What is the SAT?

The SAT Reasoning Test is the used by most of American colleges and universities as an admissions criteria. Some colleges may also accept the ACT (which is generally more accepted by educational institutions in the South and Midwest). In the past, the SAT Reasoning Test has also been called the Scholastic Assessment Test and the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Many colleges and universities require that a student applicant having taken the SAT and to submit the scores as part of their college application for admissions.

The idea behind the SAT exam and SAT score is the American high school population really differs in the types of curriculum, grading, and coursework they are exposed to. Especially considering differences in school funding, teacher quality, private versus public schools, home schooling, it is not always easy to compare the grades and material that each student encounters. A student applicant’s SAT score along with the coursework transcript is designed to function to give the college admissions committee a more complete picture about whether a specific student will be successful at the college level.

The SAT Reasoning Test is offered seven times throughout the course of a year. Colleges and universities generally like to see all the scores from a student’s different attempts at the SAT but will generally only consider his or her best score. This gives students a great opportunity and motivation to improve their SAT scores.

What are the different sections of the SAT?

There have been many versions of the SAT in the past, and the current version (adopted in 2005) has three sections: critical reading, mathematics, and writing.

The critical reading section of the SAT, which is also referred to as the verbal section of the SAT, includes three sections, two of which are 25 minutes and one is 20 minutes. The section contain question types such as sentence completions and questions about reading passages. Sentence completion questions on the SAT will focus on sentence structures and vocabulary. The reading passages questions may ask students to compare passages or answer questions based on the reading passages. The current SAT Reasoning Test no longer has straight vocabulary definition questions, antonyms, or analogy questions on the verbal section which were some of the most feared question types in the past.

The mathematics section of the SAT is also referred to as the math section, calculation section, or the quantitative section. Most of the math questions on the SAT are multiple choice but there are also 10 grid in questions where the student must enter in their answer without getting to choose it from a list of options. Calculators are allowed and in fact encouraged for the SAT math sections. The mathematics section of the SAT Reasoning Test no longer has quantitative comparison questions as in the past.

The writing section of the SAT has two aspects of some multiple choice questions and an essay. The multiple choice questions ask the student to identify errors, improve sentences, or improve paragraphs. These types of questions allow the student to demonstrate their grasp of grammar, spotting and fixing awkward sentences, and organizing ideas. The essay writing portion lasts for 25 minutes off a prompt that is broad and accepts examples based on the student’s learning, studies, reading, observations, and experience.

How is the SAT Scored?

The SAT Reasoning Test is scored out of a possible range of 600 to 2400, with each of the three sections of math, critical, reading, and writing out of 800 points. Scores for the multiple choice questions are based on the number of correct answers minus one-quarter of incorrect answers to account for random guessing. the gird-in portion of the mathematics section has no penalty for student incorrect answers since options of guessing are limited. The essay of the writing portion are graded by two trained readers who grade the score on a raw scale from 0 to 6 and graded by a third reader if the scores given by the first two readers differs by more than 1 point. For the writing section, the multiple choice questions contribute 70% to the score while the essay contributes 30% of the score for that section.

How can a student improve his or her score on the SAT?

There are many tips (many of which are not even time consuming) to improve one’s score on the SAT:

• Be familiar with the different sections and question types to be encountered
• Read more in everyday life to improve reading comprehension and how to glean conclusions and ideas of reading passage. Reading also helps improve vocabulary, grammar, entence structures, and word usage.
• Review the math concepts that are often covered
• Practice using a calculator, as it has been shown that students with familiar of their calculators (especially a graphing calculator for geometry questions or complex / multistep calculations) achieve a higher score.
• Educated guesses if student can eliminate one or more answer choices

The easiest way to improve a student’s SAT score is to sign up for an SAT test prep or tutoring service as they will cover all these points and more.

What can one usually expect from a SAT test prep or tutoring service?

SAT tutoring services usually begin with a pre-test to asses the student’s strengths and weaknesses and identify problem areas or question types. Student then are given lectures and tips for test taking skills, strategies for making educated guesses, and managing their time. Practice problems are an important part of shoring up problem areas, question types, becoming more familiar with the calculator, or weak topics. SAT test prep services also have many practice tests throughout the course so that students can practice using those test taking skills and monitor their progress. Many SAT test prep and tutoring services have touted student score improvements of 200 or more points.

How can we pick the best SAT test prep tutoring service for a student?

There are many different SAT test prep tutoring services and companies out there, different in classes sizes, teaching medium, and teaching approaches. A good starting point is to check out the different companies and see what types of SAT programs they offer. Read reviews of these SAT tutoring companies on the web. Parents can also talk to student peer, older students, and friends and family to see if they have an experiences in this area and ask for their recommendations.

Talk to the different SAT tutoring companies and ask them about specific options to see which would be a best fit. Some SAT test preparation companies will allow students to swap types of programs and offer score improvement guarantees allowing the student to retake the courses if his or her score does not improve. For the less motivated student, parents will probably want to opt for a private or small group tutoring format for the SAT class. For the more self-motivated students there are some online SAT test prep options which may be less expensive.