SAT II Chemistry no AP help

Poohbah29
Wed, 30 Jul 2014 19:56:12 +0000

My D looked into whether or not she should take the SAT chem test after only honors, and figured out that while there were definitely some topics she hadn’t covered - mostly lab related - her course was rigorous enough that the bulk of the content overlapped. That said - she did have to study in order to learn certain concepts. In addition, she found the SAT chem test asked about really specific chemical reactions (e.g. when you mix A and B in this way at this set of conditions, it turns this color). She learned a lot of these specifics simply by doing practice tests.

Not familiar with the zumdahl book at all - she used Barrons which she thought was a good indicator of the test and her score.

My understanding is that the schools often use the SAT II to validate the rigor of your curriculum and grading. So if two students gets an A in honors chem (two different schools) and one gets a 600 on the test and the other gets a 750, it gives them an indication that the first student did not have a very strong chem class.

I would recommend spending some time on the content part of the Barrons or whatever other resource you can find and map your course material to the structure of the test (they should give you a breakdown of the topics). See how much you need to learn on your own and figure out how much time you will need to learn that effectively for the SAT, and schedule from there. Or decide it is not a good plan and find another SAT II.