currently, the sat doesn’t stand for anything—it is just the name of the exam. however, that hasn’t always been the case. since its introduction in 1926, the sat has taken on more than one official name. keep reading to learn more about the history of the sat and why it’s no longer associated with those names.

the complete history of what the sat stands for

1926: the scholastic aptitude test

for the majority of its history, from the ‘20s up until the early ‘90s, the test was the “scholastic aptitude test”. so why did they scrap that?

besides sounding like a cold, robotic form of torture (which you may or may not think the test actually is), the original name of the sat didn’t sit right with a lot of people. “scholastic” means academic, and “aptitude” means innate skill; it implied that they were able to test you on how well you were bound to perform in school settings. even if you think the sat is a pretty good measure of iq—and it’s not an iq test—there’s a whole lot more that goes into academic performance than just that, including motivation, social skills, creativity, and more. your “scholastic aptitude” is much more complex than what the sat tests you on. so they changed it! great.
 

1993: the scholastic assessment tests

for years, nobody really understood the change that the college board made. in 1993, the company started giving what we now know as the sat subject tests (initially called the “sat ii: subject tests”). the original sat was renamed the “sat i: reasoning test”, and altogether they became the scholastic assessment tests.

it made sense that they took out the “aptitude” from the original name, since that’s what was causing the problem, but officially the original test was now called a “reasoning test,” which sounds more like an iq test than it does a “scholastic assessment”. and the individual test wasn’t called the “scholastic assessment test i”. that long form was only applied to the tests collectively. so what did sat stand for, then?

years later, the college board finally cleared it up. sat didn’t stand for anything at all.
 

1997 to now: sat is just an initialism

it’s pretty weird to think that an abbreviation could stand for nothing at all, but that’s what the college board says about the sat. the point of it is pretty simple: whatever words they used in the name (like “aptitude”), were automatically a possible target for critics to aim at. by taking away the words, they kept the brand recognition of the letters “sat” but got rid of any other associations.

it’s pretty similar to how kfc took the words out of their logo to avoid having “fried” give them an unhealthy image. but that has to make you wonder: who do they think they fooled?
personally, i think that’s not possible. it’s clearly an abbreviation when it’s all caps like that…. so maybe we should use lowercase and start calling it “the sat”, rather than spelling out the letters when we say it.

really speaking, sat is almost like a brand. the new coke, the new ford mustang. the fact that it once actually stood for something has become a piece of trivia. you’re better off knowing what the test is testing than what it actually stands for. now crack open the new official guide and learn something that is actually useful.

the post what does sat stand for? the full history appeared first on magoosh blog | high school.

if you’re reading this post, chances are you have at least three months until you take the sat. this is great news! three months is a perfect amount of time to spend prepping for the sat: you have just enough time to become an expert on the test and keep your grades up if you manage your time well.

the downside of having a lot of time to study is that it can be tough to stay consistently focused on your sat prep. the best way to stay on track is with a schedule, and since you’re here, i think we can safely say that you have exactly what you need to ace the test! that is, you will have everything you need once you get acquainted with the study materials. that’s where we come in!

the sat isn’t just about taking a lot of practice tests; you’ll need to learn lots of fundamentals, from math to reading. with that in mind, we’ve devised an sat study schedule that will help you not only become a better test taker, but transform you into someone who’s far more skilled at reading and math. after all, the new test is designed to measure how much high school math you remember and how well you can handle a wealth of ideas packed into a 700-word passage.

ready to study? let’s get started!

(oops, you procrastinated, you say? never fear, we have a one–month sat study schedule too!)

table of contents

• how this study plan is organized
• materials and resources
• the sat three month study schedule
  • week 1
  • week 2
  • week 3
  • week 4
  • week 5
  • week 6
  • week 7
  • week 8
  • week 9
  • week 10
  • week 11
  • week 12

how this sat study plan is organized

this plan is broken up on a weekly basis. the intention is not for you to knock everything out in one sitting. rather, you should spread the prep out over the week, studying in 45- to 90-minute chunks. some weeks are lighter than others, but as the test approaches, we’ve ramped up the study sessions. in the beginning, you might only be spending 4-5 hours per week on the study schedule; as the test nears you might be spending more like 8 hours per week.

you should not feel that you always have to study math and verbal separately. in fact, it is advantageous to make sure that some study sessions contains a mixture of the two, since it is good to get in the habit of having your brain switch back and forth between math and verbal, the way it will on the real test. so while the plan breaks up math and verbal into separate sections, this is just to help you keep your schedule organized.

the sat study plan is broken up between “review” and “practice.” don’t feel your study sessions should be broken up this way either. you’ll want to do a little review and then a little practice. that practice doesn’t always have to relate directly to what you’ve just reviewed — that’s why we’ve assigned magoosh prep questions at random. otherwise, you’ll always be too comfortable because you know which concept each question is testing (i.e., the concept you’ve just drilled). with random questions, you’ll be ready for whatever the test throws at you.

magoosh has many, many lesson videos…so not all of them were included. what we’re trying to do is to include math that is more on the advanced side, and (of course) aligned with what the sat is testing. the videos we didn’t include were the ones that tested more basic concepts (roots, integer properties, percents and ratios, etc.). these concepts will definitely be tested. in fact, they’ll be all over the math section. so if you need a refresher or your math is a little shaky, weave these basic lessons into the study schedule. to make sure your fundamentals are strong from the get go, you’ll want to cover these videos in the first couple of weeks.

one last thing: if you can’t finish everything in the first week, don’t despair. you can move on to the following week without having to complete all the work. i’ve arranged the weeks so that they focus on one area. i try to give you as much practice as i think is helpful in a one-week period. falling a bit short won’t hurt you. in fact, you can always revisit previous weeks later on — a good way of reviewing.

materials & resources

magoosh sat prep

that’s us! our sat prep includes lessons and questions that you will work through, thereby increasing your sat efficiency.

you can also study with us on your phone. our sat test prep app makes studying on the go easy for both iphone and android users.

magoosh high school blog

an invaluable (and free!) resource. if you want extra help on a section or general advice, you can search for posts relating to the sat. this section of the blog is completely dedicated to up-to-date information on the sat.

**the official sat study guide (2020 edition) – og, or official guide, will be the shorthand used in this schedule

isbn-13: 978-1457304309
isbn-10: 1457304309
this is the sat bible–questions created by the writers of the test (the college board). you’ll have plenty of practice tests and content to give you a sense of the actual difficulty and complexity of the test (it’s more difficult than the content found in most other books). find it on amazon or check out the kindle version.

important note: you may use other editions of the official guide, just make sure the title of the chapter matches the instructions given.

here is a direct link to the free practice tests if you don’t want to use the book. you can print the pdf’s.

we also have official sat study guide video explanations to the college board questions. check them out!

magoosh sat ebook: complete guide to the sat (free download)

an overview of the sat with many helpful examples, the free complete guide to the sat ebook is a great resource for understanding how the test is designed, and the fundamentals you’ll need to know to answer questions.

official sat practice by college board + khan academy

this is a free resource offered in conjunction with the college board, which is the company that designs the sat. perhaps the best part of the college board/khan academy partnership is that it brings us practice materials that are completely free. these free materials include the same practice tests offered in the official sat study guide. really, the only new things you are paying for when you purchase the the official sat study guide are the explanations that come in the back of the book (which aren’t that great anyhow).

supplemental reading

as we mentioned, doing well on the sat isn’t just about cracking open an sat prep book and practicing. you’ll also want to do a lot of extra reading. as part of your sat study plan, you should expose yourself to the types of ideas and syntax that might appear in an sat article.

the following articles come from the new yorker and the new york times. the articles below give you a taste for the length and tone of the pieces you should be reading. it is best to stick with the science & tech and business sections of the new yorker since they best mirror the kinds of passages that you’ll see on the test.

for the first few weeks of the 3 month sat study schedule, we’ve provided you with enough reading. but after that, you’ll have to hunt the passages down yourself. if you have access to them, read articles in reputable newspapers (online is fine), if you have access to them. the journal directories linked below also have a variety of open-source articles you can use as study tools.

open source directories and journals

• humanities: continent
• education & society: journal of educational technology & society

specific articles

• science: ibm scientists find new way to shrink transistors
• science: crows may learn lessons from death
• science: testing neurons with ultrasound
• business: college rankings fail to measure the influence of the institution

one other resource is the electric typewriter. this website has pooled excellent writing from many sources (including the two above) and broken them down into easy to navigate categories. if you are struggling to find reading from the new yorker or the new york times, i highly recommend this website. here are some articles that might be interesting:

• bad education
• creation myth
• a history of violence: edge master class 2011

when you read these articles, you should be in a quiet place, and you shouldn’t just skim while doing this practice (in contrast, you do want to skim when you read during the actual sat, which is a technique you’ll learn more about in our lessons). instead, force yourself to focus, read, and then come up with a quick mental summary of each piece, something along the lines of:

the article talks about the power of ancient tsunamis to dramatically alter the landscape but that scientists can’t determine if these big waves have global implications, the way volcanos or global warming does.

if you struggle to come up with a mental summary, write or type a quick one using this template:

the article talks about ____________, and specifically how ___________________ a question or dilemma raised in this article is ___________________. the author seems to believe that ___________________.

your weekly three month sat study schedule

a quick note: to make this plan as easy as possible to navigate, we have hidden the content of each day, so that you can see it when you’re ready for it. just click on a given day to see the corresponding tasks and click the heading again to hide them when you’re done!

week 1

week 2

week 3

week 4

week 5

up until now, you’ve cut your teeth on practice content and haven’t touched any college board stuff in this sat study plan. there simply isn’t that much content from the college board, so you want to use it wisely.

the hope is you’ve gotten yourself up to the level where you are ready for the stuff the college board is going to throw at you on test day. there is only one way to find out!

week 6

week 7

week 8

if you didn’t have time to review all of your questions from your last practice test, use today to catch up!

no supplemental reading

week 9

week 10

week 11

week 12

conclusion

congratulations, you made it!

now it’s time for a well deserved break…but don’t forget to come back here when you get your scores, and let us know how all your hard work paid off!

all magoosh sat prep plans are digital sat ready! start studying today.

the post three month sat study schedule appeared first on magoosh blog | high school.

if you’re taking the sat, you obviously want the highest score you can get in the time you have available. you’re going to wow all those colleges with scores that represent your very best effort. but what if the sat is in a month and you haven’t really started studying? don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!

unless it’s summer right now, you will have to balance sat prep with schoolwork, and that’s not easy to do. but look at it this way: in four weeks, you’re going to make a significant difference in the strength of your college application. are there many other ways you can spend four weeks that will make such a positive impact on your admissions chances? probably not.

the sat is about taking practice tests to hone your performance as well as learning stress strategies and lots of fundamentals, from math to reading. with that in mind, we’ve devised an sat study schedule that will help you not only become a better test taker, but also develop strong skills in reading, english (termed “writing” on the sat) and math.

table of contents

• how this study schedule is organized
• materials and resources
• the sat one month study schedule
  • week 1
  • week 2
  • week 3
  • week 4

how this study schedule is organized

this schedule is broken up in sections, guiding you through sat prep on a near-daily basis. the intention is not for you to knock everything out in one sitting. rather, you should spread the prep out over the week, studying in 20- to 90-minute chunks (practice test days will take longer).

you should not feel that you always have to study math and verbal separately. while the study schedule breaks up math and verbal into separate sections, this is for convenience’s sake so that it is easier for you to navigate. in fact, you should make sure that some study sessions contain a mixture of the two. it’s good to get in the habit of having your brain switch back and forth between math and verbal, the way it will have to operate on the real test.

the plan is also broken up between “review” and “practice”. again, you’ll want to do a little of both. that practice doesn’t always have to relate directly to what you’ve just reviewed (that’s why we’ve assigned you magoosh prep questions without many filters by subtopic). this way, you’ll be ready for the random assortment of questions the test throws at you. for example, you might spend one day reviewing geometry lessons, but your practice questions will pull from multiple areas of math.

one last thing: if you can’t finish everything in the first week, don’t despair. you can move on to the following week without having completed all the work. do as much as you can for a given day. if you have limited time, don’t try to finish all of one task. move on to another assignment for the day.

for instance, if the day calls for 25 math questions and 20 reading questions, do half of both. basically, we’re providing you materials for the maximum amount of practice that can be helpful in a one-week period – but doing less will still help you! falling a bit short won’t hurt you. in fact, you can always revisit previous weeks later on — that’s a good way of reviewing.

materials & resources

magoosh sat prep

that’s us! our sat prep includes lessons and questions that you will work through, thereby increasing your sat efficiency.

you can also study with us on your phone. our sat test prep app makes studying on the go easy for both iphone and android users.

magoosh high school blog

an invaluable (and free!) resource. if you want extra help on a section or general advice, you can search for posts relating to the sat. this section of the blog is completely dedicated to up-to-date information on the sat.

*the official sat study guide (2020 edition) – og, or official guide, will be the shorthand used in this schedule

isbn-13: 978-1457304309
isbn-10: 1457304309
this is the sat bible–questions created by the writers of the test (the college board). you’ll have plenty of practice tests and content to give you a sense of the actual difficulty and complexity of the test (it’s more difficult than the content found in the other books). find the 2020 version on amazon or check out the kindle version.

important note: you may use other editions of the official guide, just make sure the title of the chapter matches the instructions given.

we also have official sat study guide video explanations to the college board questions. check them out!

magoosh sat ebook: complete guide to the sat (free download)

an overview of the sat with many helpful examples, the free complete guide to the sat ebook is a great resource for understanding how the test is designed, and the fundamentals you’ll need to know to answer questions.

official sat practice by college board + khan academy

this is a free resource offered in conjunction with the college board, which is the company that designs the sat. perhaps the best part of the college board/khan academy partnership is that it brings us practice materials that are completely free. these free materials include the same practice tests offered in the official sat study guide. the official guide does have lots of practice material offered in the first half of the book, which will be used in the study schedule. so make sure you get that book, too.

here is a direct link to the free practice tests. you can either download pdf’s or take them online through khan academy. both options are contained in the link.

supplemental reading

as mentioned, doing well on the sat isn’t just about cracking open an sat prep book and practicing. you’ll also want to do extra reading. as part of your sat study plan, you should expose yourself to the types of ideas and syntax that might appear in an sat article.

the following articles come from the new yorker and the new york times. the articles below give you a taste for the length and tone of the pieces you should be reading. it is best to stick with the science & tech and business sections of the new yorker since they best mirror the kinds of passages that you’ll see on the test.

for the first few weeks, we’ve provided you with enough reading. after that, you’ll have to hunt the passages down yourself. (just google “new york times business”, for instance, to get you to that section.)

the new yorker

• science & tech: stone’s throw
• business: is china moving fast enough to save the african elephant?

the new york times

• science: ibm scientists find new way to shrink transistors
• science: crows may learn lessons from death
• science: testing neurons with ultrasound
• business: college rankings fail to measure the influence of the institution

one other resource is the electric typewriter. this website has pooled excellent writing from many sources (including the two above) and broken them down into easy to navigate categories. if you are struggling to find reading from the new yorker or the new york times, i highly recommend this website. here are some articles that might be interesting:

• bad education
• creation myth
• a history of violence: edge master class 2011

when you read these articles, you should be in a quiet place. you shouldn’t just be skimming to finish the articles because you won’t improve that way. instead, force yourself (yes, it won’t be easy at first) to come up with a quick mental summary of each piece.

your summary might say something like:
the article talks about the power of ancient tsunamis to dramatically alter the landscape and that scientists can’t determine if these big waves have global implications the way volcanos or global warming does.

if you struggle to come up with a mental summary, write or type a quick one the way i just did.

your reading list is not complete yet! the pre-20^th century passages, those typically taken from british novelists and essayists long dead, will be an unavoidable fixture of the sat reading section. at least one of the passages will force you to grapple with english as it was written over 100 years ago. like most things, you need exposure and practice to improve.

since it is difficult to read this stuff even when it is assigned reading at school, i’ve chosen entertaining novels, or at least as entertaining as pre-20^th literature could be. i recommend spending the next month reading one of these works. frankenstein is relatively short, so it might make for the best reading if you don’t mind gothic horror.

mary shelley

• frankenstein

edgar allan poe

• the fall of the house of usher
• the masque of the red death
• murders in the rue morgue
• the gold-bug

additional works

• dracula, by bram stoker
• the picture of dorian gray, by oscar wilde
• pride and prejudice, by jane austen

the sat one month study schedule

a quick note: to make this plan as easy as possible to navigate, we have hidden the content of each day, so that you can see it when you’re ready for it. just click on a given day to see the corresponding tasks and click the heading again to hide them when you’re done!

week 1

week 2

week 3

week 4

questions? comments? leave them below and we’ll respond as soon as possible.

all magoosh sat prep plans are digital sat ready! start studying today.

the post how to study for the sat: your one month study plan appeared first on magoosh blog | high school.

right?

so here’s a relatively productive way (*shudder*) to run through all your worst nightmares…well, your worst nightmares for your sat, as least. we’re not going to delve into the dreams this gives you.

(by the way, i say “productive” because the goal here is to realize that you want to avoid the things below, when possible. if you can avoid it, and you don’t, then don’t come crying to me about it.)
 

1. being late

when i took my first sat, i got a speeding ticket on the way there. i guess you could say i was lucky for a) having a driver’s license and b) being allowed to borrow my mom’s minivan, and i would have to say yes, i was (even though a minivan isn’t exactly the sexiest thing to drive)—but i was also dumb. the speeding ticket wasn’t from bad luck; it was from carelessness. i left home too late, and i realized just as i was leaving that i might not make it in time. and if you show up late? tough luck: you’re not allowed in to take the test.

they make it pretty hard to show up that late, though. usually, testing will start a solid 15-30 minutes after the time you’re told it will. but don’t play with fire. show up a bit early so you can chat with friends and relax.
 

2. being accused of cheating

there is almost nothing worse that can happen. if the person overseeing your test thinks you’re cheating, you’re out of the building—that’s that. your test is cancelled, your time is wasted, and if they actually have proof that you were trying to break their confidentiality agreement, you could even be going to court.

keep your eyes on your test, don’t reach into your bag during a section, don’t pull a piece of paper out of your pocket, and, simply put, don’t do anything that seems suspicious.
 

3. getting sick

pop quiz!

q: what’s worse than pop quizzes?

a: 4-hour tests.
 

q: what’s worse than a 4-hour test?

a: throwing up on your test 3 hours into it.

there’s not much to learn here other than to try to stay well-rested, well-fed, and in good spirits in the week before your sat. if you get sick when worn down, you get much sicker than you do when in top shape.
 

4. your phone ringing

you know how i said there was “almost nothing worse” than getting accused of cheating? well, this one can be potentially worse. technically, no phones are allowed in the room during the sat. in practice, this usually just means it has to be in your bag, turned off, under the desk.

but if your phone does go off, and if they suspect anything fishy, you not only get kicked out and have your scores cancelled, but also get your phone confiscated so they can search it for damning evidence. nine times out of ten, a proctor wouldn’t go that far, but there’s no point in taking the chance.
 

5. bubbling answers wrong

one minute left! you’re working on the last question in the section. it’s hard, but you’re about to take your best guess, and as you bubble it, you realize you’ve made a huge mistake. it should be question 20, and you’re about to bubble number 19. there’s one missing because you skipped question 5 and didn’t fill in a guess.

…aaaand time’s up. too late.

this is the saddest way for a test to go wrong. you put in all the time, all the effort, and you answer questions correctly, but you get no credit for it.

the easiest way to avoid it? bubble in an answer to every question, even if you’re not certain. you get punished for wrong answers, but it evens out with those occasional lucky guesses.
 

runners up

just in case all the above didn’t quite do it for you, there are plenty of other things that can cause little problems on test day. these are mostly pretty easy to solve, though:

• being unprepared
• not having practiced
• being hungry
• the guy next to you tapping his foot
• cockroaches

…we agreed that this post was supposed to give you nightmares, right?

the post the 5 worst things that can happen during your sat appeared first on magoosh blog | high school.

the biggest plus is that it gives you room to have a bad day. everybody knows or has heard about that guy in their grade who fell asleep during his chem final and flunked. what if he’d been allowed to take the final twice, and only the higher score counted? that’s what the sat is like: even the worst experience on test-day is alright, because you can try again, and that worse score will almost never count against you.

besides that, on average, students’ scores go up when they take the sat for a second time.

so with that in mind, if you’re reconsidering taking the sat, there are probably two scenarios:
 

you’re in junior year, and your score seems high enough

you know you could take the test again, sure, but do you have to? alright, so if you’ve already scored a 2200 – 2400, then there’s not really much point in taking the test again. schools will be impressed (or at least satisfied) and that’s that. but that’s only a very, very small percentage of people. usually, your “good” scores could be a little bit better. and if there’s room for improvement, there’s good enough reason to retake the test. remember that you’re very likely going to see a higher score the second time—especially if you study for it. and the summer before senior year is the perfect time to do a bit of sat prep.

also, if you already know your target and reach schools, that helps add context. if your sat score isn’t as high as the average score at your reach schools (or is just about equal to that average), then it’s worth taking the test again, clearly. that’s how you get into your first choice school—or part of how, at least.
 

you’re in senior year, and your score seems too low

if you’ve already taken the test three or more times, stop there—if you have that many tests under your belt, i can bet pretty safely that you did some serious prep, too. and if, after all that prep and all those tests, you’re still not where you want to be, but you know deadlines are coming on fast, it’s probably time to focus on the other parts of your application. remember that sat scores are just a part of the larger package. some schools don’t even care that much about sat scores.

but if you’ve only taken the test once or twice, and you have one more shot at a higher score, then yes—go for it: especially if you are under the average test scores of your targets schools. be sure to study the test this time, if you haven’t already (or even if you have). i’d recommend starting with our posts, guide to retaking the sat and how to study for an sat retake.

after all, a few weeks or months of getting familiar with the question types, strategies, and wrong answer types of the sat can translate into a very real score increase—try doing that to your cumulative gpa in such a short time! and keep in mind that most schools only look at your highest score on each section of the test across all of your test dates, so even if you just see an increase in one section, that’s still worth it.

the post should i retake the sat? appeared first on magoosh blog | high school.

these are the top ten most common problems i’ve seen in my sat students in the past. learn from their mistakes!

1. relying on a calculator

don’t freak out: yes, you’ll have a calculator during the test. so why am i telling to you push it to the side? if you don’t know what you’re trying to arrive at, the calculator is just a really expensive brick. don’t start punching in numbers until you know exactly what you want, and keep in mind that the sat doesn’t require a calculator. sure, you’ll want to use it a couple of times—and it’s a really bad idea not to bring one—but all of the math on the test is doable by pen and paper within a few minutes. if you know what you’re looking for, that is. don’t get stuck staring at your calculator before you understand what to do with it. use your pencil first, then the calculator if you need it and not before that.

2. looking up every new word

you need to learn that new vocabulary, right? so you might feel that when you’re doing a sentence completion question, you should look up all the words.

well, you’d be right to do that, but not until you finish practicing. if you’re doing a practice verbal section, answer all of the questions, then come back to the tough words (it’s a good idea to underline them) and look them up. you won’t have a dictionary with you on test day, so you need to learn more than just definitions; you need to learn how to deal with those words you don’t know. the best way to get better at that is to try answering questions without looking words up.

3. your formula cheat sheet

this is pretty similar to looking up words as you work. yes, you want to know formulas on test day, but you should be learning them outside your sat practice, rather than stopping and looking up a formula when you’re stuck on a question. you won’t have a cheat sheet on test day, so you need to learn how to get on without it.

4. ignoring your wrong answers

this is by far one of the most common and most disastrous mistakes you can make. when you’re trying to learn how not to make a mistake, ignoring the ones you do make is like baking a cake and then never tasting it. how will you know what to do next time if you don’t find out what was good or bad the first time?

5. skipping the essay

not many students really enjoy writing the essay. it’s really, really hard to write a good essay in 25 minutes time, and not once in the process do you get the payoff of “i know i got that one right” that you do in the other sections. but not liking it doesn’t mean you can skip it! the more practice essays you write, the better you’ll be able to pace yourself and come up with good examples on test day. you’ll also get a better idea of the endurance you need for a full-length test if you do practice tests with the essays.

6. music with lyrics

alright, so i love studying with music, myself, and i definitely do recommend listening to something while you study. it can help you shut out the outside world, for one, and can just make the whole experience a bit more fun and relaxing. and if you’re enjoying your practice at all, you’re more likely to sit down and do it, which is key.

that said, don’t listen to music with words. the sat demands the full attention of your brain’s language centers. any lyrics you hear and understand are going to mess you up. it’s already hard enough to stay focused on many of the sat’s reading comprehension passages. you don’t need pharrell telling you how happy he is in the background.

7. tv

music with words may be a bad idea, but tv is much worse. the entire point of most tv shows is to get you to pay attention to what they’re saying. and clearly, i don’t just mean the stuff you watch on an actual tv. netflix, hulu, it’s all the same deal: don’t turn it on. you can’t focus on sat practice the same way you’ll have to on test-day if there’s a zombie apocalypse in the background.

8. pretty much anything on your phone

i know, i know—there goes everything fun. texting, instagram, snapchat, or whatever else is going to break your concentration, and if the sat is a test of anything it’s how well you can stay focused and engaged. marathon-length stretches of focus take practice!

9. your bedroom

it’s 10:30 p.m. and you’re about to sit down and do a bit of sat prep before bed. so you huddle up in bed with the blue book and…fall asleep.

or maybe you don’t. maybe you stay awake. but i’d bet you that about ten minutes after you start, you’ll get distracted. for many of us, our bedrooms are where we spend a lot of time: watching tv, reading, playing games, playing music, drawing or anything else relaxing. if you’ve got nothing else in your bedroom other than your desk to do work at, then alright, study there. but if you might get distracted, it’s not the best place to prepare. go somewhere new, somewhere that will keep you focused and engaged.

10. forgetting the clock

granted, you should absolutely be doing some sat practice without a clock—if you don’t feel comfortable with the topics that the sat tests, there’s no point in stressing about a clock, too. you need to first be sure that you have the basics down, then start using the clock. but that’s if you’ve got months and months to study and really need to brush up a lot on fundamentals.

for the most of us, sat prep will be shorter-term, and the material on the test is relatively familiar. after all, it is supposed to align with what you learn in school. that means starting the clock now. by test day, you should know exactly how far into a section you want to be at five, ten, fifteen, and twenty minutes.

studying right

making your sat prep time as effective as possible is the only way you’ll be able to balance it with schoolwork, extracurriculars, and a social life. every time you sit down to study, make sure you’re doing it right so you don’t have to spend more time on it then necessary to get the best score you can.

the post 10 things that are ruining your sat practice appeared first on magoosh blog | high school.

a quick anecdote

first, i should mention that this story is a bit tweaked for dramatic effect (read: not completely true), but the main point of the story is untainted by the details i’m adding.

a few years ago, i was working with class of around ten sat students through a difficult reading comprehension passage and its questions. one of the students, david, was a normally enthusiastic high-scorer, the kind of guy who finishes all the practice material first then seems to enjoy helping his friends get through tough spots. at least, that was definitely true about his attitude toward the math and writing sections of the test.

but rather than tear into the passage and questions we were doing, david pulled out a blank piece of paper and started doing origami. when i asked him why, he said: “reading comp is subjective. and i’ll memorize the vocabulary words at home.”

a part of me was angry, of course. it was cheeky and a bit arrogant. but i also got it. sat critical reading questions don’t jump out as being something you need practice with—not nearly as much so as the math or writing ones do. when you get a math question wrong, after you look at the solution you might think, “ohh. right. next time, i’ll do that.” when you get a reading comprehension question wrong, you might look at it twice and think “bull.”

but once you’ve spent enough time with the test, it becomes clear these answers aren’t subjective; they’re based on the text, and they follow strict rules.

and what about sentence completions? it’s true that your vocabulary is one of the most important parts, but the test is more than that. it’s also about strategy, understanding what the test-maker wants and how to get there.

it takes practice to really understand how these questions are written and what they ask of you, (as it does for any section of the sat). vocabulary flashcards alone aren’t enough! you’ll need a three-pronged attack to hit the best sat critical reading score that you can:

1) learning skills and strategies

what you basically want to learn is a) what makes wrong answers wrong and b) what makes right answers right. okay, so that doesn’t mean a whole lot in and of itself. in order to get what i mean, you’ll need to do a little bit more reading.

once you do start to see the patterns, what the sat makers want from you, you’ll start to see your scores go up.

but that means more than just reading the blog posts linked above. learning the test means both getting those lessons—whether that’s via a teacher, a book, a blog, or an online resource like magoosh—and doing practice alone. if you do nothing else to prepare for sat critical reading, you should still do this.

2) reading, reading, and more reading

there’s no way around it: sat critical reading is largely a test of how comfortable you are with difficult texts. this isn’t just literacy, and it’s not just vocab; it’s having so much experience with the written word that you can understand the author’s exact intentions. the way people write isn’t really how they speak. thoughts are strung together a bit differently and expressed with structures or phrases that might sound too stiff or formal for a conversation.

diving into that style of english—written english—pays off. i’m not talking about dr. seuss, here, but i’m also not talking about reading the constitution or your biology textbook. i mean that you should be reading articles from the new york times, say, or harper’s. or hey, lighten it up a bit and spend your time on mcsweeney’s. whatever it is, make sure that it’s advanced enough that you sometimes have to reread a paragraph to really get it and that you don’t know every word on every page. challenge yourself.

3) memorizing vocabulary

gung-ho sat students often focus too much on vocabulary. but at the same time, it would be a huge mistake not to study it at all. after all, you’re going to see 19 sentence completion questions out of the total 67 questions in critical reading sections. those add up to a pretty hefty chunk of your overall cr score, nearly 30%. and there will be a few vocab questions in the passage-based questions, too.

and as you do build your vocabulary, soaking up words like “lugubrious,” “laconic,” and “lucre” (the l section seems to be disproportionately large in my mental dictionary), make sure that you’re actually retaining what you learn. review, and review often. use mnemonics. and use those new words in your writing, too. not only will that help bump up your essay score, but it will also make those words stick.

the moral of the story

it wasn’t that same day, but after i talked with david about the above—especially trying to see how reading comprehension questions are structured and how to beat them—there was a clear change in his attitude. i can’t say it was definitely because of anything i said, although i like to think so. instead, i imagine it was because once he got a little bit more exposure to the test, his interest in the reading section snowballed.

with the right mix of experience and training, the critical reading section, like the other sat sections, becomes just another type of puzzle waiting to be solved.

and don’t forget to take a look at the other posts in this series:

• how to study sat writing
• how to study sat idioms
• how to study sat math

the post how to study sat critical reading appeared first on magoosh blog | high school.

and even if you’re not in any ap classes, this post might still apply to you; after all, how close together are your finals and the june sat? whether it’s ap tests or other exams, having the biggest test of the year in a class be so close to the sat is brutal.

studying for both—and yes, you’ve got to study for the sat—is a balancing act, one you do for weeks (or even months). keeping from toppling over takes skill.

know your goal

the biggest problem, obviously, is time. how much of your life are you going to devote to these tests? once you’re done with class, you still probably have a team, a club, a part-time job, or some other extra-curricular that’s going to eat up time. maybe you have two or three. and you have to sleep, of course. what about seeing friends, reading a book, doing what you enjoy? ideally, you’d have time for that too, but i’ll be honest; for a few weeks, you might not. most people find that it boils down to three options—grades, sleep, or fun—and you can only pick two.

that’s a bit depressing, but don’t give up on it here. there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. the time leading up to these tests will go by a lot faster than you think. spending a few weeks with complete focus on academic goals (and being well-rested enough to remember what you study) isn’t going to kill you, and the reward is huge. these test scores affect your next few years, and the results can be pretty awesome.

take, for example, a friend of mine: let’s call her meghan. meghan did really well on all of her ap tests, and when she started college, she was given course credits for those tests. so in her junior year of college, she took a semester off—she had enough credit that she didn’t need to take any classes for a whole semester, and she was still able to graduate on time. in that semester and the summer leading up to it, she moved to prague for 9 months, got a job teaching english, and basically lived it up euro-style. then, when it was time to come back, she moved back home and started up classes again. without the ap credits, none of that would’ve been possible.

did i mention that high sat scores and a solid gpa helped to lock down scholarship money and get her into her first choice school? there’s that, too.

if you’ve heard this before, it’s for good reason: it’s worth repeating. keep your eye on the prize. put your social life, your leisure time, aside for now. you’ll have a chance to come back to it later.

organize your time

devotion only gets you so far. what about the practical advice? the most important thing you can do, the one indispensable piece of the puzzle, is creating a study schedule for yourself. it’s much, much easier to just do what’s next on the list than it is to sit down and decide where to start, especially when you’ve got so much on your plate.

give yourself something to do every day, however small it may be. know how much time you want to spend on each subject. include breaks in the schedule, too, so you know exactly when you can step back from your book or computer.

and, of course, each day in your schedule should have a couple of themes, focal points. don’t expect to study for 5 different tests every day. but that’s not the real danger. the common mistake is exactly the opposite…

mix your studies

organizing doesn’t mean spending 3 hours studying only chemistry on tuesday then 4 hours doing sat math on wednesday. break up your time like that and you’re basically throwing some of your energy out of the window. if you want to really retain what you learn, you need to vary the topics a bit. spend 30-45 minutes on one subject, then move on to another for an hour, and a third for an hour after that. two or three subjects every day is a solid goal.

repeat the material

similar to breaking the material up and studying different subjects, repeating the same material across several days makes it much more memorable. if you really want to learn, for example, how to write a good sat essay, one of the best ways is to read example essays a few times, write more than one yourself, and come back to edit each one you’ve written a couple of times over. each session you spend preparing for the essay might be only 30 minutes long, but in sum, they’ll add up to a much greater impact than you’d get by just hammering away on practice essays for hours on end on one miserable day.

quiz yourself often

repeating material isn’t just limited to the time you spend in your bedroom, kitchen, school library, tree house, or wherever it is you study. spending just a minute or two mentally quizzing yourself, repeating information you’ve studied, really cements it. when you’re brushing your teeth, review the measurements of special triangles. while you’re in the shower, come up with as many sat words that start with “c” as you can (cathartic, catatonic, candor, cede, creedence,…).

every minute you spend helps; it doesn’t have to be time that you scheduled for studying, specifically. keep your mind in the right place, and you’ll make massive progress.

and again, remember that it’s not forever! the tests will pass, and life will go on. just not quite yet.

the post how to study for both the sat and your ap tests appeared first on magoosh blog | high school.

that was how i got my start teaching, and i’ve known plenty others like me. personally, i thought that wasn’t such a bad thing. i was happy to dive in headfirst, to find out right away what it means to be at the front of the room. i knew i had something important to say, and i felt like i could connect with my students. after all, i was only a few years past the sat myself. but i did, like i know so many teachers do, feel a bit lost sometimes. teaching isn’t an easy job, not if you’re invested in it. and while i won’t go so far as to say teaching the sat is more difficult than teaching traditional school subjects, it’s absolutely true that it’s a unique thing to teach.

know why you’re there

everybody knows that teachers are there to “make a difference” and “have an impact,” right? it’s trite, but it’s true. as an sat teacher, you’re in a remarkable position. you can improve the scores of dozens (or hundreds!) of students each year. and we’re talking about tangible results, here. the gap between a 1500 and a 1700 might be the difference between acceptance into a target school or a reach school. yes, i realize that not every student makes such clear progress, and i know not every teacher is taking on so many students. but even so, this is a special kind of teaching, one that opens the door to some very real job satisfaction: getting to know students, seeing them improve, then hearing about their test results is fantastic.

make sure your students know why they’re there

how many of your students are studying with you by choice? it would be nice if every student cared enough about the test to sign up for lessons and devote their full attention to what you have to say, but that’s not always how it works, is it? if you want your students to listen, you have to show them why they should care beyond just doing what they’re told. don’t get me wrong—clearly, there are plenty of students out there who do understand the importance of improving their sat scores and will share your enthusiasm, but you can’t sit back and expect that of everybody. instead, it’s up to you to get them motivated

• keep putting it in context. never let students forget that the prep they do now opens doors. this isn’t just homework for the sake of homework, and there’s no such thing as pointless math on the sat; all the material and practice you go through has a clear, concrete goal attached to it. there’s a carrot dangling on the end of the stick—an awesome carrot.
• show you’re invested. the more students feels like you care about their sat scores, the more they’ll feel like they should care about those scores. tell them that you care, then prove it. know how much homework they’ve done. know how they performed on all of their practice tests. know their goal scores and their reach schools. keep copious notes on each student you have and review them as often as you need to.
• show them that they can beat the test. practically speaking, this is different for every student depending on personal strengths and weaknesses, but one way to do it early on is to teach a test strategy (e.g. using the answer choices to your advantage) and have students work through a set of challenging questions entirely with that strategy. getting a right answer because of a new skill is a fantastic motivator to learn more new skills.

know what makes good material

if you were just hired by one of the big name prep companies, then you’re going to be stuck with their material, for better or worse. but even then, that doesn’t mean you should be indiscriminately using everything in the book. in pretty much every book other than the official guide, there will be poorly written questions. recognizing them and avoiding them is key if you don’t want to mislead your students on the feel of the test or, worse, get stuck trying to explain a question that would never show up on the test and is entirely debatable. the worst offenders have entire pages of material you may need to skip in order to keep your lessons on track, helpful, and accurate.

and if you’re teaching privately or otherwise have the liberty of choosing your own material, that’s all the more reason to know which sat books are best and why they’re the best. a seasoned teacher or tutor will have an arsenal of resources to recommend depending on what’s needed. the book that has the best full-length tests isn’t going to be the same book as the one with the best math explanations or the best vocabulary list.

and what about online help? if you’re restricting yourself to paper-and-ink resources in the information age, you’re doing yourself and your students a major disservice.

some musts (and they’re all free!):

• college confidential
• the four official sats available online
• magoosh’s blog and our vocabulary flashcards
• the pwn the sat blog
• khan academy

and there’s plenty more out there. be voracious. buy, read, use, and scrutinize everything you can, with blue book questions as your yardstick.

guide, don’t lead

it doesn’t matter whether you’re teaching or tutoring; students learn best when they come to conclusions themselves. this isn’t just about the sat, clearly, but it’s always important to keep in mind. keep your students talking and thinking in any way you can. never let a lesson become a one-way lecture or you risk losing the interest of everybody in the room besides yourself. dialogue is crucial. (and that means more than just asking yes/no questions!)

and when you are the center of attention, you have to be the most interesting, engaging thing in the room. tell jokes. speak with your hands. smack your hands on tables, jump up and down, laugh out loud, and get excited. the more energy you have, the better, especially if you’re a classroom teacher.

teach everything

as an sat teacher, you tackle some of the trickiest math, grammar, and reading comprehension questions that a high-school student will ever face, and then you need to be able to relay it all in lucid, comprehensive explanations.

most people will have a favorite part of the test, but bear in mind that you need to adapt to the student’s needs. that might mean spending extra time on your own becoming even better versed in whatever part of the test you least like. a comfort zone is not a good thing. the best sat teachers are experts on—and enthusiastic about—every part of the test.

never settle

there’s so much more to say, but we’re going to keep this as general as possible to keep it short. to teach the sat well, remember that you will always have room for improvement. actively learn from your lessons. constantly question your techniques and materials, try new things, and talk with others in the same boat to learn from their experiences, too.

and don’t stop reading here: keep exploring!

the post how to teach the sat appeared first on magoosh blog | high school.

if english isn’t your first language, then you have an extra challenge when taking the sat. the test is hard enough for native speakers. coming from a different language, it might seem impossible.

applying to u.s. colleges and aiming to study in america is ambitious in the first place, so if you’re reading this at all, i applaud you. you need serious commitment to do this, and that’s fantastic. so here’s the good news: your sat score is manageable. this will not be as difficult as it might seem.

many schools will consider toefl scores

if you have a lot of difficulty with the sat reading and writing sections, then check if your goal schools want toefl scores. if they consider toefl scores, then they generally care less about your sat reading and writing scores.

the toefl is a test of english for non-native speakers so that schools can judge your ability to communicate. the vocabulary is easier than sat vocabulary, the reading questions aren’t so tricky, and the writing passage is easier to get high scores on. there are other sections, though, including the listening and speaking sections, so it’s a very different test than the sat, but the two in combination can make your application stronger than an application with only sat scores (with low reading and writing).

but if you do have competitive reading and writing scores (500+), then you almost definitely don’t need the toefl. and in that case, you should think more about how you can raise your sat score.

vocabulary!

the sat very rarely tests vocabulary directly. sentence completions are often only possible to answer if you know the definitions of words. but that’s a good thing: you can learn vocabulary simply by studying flashcards. reading comprehension, by comparison, is much harder to improve. vocabulary is mostly about memorization. if you learn all those words, you’ll increase your score. simple.

grammar rules

if you learn the rules that many sat writing questions test—such as subject-verb agreement and parallelism—then the writing multiple choice questions will be almost as easy for you as they are for a native speaker.

most of these rules are not very complicated. again, this is just about memorizing, like vocabulary is. if you study the rules and do practice questions, you’ll be just fine.

the essay

if you study the essay format and practice writing in a specific structure, you can earn points on the sat even with vocabulary or grammar mistakes. giving a well structured, clear opinion with understandable reasons is half of the task. yes, vocabulary and grammar can help you a lot, but that’s not everything. focus on the structure.

reading comprehension

this is really the biggest challenge for non-native speakers. there’s no easy way to improve this quickly, so it should be the least important part to worry about from the topics in this blog post. but if you have a lot of experience reading in english, it will become easier. read as much as possible for as long as possible. try to go through a few different news articles every week. read a novel in english. follow blogs in english (like this one!). the more reading you do, the better.

of course, learning question strategies and practicing taking notes definitely help, too! but this is nothing special for non-natives: everybody benefits from practicing sat strategies.

and more…

there’s much, much, more involved in your application than just your sat score, so don’t focus on this alone! your grades in school, your activities outside of school, recommendations from teachers, and your application essay are all pieces of the bigger picture. even if you have trouble on the reading and writing sections of the sat, you still have chances to get into good american colleges! be sure to focus on those other parts of your application, too.

the post preparing for the sat as a non-native english speaker appeared first on magoosh blog | high school.