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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 will be 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 what 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 rather arcane language of the SAT.

It is for this reason that I recommend to “re-discover” the material in the more interactive process 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 complicate. 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 to improve one’s “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.

Let’s look at how this works! To begin, everyone should have the Official Study Guide. TCB publishes The Official SAT Study Guide: For the New SAT (ISBN: 0874477182). It has eight 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 to read 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 known substitutes to the material released by the College Board.

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, I recommend to get “all” your books out and start answering the questions without any time limits. Whenever you’re stumped, take a peek at the response or even at the fully developed answers that are posted on the TCB site. The idea is to 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 “great secrets”. 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 not covered in a question. The index and table of contents should be your best friends.

2. For the second phase, you’ll 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 be able 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 have saved 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 the TCB 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 ETS’ trickiness. Also, realize that finishing a section with MUCH time to spare is also poor time management. Spend enough time on the SAT forum, and you will read about careless and dumb mistakes. Rushing through the test is never recommended!

3. The last phase involves taking one or more tests under “testing conditions.” Some people recommend to build up your stamina by working through a few 4 hours 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 I 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. For some, 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 concept should 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, or discuss the questions on the SAT forum at CC, he 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 TCB. A subscription to the online course of TCB gives accept to SIX additional tests as well as access the grading system for essays. My recommendation is to sign up for the service, especially if you need more tests.

This brings us to the question about source books. While I recommend to acquire as many books 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, or Barron’s 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 reading comprehension sections. Among the books, one deserves a special mention: and that is Gruber’s. In general terms, Gruber went further and faster than the other authors, and its math section was deeper and better. Alas, Gruber’s 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 are NOT meant to be studied cover-to-cover but are meant to be used as you would use 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. So far, 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 Robinson’s –often pompous and grandiloquent- recommendations and subject themselves to his recommended game plan. Use Robinson’s 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 subtle approach. 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 as well 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 not like 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 the Grammatix 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 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 you did 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 and build 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 an 5 hours ordeal. One of the keys of a successful preparation is to establish a number 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 want to make sure you understand what TCB considers correct answers. As I will post this afternoon, 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 in your 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 most SAT books had gone through several revisions, the job of identifying the best books was much simpler. For instance, nobody would confuse the Gruber’s 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 PR, Kaplan, Barron’s, among others.
I started to use the term “synthetic” tests to describe the tests found in the bboks of PR, Kaplan, and others. I even pushed the envelope by labeling them wannabe or fake test. 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 build up a collection of about 45 official tests. Enough to satisfy the appetite of the most voracious 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. The College 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.

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 to students' 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 will NEVER show up! It is a pure waste of time. It would similar to using a book written for the former SAT Math-IIC test to prepare for the SAT. While you'll learn “something”, it won’t be what you seek to learn. The same can be said for books such as the Princeton Review 11 Tests for the New SAT. The book was rushed to capture last summer’s 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 in such 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 TCB 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 reading the solutions proposed by TCB, it is worth remembering that that they usually offer lengthy solution 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 effective ones will be … your own.

Lastly, if you run of published test, do not hesitate to work with older tests. Obviously, you’ll 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 or Writing that they won’t 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 sense of 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 memorizing words 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 to understand 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 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 egregious offender 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 appear on new tests, and the results confirmed my worst expectations. While Barron's provides a good 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 the emails 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, not by 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" when representing 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 critical reading. 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 the other 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.