How to Prepare for Each of the SAT Sections in High School

Are you stressing about the SAT Sections and need some ways to prepare for the unknown? Continue reading on to learn more about each of the SAT sections and how to tackle them with a strategy.

Image courtesy of Pexels

What are the SATs?

This is a question you need answered before turning 15, if planning to go to school in the United States.

The SAT is a standardized test that is required by many universities in the US. Another accepted standardized test is the ACT, but let's just focus on the SAT for now.

The SAT has three main sections-reading, writing and mathematics-which are all marked out of 40. Your score out of 40 for each of these sections are turned into a score out of 1600. There are four papers, one for reading, one for writing and two for mathematics.

Improve Your SAT Score

The easiest SAT section to improve upon is the mathematics section.

Most students lose points here not because of the difficulty of the questions, but because of the tricky wording. Questions are intentionally worded in a confusing way to trip even the most experienced student.

The best way to avoid making these mistakes is to practice as much as possible and understand the question patterns. For example, some questions have quite a few data values, but you don’t even need to read all of them to get the answer which can be found out by using logic.

Some of the questions seem too easy to be true, but you just have to believe it to be true and move on to the next. I can’t recall how long I have spent just trying to overcomplicate questions, just to reach the same answer.

The next SAT section that people find relatively easy is the writing section.

This section mainly just tests your ability to recognize basic grammar structures and correct them if necessary. As mentioned earlier, this section is still easy if you know your grammar well. If you’re like me and don’t, then this section can be a bit tricky. Not to worry, as this can be turned around quickly.

Read as much as you possibly can on grammar structures and punctuation like dash, semicolon and colon. For the punctuation questions, most of the choices will seem to be the same, which is why it is important to read about what sets each of them apart and when they should be used.

The last SAT section is the reading, which is kind of difficult based on how comfortable you are with reading comprehensions. The reading section is the most difficult, solely based on its ability to seem completely subjective. This is because most of the questions seem to ask for your opinion, which makes having a correct answer redundant.

But as I have learned after multiple mistakes, all answers are objective and are present either in the passage or the question itself. All but the correct answers have a word or two which make it an incorrect one, and the ability to spot these words is just a skill that needs to be honed by practice.

Exam Day

The day before the exam is probably the most stressful day, as we believe that what we do then will affect our results. What I have realized is that the best thing you can do the day before the exam is just relax and do something fun to take your mind off the test. This applies to all exams and tests and not just the SATs. This really helps calm your nerves.

Another important thing I’m sure most of you have heard about before is getting enough sleep. I try to get around 8-10 hours of sleep before the exam, and it actually helps in making me feel relaxed.

On the day of the exam, you need to tell yourself that you have tried your best and just hope that it all works out well. Even if it doesn’t, always remember you have a second chance to do even better and try to push yourself a bit further.