<p>Hey Everyone!</p>
<p>So although I’m relatively new to the CC community, I’ve been an SAT tutor for over 10 years, and I’ve worked with over 1000 students as well as trained over a hundred tutors.</p>
<p>Suffice it to say, I love working with the SAT and I’ve been moved to create this post detailing what I see as the top 5 most common, and CORRECTABLE mistakes that students make on the SAT.</p>
<p>Yes, this is slightly subjective, however these represent key, fundamental errors that I see nearly ALL my students make. That’s right, whether they’ve had lots of prep or very little, whether they are rich or poor, whether they are motivated or not… these mistakes happen ALL THE TIME.</p>
<p>If these seem pretty general and obvious to many of you, you’re right… they are! The point is that these are easily correctable mistakes, and once you correct them they can raise your score in bunches for any section of the SAT. In fact, these 5 mistakes, when corrected, could be worth an extra 100 points or more per section!</p>
<p>Without further ado, here they are:</p>
<ol>
<li>Not Answering the Question!</li>
</ol>
<p>No, I’m not talking about leaving the answer sheet blank, that’s actually a very USEFUL strategy (one that I’ll briefly cover later). I’m talking about the failure to recognize what each SAT question is TRULY asking for. So many times students will overlook a piece of information that is crucial. For example, the most common type of mistake in Math is when a student does all sorts of work to solve for x, answers the correct value of x, but then overlooks the fact that the question asked for “the value of 3x” or something to that effect. Answering what they (the SAT) want to know is as IMPORTANT AS IT GETS! Why? Because it’s the only way to earn points! Give em what they want to know!</p>
<p>The SAT is an extremely literal test. If they say “what is the value of 5x”, don’t give them the answer for just “x”. Also, if the question reads, “the tone in lines 5-8 can best be described as…” DON’T answer according to the OVERALL tone of the piece or how you feel about the piece… just give them the tone of lines 5-8.</p>
<p>By focusing only on what they want to know, you will eliminate extraneous information that can distract you as you work through a question. Focus on what the question asks for and you will cut down on simple mistakes, and you might boost your SAT score by a chunk of points. Just remember to ask yourself “am I giving them what they want to know?” before you complete every question.</p>
<ol>
<li>Ignoring Scoring and Difficulty</li>
</ol>
<p>This is another portion of the SAT that is very cut and dry, however TONS of students overlook test difficulty and scoring. To briefly review, EVERY question is worth the same, and any wrong answer (except on the Grid-in section in Math) has a penalty of –1/4 of a point. That’s pretty standard…</p>
<p>But guess what? Not every question is the same difficulty. There are distinct easy, medium and hard problems in each section. Yet THEY ARE ALL WORTH THE SAME (one point)! Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by trying to get through the hard questions thinking that they will net you more points. You can actually score a 600 or better in any given section of the SAT by ONLY answering the easy and medium questions. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do the hard questions, but work up to them, making sure you are first carefully answering the easy and medium ones correctly.</p>
<p>What’s also commonly overlooked about the SAT is that for ALL the math and writing questions, as well as the SENTENCE COMPLETIONS, the difficulty moves in ASCENDING order. Meaning that the first questions will be the easiest and then last questions will be the hardest. What can you do with the HARDEST questions at the end of these sections? Leave them BLANK! There’s NO PENTALY for a blank answer, and you’ll be able to allocate the time you might have spent spinning your wheels on the hardest questions to easier and medium questions.</p>
<p>By applying a little common sense and taking the time to navigate through the easy and medium questions before the hard ones, you could net yourself over 100 points using this strategy alone. If you plunge yourself into the hardest questions, you’ll not only be likely to lose points, but you’re also increasing the likelihood of simple mistakes on the easy and medium problems that you may have spent too little time on.</p>
<p>Know the scoring and difficulty structure of the SAT! It’s laid out there for you to take advantage of.</p>
<ol>
<li>The Pristine Test Booklet</li>
</ol>
<p>When you are finished with the SAT, your test booklet should look like the graffiti covered walls of an abandoned subway station. MARK UP YOUR TEST BOOK!</p>
<p>Oftentimes I have to beg my students to please, please, please write down their work. And the ones that take my suggestion to heart and start writing down more work suddenly see their scores increase. It’s like magic!</p>
<p>Think of it this way. The SAT is a 4 and a half hour long marathon – not a simple 10 minute quiz, or 1 hour test. Remember, though the actual length of the test is 3 hours and 45 minutes, that DOES NOT include breaks or the plodding introduction and instructions that will be read out loud by the proctor. So imagine if someone were to give
you a challenge for 4.5 hours and you WEREN’T allowed to take notes or write things down – all the work had to be in your head. How do you think you would do? Probably not so hot, or at least not as good as if you wrote down your ideas, notes, made diagrams, etc. Right? </p>
<p>Imagine if those NASA techs who brought the Apollo 13 spacecraft back to earth were CHOSE TO NOT write down any of their notes? We probably wouldn’t be celebrating their success as much as lamenting their failure to WRITE WORK DOWN (not to conflate taking the SAT to saving the lives of the astronauts on Apollo 13 – but you get the idea).</p>
<p>Sometimes I am blown away when my students will show me their homework or practice tests and there is nary a mark on the page. It’s as if they think they are going to get extra credit for less marks on the page. Guess what? There’s no extra credit for less work!</p>
<p>This is such a simple thing, and it might seem intuitive (like many of these tips), however The truth is that if you aren’t writing down much, you should be writing a whole lot more. </p>
<p>Are you writing down your own words in the blanks for sentence completions? Are you writing down your work on math problems and equations? Do you do all your work on your calculator without writing down figures? Are you underlining important parts of passages? Are you crossing out answers? Do you write down your thoughts or outline for your essay? Are you writing down the main idea of each passage after you read it? </p>
<p>Ask yourself all these questions as you work on your SAT prep, because writing down your work is key and WILL net you more points!</p>
<ol>
<li>Overlooking the answers</li>
</ol>
<p>OK, get ready to have your minds blown… ready? Wait for it… wait for it… the SAT is a multiple choice test! With the exception of the essay and the Grid-ins on Math, EVERY QUESTION is multiple choice! Which means, if you want to really learn how to master the SAT and get your dream score, you MUST USE THE ANSWERS.</p>
<p>It’s interesting to note that many of us have been programmed by the tests we take in school to see the questions and the answers as separate. However, in order to fully utilize the SAT multiple choice structure to your advantage, you should see the answers as PART of the question. Even if you don’t know the answer off the top of your head, it IS in one of the answer choices. Not only that, but you also may be able to eliminate an answer choice or two, which puts the odds in your favor if you need to make a guess. </p>
<p>Remember that a random guess has a 1 in 5 chance (20%) of being correct, and the penalty for a WRONG answer is –1/4 of a point (25%). If you can eliminate just TWO answers,that puts you at a 1 in 3 chance of getting it correct (33%), and you have almost doubled your odds of success! Sorry to get all mathy on you, but every student needs to take advantage of using the answer choices.</p>
<p>For Math especially there are so many questions where testing the answer choices (or plugging in your own values) works so well. It’s such a shame to see a student give up or miss a math question because they ignored the clues that were in the answer choices. </p>
<p>This tip also goes hand in hand with MARKING UP your test booklet, because you should ALWAYS be making notes on the answer choices and crossing out those that you have eliminated. Working both of these skills will DEFINITELY improve your SAT experience and point total.</p>
<ol>
<li>Getting Cute/Fancy with the Essay</li>
</ol>
<p>This might not be the #5 most common mistake on the SAT, but it as a VERY IMPORTANT point and I’ve noticed that there are A LOT of essay discussions on CC, so I thought it was worth including in this list. If you can construct a well-written essay that is built around a strong thesis, you may be able to capture another 30-70 points on your SAT Writing score.</p>
<p>Too many students waver on their thesis. Pick your side of the assignment and STICK TO IT. Many students are simultaneously taking the SAT while they are working on crafting well-written, poetic college admission essays and they confuse the two. The SAT Essay isn’t the type of essay you want to get cute and flowery or crafty on, it needs to be direct and easy to digest.</p>
<p>The SAT Essay is not something you want your reader to have to muse over, think about for a few minutes and then get excited over. It’s looked at differently than your college admission essay, because all the SAT readers are looking for is if you can articulate an argument and defend to your thesis. Remember that your SAT Essay is supposed to be a FIRST ROUGH DRAFT and the readers, who are only spending 2-3 minutes per essay, are supposed to grade it as such. Don’t worry if it isn’t as deep and flowery as your college admissions essay that you have probably spent over a month drafting and revising.</p>
<p>Using basic essay structure and hammering home your thesis can truly help you excel on your SAT essay. Have an introduction with a strong thesis as your LAST SENTENCE, have dynamic body paragraphs that utilize good grammar, sprinkle in 2-4 nice vocabulary words, and you’ll be fine. Have a conclusion if you want, but it’s NOT needed, so only throw one in if you have time. Trust me, the biggest place students get dinged is when they waste their time addressing the other side of the issue or if they are too obtuse in framing their arguments.</p>
<p>Think of the SAT essay as your chance to be a one-sided jerk! Just pick your thesis and stick to it; hammer it home, while using varying vocabulary and transitions so as not to be repetitive. I’m telling you, this is your chance to go to town, be subjective, use personal stories, make up facts, do whatever it takes to defend your thesis. That’s the key to getting a good essay score of 10 or better – being able to interpret the assignment, craft a thesis, and then defend it. Everything else is just gravy.</p>
<p>So there you have it, the “Top 5 Most Common and Correctable Mistakes on the SAT”. Again, they might seem like common sense, but if everyone addressed these errors, the national average would be well over 600 per section as opposed to being around 520-540. And trust me, I see my students make these fundamental mistakes ALL THE TIME.</p>
<p>If hope this helps, and I’m so glad that there’s an active forum where information like this can be shared. I have a lot of respect for everyone herein the CC community for working to improve their SAT scores and up their chances for college admission. Thanks for letting me share some of my insight, and f you have any further questions or if you feel I missed something please comment!</p>
<p>Cheers,
J</p>