Five Things to Do the Week Before the ACT

It's the week before the ACT. You don't know what to do, you say? 1. Re-take a practice test. With only a week before the test, any studying needs to build confidence and reinforce what you've already learned. Don't spend time learning new material: cramming isn't very effective, and it'll just stress you out. Choose a practice test you've done before, preferably a long time ago, and take it again under timed conditions. If you've been studying,...

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December SAT scores are now available!

If you took the SAT in December, your can view your scores online now. Here's the score I got in March 2019: ...

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Five Things to Do the Week Before the SAT

It's the week before the SAT. You don't know what to do, you say? 1. Re-take a practice test. With only a week before the test, any studying needs to build confidence and reinforce what you've already learned. Don't spend time learning new material: cramming isn't very effective, and it'll just stress you out. Choose a practice test you've done before, preferably a long time ago, and take it again under timed conditions. If you've been studying,...

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SAT: The Best Prep Books

Update: I've updated the Errata list for John Chung's SAT Math book. This is a current list of the books I'm using with my own students. I'll revise it as new books are released. The Official SAT Study Guide, 2018 Edition This new edition eight official practice tests with answer explanations, though the College Board is no longer recommending that students take tests 2 and 4. The 2020 edition of this book has two replacement tests that...

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Improved Sleep is Associated with 212-point SAT Score Gains

Here are some excerpts to take note of from the book Why We Sleep:In Edina, Minnesota, school start times for teenagers were shifted from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. More striking than the forty-three minutes of extra sleep that these teens reported getting was the change in academic performance, indexed using a standardized measure called the Scholastic Assessment Test, or SAT. In the year before this time change, the average verbal SAT scores of the...

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How to Raise Your SAT Score by Reading Biographies

Update: I've added Bruchko to the reading list. The easiest way to raise your SAT Reading score is to read. The skills the SAT tests - knowing vocabulary, literal and careful reading, expressing complex ideas in subtle and clever ways - will naturally become part of you. Reading is the cheapest and most enjoyable way to expand your knowledge. It's less annoying that paying a professor to force you through a curriculum. It's the...

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Online Tutoring Q&A

How effective is online tutoring?  My online students have seen some large score increases and high final scores. (This isn't a random sample, though: the students who search for and find my Web site tend to be highly motivated individuals.) SAT Math Level 2 problem solved on a Jamboard  How does online tutoring work?  Before each session starts, I'll share a Google Jamboard with you, which will allow us to...

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SAT Practice Tests

Update: I've removed Practice Tests 2 and 4 from the list, since the College Board no longer recommends that students take those two tests. Table of Contents College Board SAT practice tests Ivy Global SAT practice tests, including answer explanations PSAT practice tests Suggestions The PSAT practice tests at the end of the list provide useful diagnostic scores until you hit 700 in either Verbal or Math. If you're worried that you'll run out of...

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Timing Rules for the SAT and ACT

Update: I've added additional comments to the Math section. The easiest way to avoid making "stupid mistakes" on the SAT and ACT is to slow down. Skipping steps and not reading questions carefully tend to lead to small mistakes. You can slow down if you have a way to keep track of time. For example, on SAT Critical Reading, you have 13 minutes per passage (65 minutes for a total of 5 passages). That means that if you know the multiples of 13,...

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