<p>I am now a freshman at Duke University, and to get here I worked very hard to do well in high school and on standardized tests. In no small way, early preparation for the SAT laid the groundwork for much of my high school success, while later on what I’d learned in school helped me ace my SAT. Here’s how it went:</p>
<p>7th Grade: My first SAT taken. </p>
<p>Summer between 8th and 9th: Spent two months studying the SAT, with particular emphasis on Math.</p>
<p>9th Grade: I’d gone from mediocre honors student to challenging the very best at my high school. What had changed? Not much, but enough, and in all the right places. I was no better than my peers at learning new math, physics, or chemistry material, but it certainly didn’t hurt that I made no algebra mistakes. Preparing for the SAT the previous summer helped me appreciate a new threshold that I hadn’t ever aimed at before: perfection. This wasn’t something that my classes could teach me. With their tiered grading system, you could lose 10% and still have an A. With the SAT, it was very much different. As for critical reading, preparing for that section helped me value clarity in writing, importance of structure, and preciseness in word choice. In middle school, I’d been going through that phase where every essay I wrote must employ flowery prose, unconventional form, and extreme, emotional topics. Reading the SAT passages, internalizing them, then answering questions about them helped me better recognize the flaws of my own writing and move forward.</p>
<p>9th - 12th Grade: I joined a bundle of extracurricular teams with demanding tryouts that I’d previously felt were impossible to pass. These nationally renowned groups were always leading favorites to win state championships, and I’d been blessed with the fortune of both a school with a energized student body and leg up from the SAT that allowed me to keep pace with them. My classes and these activities had a real synergy: sophomore honors chem was easy because the math components were never a problem; this led to winning an ACS scholarship through placing high in regional exam; preparing for said exam made AP Chemistry a breeze; taking AP Chem early meant that trying out to represent my school in a state level Chemistry competition the following fall was doable. </p>
<p>In this single subject, I managed four complete passes through the material, mastering it further with each visit, before beginning my third year of high school. In biology, physics, english literature, english writing, and math I did the same, though each in their own way since each domain of learning operates differently.</p>
<p>Preparing for the SAT early was no cure all. It taught me no tennis. I learnt no percussion with its help. But where it was relevant, my early SAT prep taught me tools with which to approach academic material in a precise, analytical way.<br>
In the end, there were no tricks for me to employ on the SAT. I knew that as long as I was focused while solving math problems, I’d make no mistakes. If I read actively while reading CR passages, and took the steps to internalize their meanings, I’d make no mistakes. In the end, the way I approached the SAT became no different from how I approached any of the other hundreds of multiple choice tests I’d taken. </p>
<p>Some concrete pointers:
-Buy the College Board book of Real SAT Exams. I took every single one available, and a few more than once. Without these, the final stretch of my push toward a perfect score would’ve been hard to impossible.<br>
-The Barron’s guides will get you the high difficulty questions you can expect on the SAT, but be prepared to face typos, incorrect answer keys, and poor lesson organization. They’re valuable still for the sheer volume of densely packed material found in each book.
-Princeton Review guides are polished, both well written and comprehensive, but they never seem to grant the reader with the practice necessary to seek and destroy the hardest questions. A good starting place, and perhaps the best book for someone low on time.<br>
-Kaplan, McGraw Hill, Peterson’s are all similar in their insanely wide margins and spaced out work material. I avoided them.
-Gruber’s guide was the one that kick started my math. It truly is a guide that helps students succeed in both the classroom and on standardized tests. Beware though that the book is massive, disorganized, and repetitious. If you manage to best this thorny tangle, you’ll be in good shape.<br>
-Classes offered by Kaplan and Princeton Review: I never took any, but I taught the SAT at Kaplan for a short while. While their lessons are well structured and thorough, they’ll do little for all but the really confused. I disagree with the contention that all that can be learned from a Kaplan/Princeton Review lesson could be found in their own study guides. An engaged teacher can really make a world of difference, especially if you approach him/her for specific pointers either before or after class. I can’t speak for Princeton Review, but Kaplan picks their tutors very stingily. This is how my hiring process went. Sixty candidates each gave ten minute presentations on a topic of their choice to the rest of the candidates. From our batch, three were chosen to train for teaching the SAT, one for the LSAT, and two for the MCAT. By the end of training, a SAT candidate and a MCAT candidate were cut. Both had near perfect scores in their respective tests, and were no slouches at teaching either. </p>
<p>Besides starting early, you have to finish strong. By taking so many exams over the years, I became a ruthless test taker, and made sure that the SAT operated on my terms. This meant understanding its format intimately, finishing with half the time remaining on each section, and identifying the rogue questions that you could easily miss if you’re not on your A game. I’d always mark these problems with a dot next to their respective number on the scantron, where the larger the dot, the harder the question. This ensured that every additional pass-through gave appropriate attention to each question.</p>
<p>Well, I certainly typed a whole lot more than I’d hoped to, and very messily at that. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. To those of you currently working on college applications, good luck.</p>
<p>To everyone, Happy Holidays, and may the next year be kind.</p>
haf fun in DUKE!</p>