Mastering the SAT: Top Tips for Success

Most colleges around the world require standardized test scores to examine the scholastic eligibility of a student. The one that's most familiar to us is the SAT.

While many Logos students struggle through it, here are five pieces of advice that you'll need to ace the exam.

Disclaimer: This article focuses on the Reading Section of the SAT.

Understand That Every Reading Passage Has a Structure

The SAT Reading section evaluates your critical reading and inferential thinking skills. To do that, every passage in the SAT Reading section has a logical structure behind it. It is important to discern these structures or flows of information to grasp the theme and main points. This is because the logical structure of a passage reflects the writer's intention and therefore gives us a clear insight into the main idea of the passage.

Let's give an example. Passages with scientific themes are most likely to contain hypotheses and evidence from experimentation. This composition can be used to form various logical structures.

i) If a scientific writer wants to set forth a counterargument to a preexisting theory or hypothesis, the structure will be in a format that describes the conventional theory first, then states an experiment related to that theory, and finally provides a conclusion contradicting the conventional one.

ii) Or a writer might want to consolidate/verify a yet ambiguous theory. Then, the author will state the theory that is in issue first, suggest the points of ambiguity, and then finally provide an explanation or experiments supporting the theory.

With these two examples, we can see that the authors use appropriate logical structure to emphasize the main claims or intentions of their passage. Therefore, it'll be immensely important for a test-taker to pay extra attention to a passage's logical structure.

Advice about Reading in General

This part of my advice is about general reading skills. In order to comprehend and analyze a text, one has to first understand what the text is about, understand the claim, and examine its evidence.

Luckily for us, instead of a 700-page long Critique of Pure Reason, we have a Digital SAT passage that has a length of one or two paragraphs.

First, to find the main focus of the passage, you have to read the first two sentences of a passage and highlight its keyword. Then, try to find a contention about this keyword. Third, find the evidence for this contention.

You'll first need to solidify this habit before jumping on to other tips and techniques.

Read the Passages Strategically

Many people question which of the following is more efficient: reading the passage first or reading the question first. Personally, I prefer reading questions first. That way, you can notice which part of the passage to focus on. If you practice this a lot, you'll one day reach the level where you can answer the question without looking at the options, which of course, is not our sufficient condition.

Back in the paper SAT, there were a lot of students who read both questions and the options first before reading the passage. That way, they tried to find direct evidence for each option in the passage. However, this inverse technique might not be efficient in the Digital SAT, as it has shorter passages compared to the paper SAT.

Be Aware of Different Types of Questions

The SAT Reading section consists of various types of questions. It is immensely important to know the different types of questions and prepare a reading mechanism for each type. Let's give another example. The type of questions that I most struggled with were Logical Conclusions questions. These questions are mostly written like, "Which choice most logically completes the text?"

The reading mechanism that I tried to solidify to solve this type of question was:

i) Look for and highlight the main focus of the passage.

ii) Then, highlight the main point made regarding the focus.

iii) Finally, look for the option that most adequately concludes the main point.

It is not an easy task to solidify each mechanism in your testing brain. You'll have to review the reading tactics that you've created repeatedly, and will even have to solve the same questions that you struggled with several times. Frankly speaking, you have to practice A LOT.

Try to Understand Your Mistakes

When you keep solving the SAT problems, you'll be able to list out the common mistakes that you repeatedly make.

Mistakes usually fall into one of four categories: Content weakness, Time pressure, Question comprehension issue, and Careless error.

It is extremely important to clearly understand WHY you got a particular question wrong using the four categories above and try not to make the same mistake again. I suggest making wrong-answer notes.

The most important factor in performing well in your SAT is staying calm and having faith in your abilities thus far. Remember, this test is just one of many opportunities for your future. I hope this article will aid your prep journey to the tests. Good luck!

- Hyunjun. J