Passing the SAT test
Do not cheat. This goes without saying for 999 out of 1,000 students (hopefully even more!), but cheating is not the way to get a high score on the SAT. Not only are you sacrificing your integrity and reliability, but you are doing yourself the great disservice of taking something you didn’t earn, and I guarantee it will catch up with you sooner or later.
Prepare in advance. If you fully understand the importance of the SAT in determining your admission to the colleges you’ll apply to, you’ll spend quite a bit of time preparing before the test—and I don’t mean the day before the test. Start a few months in advance to review concepts you know you are having trouble with.
Study regularly. You’ll get a lot more mileage studying for the SAT if you set a day and time each week (or more often if you’d like) to study. This will also help your mind and body prepare for the exam by getting them used to sitting and concentrating for a long period of time.
Take practice tests. The more you are exposed to the actual exam questions, the easier it will be for you to deal with the actual exam. Simulate the test experience (timed, sitting at a desk, etc.) to ensure that when test day arrives, the situation is not new to you. This will help you relax and perform to the best of your abilities.
Make flashcards to help you study. If you play on a sports team or participate in a school club, making flashcards can be a great way to find time to study even when you’re busy. Just keep the cards in your backpack or gym bag and pull them out when you’re on the bus or waiting for your ride. Formulas and math concepts are especially good for flashcards; so are vocabulary words.
Rest well the night before the test. Going to bed before midnight may seem impossible to you, but trust me on this one. Your mind will be pushed and stretched to its limits during the test, so the last thing you want is for your body to be tired and groggy. Remember: going to bed early, getting up early, makes a man healthy and wise.
Arrive early at the test site. The SAT alone can make you pretty nervous, so the last thing you want is to be late and not have much time to settle in and relax. Check the night before to make sure you have everything ready that you will need in the morning. Then when you wake up the next morning, instead of running around the house frantically looking for the things you need, you can take a nice hot shower and relax. Obviously, the end goal of all of this is to make sure that you can do your best work on the test.
Read all instructions. Even if you think you know what you’re supposed to do, take a few seconds to at least skim through them. Taking 20 seconds to read the instructions will waste much less time than if you fill out the SAT section only to find out you did it all wrong.
When you’re taking the test, don’t get stuck on just one question. If you come to a question that you can’t answer right away, don’t get nervous. Just skip it and come back to it. Unless you’re skipping a lot of questions, on the SAT it’s usually better to skip the question rather than guess and then come back to it. You are penalized for every wrong answer you give, while leaving a question blank doesn’t really have much of an impact on your score. Again, don’t leave too many questions blank, as that reduces the score you can potentially earn.
Check your answers with the extra time you have left at the end. You may not have time to go through all the questions you had trouble with, but at least go through as many as you can. Be careful not to question yourself too. It seems that most of the time our first impressions are correct, so don’t change an answer unless you have a good reason to.
Eat ice cream. But wait until you’ve done the test and done the best you can. Hard work and effort on your part should almost always be rewarded with some form of high-fat, high-sugar frozen dessert.