The biggest mistake I see students make with test prep is delaying until they find the “perfect” materials before starting.
You don’t want to waste time or money. Right? The problem is that by delaying; you are wasting time and possibly money. Reddit is filled with students asking for the “best” materials to reach a 1550+ score or students who have raised their scores opening up to questions. The problem is that there is no magic set of books or strategies that will work perfectly for everyone.
If there were one set of materials that guaranteed a 1500+ score for everyone, there wouldn’t be any other materials on the market. And the SAT wouldn’t exist because it would fail to differentiate students from one another.
The SAT is a sorting mechanism, not a grade
Students often look to the SAT to verify their grades. While it can do this, its real purpose is to sort students.
Given enough time and practice, most people can get a high GPA, but the test is determining your actual skills. Are you skilled enough to be successful at this school? Each school has a range in mind that it sees as “smart enough”.
If you reach that, then the admissions committee will decide based on your school grades, activities, leadership, essays (personality), and additionally a host of other things that have nothing to do with you. These intangibles are institutional needs, and you will either satisfy those needs or not.
A high SAT score merely gives you more options because you are seen as smart and skilled enough for more schools. Getting 10 points higher than your classmate won’t be the difference between acceptance or rejection.
Training for the SAT Race
If you were training for a marathon, would you spend time looking for the perfect shoes, route, or coach? Or would you just start running? Perhaps you run a little at a time, getting stronger every day. As you get stronger, you also get faster.
If you spend time looking for the best books, courses, and strategies, you are wasting time. Instead, get started building your reading strength and stamina. Just like running, you can’t get stronger by watching other people run. You need to put in the time working on it.
Read Every Day
Yes, I mean it. Every day. The good news is that 20-30 minutes is enough to benefit your brain, and more isn’t exponentially better. (You can read more…I would never dissuade you from reading more)
Your brain best gains vocabulary through context. That is, learning a word in isolation connected to a single definition, is not the most effective or efficient way to improve your vocabulary. Instead, you want to read and encounter words in their native environment, so you can understand how they are used in addition to what they mean.
Reading also builds background knowledge. One overlooked aspect of the SAT is the role that background information plays in reading comprehension. I often encounter this when coaching LSAT and MCAT students in reading. The students are amazed that I, a lowly English teacher, can read a passage about Okazaki fragments and get an inference question correct. I can perform this amazing feat because I have a vast resource of background information, gathered through years of what I like to call “paying attention to the world*.”
Background knowledge increases comprehension and, more importantly, speed. Because the SAT is a timed test, faster is better. So, if you don’t have to ponder what the “crystalline structure of salt” means, you can get through the passage faster.
Figure out your own strengths and weaknesses
If you do the same thing over and over without improvement, you might be blind to your own weaknesses. Are there specific question types that you get wrong? Is there a topic that always baffles you? Do you lose focus 45 minutes into the test? Do long answer choices make you pick a “good enough” answer? Dig deep and don’t default to “I knew it”. That is ego-preserving behavior, but it doesn’t make you better.
Get an accountability partner
If you plan to run but then don’t feel like it when the time comes, you might need a partner. As long as your partner can crack the whip or make you feel guilty for not showing up, you can be motivated to get to work. Find somebody in person or online who shares your goals and also wants to make progress. Even a simple standing appointment to work together (body doubling) on your own things can make an immense improvement.
Get a coach when you are truly stuck
Private tutors have a bad reputation for being expensive, and sometimes we are. But I would argue that having a short meeting with a private tutor to address a specific problem in an hour can save you weeks of hitting your head against a wall. Recently, I had a student who could only afford one hour, but because they gave me all the information about what they had struggled with and all their test results (questions wrong-not scores) I could pinpoint the problem, and we worked it through in that hour. The problem was a conflicting understanding of some key grammar concepts. Once we walked through the actual rules (according to the SAT), they overcame the block, and the new understanding coupled with confidence boosted their score into the 700s.
Mindset Matters
Elite athletes are well known for talking about the role mindset plays in sports. Mindset is equally important in testing situations. If you go into the test thinking you are going to fail, or the test is too hard, or you will run out of time, you are probably right. There was a study done on a previous version of the SAT, and researchers found students spent on average 5 minutes per hour staring into space, looking at the clock, and zoning out during the SAT. During that time, they worried about not having enough time, failing, and insisting that they didn’t understand. Instead, they should use the time to work through the problem. Stop with the negative self-talk. Be aware of and reinforce your wins.
Long-term success is built on daily work
Yes, it can be boring, and sometimes you will feel stuck, but grit is a key personality trait of those who succeed in the world. So, treat the task like a race and not a test, and see how your mindset shifts.
If you got to the end, congratulations; you read over 1000 words and were exposed to SAT words including verify, intangible, stamina, exponentially, dissuade, feat, and grit.
*I grew up in a house where information was seen as valuable. We read newspapers; watched documentaries, TV shows, and movies; explored and experimented in nature. Now, before you think I was raised by geniuses with PhDs, I was not. My father had dyslexia and was removed from school when he was 16, and my mother failed grade 10 (boys were very distracting). They were just interested in the world and learned on their own as adults. Here’s your word for today: Autodidact, a person who learns on their own for their own purposes. Get interested in the world and learn something new every day, not because it will be on a test, but because it makes you an interesting person who knows things.
