SAT Prep Black Book: The Most Effective SAT Strategies Ever Published (61 page)

You hear people complain about this all the time
. “I can’t do well on the Math part of the SAT because I’m too creative,” they’ll say, or, “I’m too analytical to do well on subjective questions like Passage-Based Reading ones.”

This isn’t true at all
. First of all, the human brain is too adaptable to be good at using only numbers or only words; if it weren’t, we’d never survive. Except in the rarest of cases, people are not strictly good at either math or language.

But more importantly, the sections on the SAT don’t really test Math and
Reading skills, at least not in the way the people typically think of them. They just test general reasoning, using basic math and language concepts as the means to an end. In other words, the SAT Math Section isn’t a traditional math test, the SAT Critical Reading Section isn’t a traditional reading test, and the SAT Writing Section certainly isn’t a traditional writing test. So even if your brain were designed to do well on only math or only language, it wouldn’t matter on the SAT because the SAT doesn’t test either of those things directly anyway.

Want proof? Have you ever met
someone who thought she was a “math person” who scored hundreds of points lower on the math section than on the other parts of the SAT? I meet people like this all the time. You might even be one of them.

If you are one of them, do yourself two favors
. First, stop pigeon-holing yourself. You can be good at anything you want to be good at. Second, realize that the SAT isn’t really a math test or a language test, and just take it for what it is—a highly repetitive standardized test of basic skills and reasoning. Check out all the rules, patterns, and solutions in this Black Book. While they all involve paying careful attention to detail, not one of them rewards the kinds of skills that would be rewarded in the typical English, literature, or math class.

Fact: Anyone can do well on any part of the SAT—or on all of it—by attacking the test intelligently.
That’s what this Black Book is all about.

A lot of students have told
me they changed their answers on the SAT because the answer choices they originally liked didn’t seem evenly distributed—it seemed like there were too many (A)s in a section, for example. When I ask them why they would worry about a thing like that, they say that somebody told them that the answer choices are always distributed evenly on the SAT.

This is partly true—over time, all the answer choices on the SAT are used equally
. But within a particular section, the answer choices can be distributed quite unevenly. A particular section might clearly favor one, two, three, or four answer choices, or it might distribute its answer choices almost evenly. You never know.

Let’s prove it
. Turn to page 432 in
The Official SAT Study Guide
. You’ll see an answer key from an actual SAT written by the College Board. Take a look at how often each answer choice appears in each section.

As you can see, there’s absolutely no way to predict how many times a given answer choice should appear in a given section
. So don’t worry about the distribution of the answer choices you pick—just focus on trying to get every single question correct, and let the answer choices you select fall where they may.

Fact: Answer choices may or may not be distributed evenly on a given section
. Don’t worry about it.

Some people will tell you that you should take the SAT at a particular time of year to get the highest possible score
. The theory is based on the fact that the SAT is a norm-based test, which means that when you take it you’re compared to other test-takers, not to some objective standard. So the idea is to try to take the test at the time of year when the people taking it with you are likely to do the worst.

This idea can’t possibly work, for a variety of reasons
. The simplest reason is that you can’t predict when the weaker test-takers are more likely to take the test. Some people say they’re more likely to take the test late in the academic year, because they’re procrastinators. Some people think they take it early in their senior years so that they’ll just barely make the admissions cutoffs. But even if one of these theories could be proven (they can’t), you’d be ignoring the fact that the best test-takers are the ones who take the test often and early—and they’re likely to be in the mix at any given point. So even if there were a time of year when the weakest test-takers took the test, the strongest test-takers are just as likely to be out in full force on any given date as they are on any other.

And there are other problems with this idea as well. For instance, if it were true that a particular month reliably attracted the weakest test-takers, then word would quickly spread to all the super-competitive, obsessive test-takers, who would start taking the test that month in order to gain a supposed advantage, and end up canceling out that supposed advantage.

(Of course, there are also other, more technical reasons why this idea is doomed to failure—the sample size is too large, for one thing, and statistical norming doesn’t only take into account the people who take the test with you, for another. But don’t worry about that for now—just remember that you can’t time the test.)

Fact: It’s impossible to time the SAT for a variety of reasons
. Just take it when it fits your schedule.

We’ve just gone through several common SAT misconceptions. There are a lot more of them out there—you’re certain to run across more of them as you continue to prepare. Just remember that you should always double-check everything you hear. You don’t want to get a lower score than you deserve because you followed some bad advice.

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”
- Seneca the Younger

Imagine a hypothetical test with 100 questions of varying difficulty on various subjects
. If you needed to answer any one question correctly, you could probably find one that seemed to be the easiest for you, and get it right.

Now imagine that you
’re working on the same imaginary test, and you’ve answered 90 questions correctly, and you want to get one more of the remaining ten. The odds are good that you’ve answered all of the questions that were easiest for you. All that are left are the ones you skipped, and now you’re more likely to be stuck than you were when you just started out.

No
w imagine that you wanted to get nine of the ten remaining question, or even all ten. It would only get harder and harder, right?

My point is this: The more you improve
on any test, the harder it is to keep improving. The more you succeed with the SAT, the rarer your opportunities for future success become. The more questions you master, the closer you come to having to deal with the questions you dislike most if you want to make any progress
.

So making an elite score on the SAT (say, an overall score of 2250 or more) will require most people to prepare diligently and intelligently. Let’s talk about how to do that.

Your attitude is an important factor in preparing for the SAT.

If you want a good score,
you
have to do it. That sentence is probably the most obvious one in this book, but it’s also the most important. Every other strategy or attitude will fail you unless you take full accountability for your performance.

Many people feel that they have performance anxiety that makes them bad test-takers
. Others think the test is biased against them. These people may be absolutely correct, but that will not help them improve their scores. The only thing that will help you improve is diligent, intelligent practice.

Thinking about nonspecific problems that you cannot fix will only distract you from other weaknesses that you
can
fix. When you conquer all the problems you can pinpoint, you may be surprised to find that there are no others left to deal with.

You will fail in some way, however small or large, over the course of your
SAT preparation. Everyone does. However, failure is as impermanent as you want it to be. If you are willing to work for it, every failure is literally another opportunity to succeed in the future

R
emember to keep working until you achieve the score you want. As your progress becomes more and more difficult, remind yourself that it’s only because you’ve already come so far, and that you can go even further.

Performing on the SAT, like any other skill, becomes easier if you practice it.

You will need some amount of some kind of practice; the kind and amount depend on how well you’ve done so far, in which areas, and how well you want to do in the future.

First, at the very least, everyone should become familiar with the question types by reading this Black Book and looking through a copy of the Blue Book (the College Board Publication
The Official SAT Study Guide
). Most people should take a timed practice SAT from the Blue Book in a reasonably simulated testing environment just to see how they do. However, if you have started early enough, and if you feel comfortable with it, you can just sign up for the test and take it once in order to get a realistic idea of your performance. In either case, the point is to find out where you stand, and which areas need work.

Once you grade your test or receive your score report, you can read it to find out how you performed in which areas
. Obviously, you want to pick out the areas where you’re not satisfied and work more on them. The way you work on them is up to you. You can do one problem at a time while reading through the steps in this Black Book, you can take one section of your trouble area at a time, or you can go ahead and take the full test.

However, you need to be sure to
think about timing when you work up on a full section or a full test—you don’t necessarily need to time every practice session, but you do need to remember that on test day you’ll have a limited amount of time to answer questions.

You also
have to be responsible in your practice. If you don’t feel like you’re practicing enough, or if you’re not improving, then you need to put in more time, or go back to basics with the different sections of this book. Just keep working away at it. You get results depending on the quality of the work you put in, so if you want an elite score, remember: Work smarter
and
harder.

As you practice you will notice certain areas of the test that seem to give you particular trouble
. Take note, and work harder on those sections. There is no “I can’t do it”—the information you need is there in every question, just learn to see it and use it. Don’t be tempted to convince yourself that one question type is just too hard or flawed or has some other problem. You can do them all if you will only work on it.

When you do start to notice problem areas, see them as places where you have not yet succeeded, not places where you won’t or can’t succeed
. Learn the difference between recognizing weakness and expecting failure.

You can spend all the time in the world practicing, but if it’s mindless practice, then you won’t improve
. Practice actively and intelligently. Don’t try to look up every word in the verbal section and memorize its meaning, but if you feel like you keep seeing a word with which you are unfamiliar, go ahead and look it up and be sure you understand what it means; the odds aren’t bad that you’ll see it again somewhere.

However, if there is a word in the math section that you don’t understand, look it up every time
. This isn’t as extreme, since there are far fewer of them in math than in verbal, but you cannot answer a math question without knowing the vocabulary.

Also, feel free to come up with your own tricks while practicing, but if your tricks don’t work every time, then don’t rely on them
. When you’ve mastered all the techniques, you shouldn’t just be right all the time; you should know that you’re right, know why you’re right, and know how you’re right—every time. Remember: if you’re not getting 800s (or whatever your goal is) in practice, you probably won’t get them on the real test.

If you’re putting in all this extra effort to reach an elite score, then you must have some larger goal in mind (improving your chances at a particular school, qualifying for a scholarship, or whatever). Keep that goal in mind. Let it motivate you to continue to work even when you don’t want to. If you get your score report and you’re not satisfied, think of it as a progress report and let your goal keep you working. Repeat this entire process thoroughly in order to optimize your improvement.

At the same time, treat each test as the real thing, because it is
. Don’t take a test thinking only that it will help you know what to do better later. It will, but always shoot for your goal or else you might not do as well as you can. Strive to do your best,
always.