing for the SAT, it would be much better to simply read all the past SAT tests.You would be even better off by taking all the practice tests AND pay close attention to

the style and tone of the test.

If you are set on spending the time working with lists and flashcards, you need tounderstand how the lists were compiled. Most of the lists started by compiling the words

that appeared on past tests. The best lists are the ones that do NOT pretend to be more

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than a historical compilation. The worst lists are the ones that pretend to be better by

adding a lot of seemingly difficult words that miss the SAT mark. The most egregiousoffender is Barron's: by recycling their mostly ineffective GRE list of words, the authors

of the 3500 words are doing a gross disservice to unsuspecting high school students. I

performed a mathematical analysis of the number of Barron's words that have appeared

on new tests, and the results confirmed my worst expectations. While Barron's provides agood indication of what showed up in the past, it does a horrible job of predicting future

occurrences. The difference is important to know.

This said, there is value in working on your vocabulary, but is has to be gradual and

constant. Several websites and some tutoring companies- offer a service that sends out a

number of words on a daily basis. Since it would take only a few minutes to open theemails or log in at the website, it is a good idea to start subscribe to a few of them. This is

the kind of repetition that helps you prepare without really feeling it.

I'll leave you with a last tidbit of information. The SAT does not really test your

vocabulary but you reasoning ability. The challenging questions are made difficult, notby testing arcane words, but by testing the secondary and tertiary meanings of EASY

words. Examples of such meanings are "air" when used as a verb, "low" whenrepresenting a sound, and a slew of others. Do you think that "low" would ever show up

on a SAT list and convey the meaning of "the characteristic sound uttered by cattle as in a

moo?" Pretty doubtful!

If you want to improve your verbal scores, spend most of your energy understanding the

techniques to recognize the patterns of Sentence Completion, and especially criticalreading. If you truly have time to waste, spend it on the wordlists. Studying any wordlist

without the absolute mastery of the verbal techniques is a recipe for disaster. On theother hand, I do support spending time to review a small number of words on a daily

basis. I also support spending time on analyzing roots, prefixes, and suffixes.

On the issue of tricks and strategies

After spending time building the blocks of knowledge and confidence, students should

start developing techniques to save time. The SAT is mostly a test of mental quickness.People who like to solve puzzles tend do well. One good facet of the SAT is that the

puzzles thrown at students are rather simple and very often repeated. Again, there are

no great secrets. Dedicated students should be able to learn the techniques, leave thecalculator in its case, and know what NOT to do. Developing time saving techniques will

help students find not only the correct answer, but the best answer in the shortest amount

of time. It is worth remembering that the four incorrect answers do NOT matter: nobodyneeds to show the steps and confirm the answer. Well, that is fine and dandy, but how

does one acquire the techniques? This is where your source books come in play. As we

know, the books contain a number of tips and strategies. While most of the advice is

helpful, it is important to tailor it to the individual student. In other words, by reading thevarious industry offerings, a student can acquire a set of tools that will start the process.

However, the advice is really aimed at helping average students improve their scores. I

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am not saying this is a pejorative way!

Most books, and organized prep classes, are most helpful for students who will score

between 500 and 650. Despite being incomplete, the advice is still valid and will help

anyone in the earlier phases. Concepts such as the process of elimination (POE) and

plugging key numbers represent key components of any students arsenal. However, toreally push your talent to the limit, youll have to graduate from the generic concepts.

This is accomplished by practicing and looking for hidden patterns. Slowly but surely,

your brain will recognize the questions and the answers will flash right in front of you.Oh, I know that someone said that the SAT was super easy because ALL the answers are

always in front of you except for the Student Produced Responses or grid-in questions.

That is, however, not what I meant!

On preparing for the Critical Reading section

Reading The New Yorker and Discover magazines should be very helpful for the verbal

section. Avid readers have a real advantage on the SAT.

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Common Sense Method to Prepare for the SAT