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SAT Advice for a Foreign Student?
An anonymous reader asks: "I am a student from the UK who is currently in the process of applying to a university in the US. This means that I need to take the SAT Reasoning Test. I have read study guides and seen sample questions, but the more I look around the more I seem to be seeing general 'study skills' information aimed primarily at explaining how to learn rather than what to learn, which results in a lot of pages to work through for seemingly little data. What would help me immensely is any kind of resource aimed at an audience unfamiliar with the tests. Does anyone have a link to a list of exactly what I am expected to know and in what detail I need to know it, as well as anything else that can help me prepare for the exams?"
Algebra I and II, Geometry, have a good vocab, and know how to write an essay that aruges points you agree with, and points you don't agree with. Yeah, thats it pretty much.
Yay, I have a sig.
..be careful asking for pointers
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/ab out/SATI.html
Here's a comprehensive online course for the new SAT by Harvard & MIT grads and a perfect 2400 scorer:
:)
http://www.accoladeprep.com/
(Full disclosure: This post is on-topic, but also a shameless plug -- I'm one of the co-creators of the course.)
Contact us (contact at accoladeprep.com) and we'll get you set up.
Alright, end shameless plug
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
Yeah, I've got some advice for you, foreigner: "Stay there and stop takin' our jerrrrbs!"
Read the books. Pay attention to the meta-test taking junk. It helps immensely. Latin roots, basic math, and decent grammar will be the only things you really need.
If you can write a good argument you're just fine on the writing. Of course, I majored in philosophy and got a 5/5 on the writing portion of the GRE, so my definition of 'good argument' might differ slightly from yours. But I doubt it, to be honest.
My little site.
You speak English and are apparently somewhat intelligent (while the American eductation system in general sucks ass, if you're bothering to come here from abroad, I'm going to assume you're going to go to one of the better schools.), so you'll do fine. Besides, you can always take it again.
In case, you wonder, it just has general logic, reading, math, and scientific deduction questions. The only thing to worry about are the analogies, but they're easier on the actual test than they are on the practice tests. Anyway, this test is nothing that any high school freshman in the US shouldn't be able to do at least half-way decently, which means an average high school student of any other industrialized nation should pass with flying colors. If it tells you anything, I flunked out of college three semesters in a row and got a 2.0 GPA in high school and yet I got a 1492 composite (out of 1600) on the SAT I.
If you're still worried, order one of those SAT I practice trainers from Amazon.
A prep course isn't absolutely necessary. I didn't take one and did just fine. I'm not saying it would be a waste of time and money, but not everybody else in the world actually takes them.
Either way, do they even offer SAT prep courses in the UK? That's gotta be expensive if they do...
The College Board, who administers the test, has information on their site about what the test covers. Another useful resource is the CollegeConfidential forum (The College Confidential company offers paid admissions advice, but they have a free message board that's filled with tons of useful information and people who can probably answer any questions you have.
A prep course isn't absolutely necessary. I didn't take one and did just fine.
Neither are the SATs if it comes to that. I didn't take them and I did just fine. It depends on who you are and the quality of the school. In fact, the better the school, the less necessary they are.
KFG
is to do your undergrad in the UK(where tuition is insanely cheap comparatively and for undergrad the quality is about the same) and then do grad work in the US(where outside of Cambridge and Oxford, the quality is generally better). Just my 2 cents.
Monstar L
...and done reasonably well, the only thing I can recommend is to take practice tests -- lots and lots of practice tests. That's the only way to become familiar with the content.
The test is designed to trick you. You really only need to know algebra and geometry for the math section and lots of vocabulary (more importantly the way words are formed, so you can infer their meaning) for the language section.
If you take practice tests, you will know the tricks in adavance and will be able to spot them. It's not really a knowledge test, but a "how well can you take a test" test.
I took my SAT's in 2004, which was the last year of the old 2 section, 1600 format. Let me first of all say, that while I understand the necessity of the "standardized test", I don't think the old SAT was all that good of an evaluator; I'd imagine the new one probably isn't much better.
Assuming you've received a decent high school education, you probably know how to do pretty much anything they're going to throw at you. I don't think studying specific topics is going to do you any good. What you do need is a good working knowledge of the test. You need to be used to the way that questions are posed, and you need to be able to quickly identify what you need to do to respond.
The ridiculous SAT-prep culture in the US bothers me to no end, I think it's just one big feeding frenzy on student-parent pride and insecurity, so I never bought any books or took any SAT classes. What I did was just take it twice. The first time I went in completely cold, having basically no idea about the test other than its length and that there was a math and verbal section. I fully intended this to be nothing more than a dry run, and thus didn't have those scores sent anywhere. This got me familiar with the test format and testing conditions. That way, when I took it the next time, I could concentrate fully on answering the questions.
This exact approach may not be ideal for you, but I can't underestimate the importance of familiarizing yourself with the exam enough so that you can focus exclusively on responding. Just being familiar with what was happening boosted my score 150 pts. (1450 -> 1600)
It's a logic test - says so right on the thing. What do you need to know? 9th grade math and a decent array of English language words. Beyond that, it's completely up to your brain. The guides you're seeing aren't telling you how to learn; they're telling you how to read and understand the questions, and how to beat the test's tricks. Understanding what the SAT is and knowing how to handle its questions is about 80% of the test. The rest is general knowledge they're expecting most people to have. Honestly, if you're a bright kid, there should be nothing holding you back from scoring a near-perfect SAT score if you have a solid 8th grade education.
The SAT isn't testing your math or language skills; it's testing your ability to reason. As such, it's testing something that's innate (re: ability vs training). The prep classes, study guides, and sample questions are geared toward teaching you how to approach the test itself and the questions. They teach you about how the test is scored, how to pick apart the wording of the questions, and what kind of attitude to take with it. Frankly, if you need help with the knowledge end of things, no prep class on Earth is going to save you. Without the basic knowledge (and we really are talking about basic - 8th grade - knowledge), no amount of reasoning or test taking skills is going to save you.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
This is dangerous advice; even if it is a farce, for very many schools the SAT is still an important (and often required) part of the college application (until something better comes along, but I'm not holding my breath.)
Selective schools get inundated with many more highly qualified applicants than spots and the SAT is one of several measuring sticks admissions counselors use to cull the field down to a manageable level.
I agree that the SAT is largely a meaningless hoop to jump through, but realize that thumbing your nose at it will just cause the college to shrug and admit one of the many other applicants who took it seriously.
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
Seriously.
Go to Orkut or something.
I am from India, and one of the reasons there are so many GRE/SAT cracking students there is focussed coaching. There are specialized coaching academies etc., etc.,
Its a big business.
A GRE score of 99 is common. No wonder you see so many Indian students there.
So ask them. They will be more clued.
Check out the books from India on sites like firstandsecond.com which have the type of questions.
These fellows register for SAT/GRE. Send 10-15 people with each person to memorize 5-10 questions.
So you actually have last 5 years papers etc., etc.,
These books cost something like 5-10 Euro atmost.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
This is dangerous advice. . .
.realize that thumbing your nose at it . . .
.will just cause the college to . . .
I didn't advise anything at all.
. .
I didn't thumb my nose at it. I thumbed my nose at everything after sixth grade. Me and Jethro Bodine; soul brothers.
. .
Give me a full scholorship? Small, highly regarded private college with ultracompetive admissions. Only place I even applied to. Nor am I unique in this regard. It happens. Depends on the school and who you are. Which is where I came in to this movie.
KFG
I'm also likely to take the SAT, with the subject tests. A friend who went to America got me Kaplan for the subject tests and Princeton Review for the general test. I'm going to take SAT I, Math II and Physics.
7 9&lastnode_id=0
For the math section in the SAT, if you got an A at GCSE that is probably sufficient. As for the english reading section, it's fairly simple.
Princeton Review seems to be the exam technique for idiots. Sentence completion (me):
1) Read the question
2) Read the choices
3) Point to the correct one (in the rare case that I can't work it out, a guess will do if I can eliminate at least one option, see [1])
4) Write that down.
Sentence completion (them):
1) Read the question
2) Identify whether the clauses of the sentence are contradictory ("however", "on the other hand", "but" and many more listed in the book), supportive ("similarly" etc) or neautral
3) Identify the word in the question which the answeer has to support or contradict
4) Identify the answer
5) Write it down
They claim people are suckered into close seconds for sentence completion. Well, I've tried it and I'm not. Those "other people" are just stupid.
More another day (or later today), when I dig out my Princeton Review book to show you how terrible the whole thing is. But meanwhile, consider this:
"Beginning of test => Easy questions => Obvious answer"
"End of test => Hard questions => Obvious answer choices are wrong"
(math): answers which are numbers given in the question are obvious. This means that on many higher questions they are wrong.
[1] http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=10948
Math
SAT is not supposed to require Trigonometry. I feel it is helpful, but you don't really need it. The key to the math is to know the tricks. It is easiest to get practice tests and see the tricks for yourself. Most mistakes I see (from people who know the math) result from not reading the questions carefully enough and not knowing what to do with a given figure.
- Beware the words "figure not drawn to scale." In many cases, you will want to draw your own, more accurate figure.
- Know basic math terms like: mean, median, mode, prime factor, prime number, midpoint, bisect, etc.
- I know the test gives them to you, but know the area of simple shapes and the special triangles (45-45-90, 30-60-90, 3-4-5, 5-12-13) by heart.
- Look for the special triangles. They will pop up when you don't expect them.
- Any side of a triangle must be greater than the difference of the other two sides and less than the sum of the other two sides. (Seems like common sense, but people cramp on this on under pressure.)
- Remember that finding xy or (x + y) does not necessarily require you to find x or y individually. Additionally, remember that (x + y)^2 has a 2xy term.
- If you get an answer you are sure is right but does not show up in the choices, look to see if there is a way to simplify it or combine terms.
- 1 is not a prime number.
- Grid-In questions have no penalty for guesses. Grid 0 if you don't know.
- The grid-in grid only handles 4 digits. A "." or "/" takes one of those spaces.
- Read carefully!
- Mark the test up!
This isn't exhaustive by any means, and I'm just writing these from the top of my head. Math is what I know best, and I have to catch a bus this morning, but I will post some tips for the rest in this thread if I have time.
go home, seriously our education system blows chunks.
Are you sure you don't mean "be a white male"? Seeing as how that's the unanimous concensus among every commentary about the SAT?
Know that the whole "Asians are good at math and school stuff hur hur" stereotype is a...stereotype. Want another stereotype? When you said Asian, did you picture any Indian, Pakistani, or Middle Eastern people?...that's Asia too!
The more you know!
Study the test, don't study for the test. Learn how it's written, how it's graded, what kinds of things they are likely to ask you, etc. These tests are predictable and thus you can study them, and in doing so you can do better than otherwise. Unless the quality has gone down, I recommend the Princeton Review books on the topic. That's what I used (though it was 10 years ago).
My testimonial: I took the SAT, got a 1270. According to ETS (the people who make the SAT) I was unlikely to gain any score on a retake, in fact they claimed statistically I was likely to lose a couple points. They were correct in that there really wasn't anything I could think to study more of. I knew how to do everything on the test in general, it's not like there was some math I hadn't learned yet or anything, I just screwed some things up, mostly in the English section.
So what'd I do? Got a Princeton Review book ans studied the test, rather than studying for the test. 9 months later, I took it again, having learned really nothing more that was applicable to the test in school. That time I got a 1380, the big improvement being in the English section. Wasn't because I got smarter, wasn't because I learned more for the test, it was because I studied the test itself.
As an example something I made big gains in was vocabulary. I had a good vocabulary prior to the SAT, but just not in the kinds of words they liked in general. Well the book identified a hitlist of 275 words that ETS just loves to use on that damn test. So I learned those (275 words sounds like a lot but it really isn't). Sure enough, over half the words on the test came from that list, mostly the hard ones.
Also it gave valuable insights about test construction, like that they order the questions by difficulty and one of the ways they make hard questions is with "idiot attractor" answers. They'll put an answer down that looks intuitively right, but is wrong. So on the first questions, the intuitive answer is the one to go for, and the last few, you don't.
Now you'll want to get a current book as they could have changed it and there's at least one major new part: The writing test, which we didn't have. However I think you'll find that provided you have a good, pre university education (in the case meaning good math education through algebra and some trig and good English skills) your time is best spent studying the test itself rather than the material they claim it'll be covering.
Learn the rules of the game, and you'll find it much easier.
I took a PSAT/SAT class for three summers and ended up with A++ scores on both. We had two materials - one was the above book, which was awesome. The other was a 4~ inch binder of worksheets covering all aspects of the tests -- succint explainations of the "objectives", practice problems in increasing difficulty, and then a page full of page numbers and problem numbers of similar problems in the 10 SATs book. From this, which was seriously one of the best classes I've taken in my life, I would recommend dividing SAT/PSAT prep into two parts:
1) Get familiar with the test's structure. The optimum situation here is to do practice tests in a classroom with bright lights, total silence, other students, a proctor, etc. Even if you think you can't do this, DO THIS. Your school offers something like this, and if it doesn't it wouldn't be crazy hard to make it happen. Find a cool teacher who is willing to help, put the word out on which days you'll do the test (assuming you split it into separate days), get a copy of a recent SAT test (probably from a book) and run photocopies (or everyone buy their own if they can afford it), have the teacher be the proctor, have everyone grade each other's or scantron it or something. It's either already offered or doable.
If you have to go this part alone, make sure that, at the very least, you sit in one chair for several hours and do the entire test, with every section timed, in one go. Everyone's at least a little nervous when they walk into the testing room, but if you know what to expect, you'll be ahead of 95% of the people in the room already.
2) Know the specific objectives of the tests. I'm not sure if the actual test is formally divided into objectives, but there is a great consistency in the types of questions from year to year...hard to explain, but...an example!
On the Verbal portion, there is almost always a question which requires proper gender pronouns in an ambiguous situation. I assume everyone goes into this one like I did: "Ok, cool, we'll just use 'he or she' or 'they' and be done with it." And by the test authors, that is incorrect! The correct way to refer to a singular ambiguous person is with the masculine pronoun:
Wrong: Whoever painted this dropped their brush.
Wrong: Whoever painted this dropped his or her brush.
Wrong: Whoever painted this dropped her brush.
Correct: Whoever painted this dropped his brush.
Ridiculous? PERHAPS! But this is how every question I saw was scored. The class I was in argued with our teacher for 30 minutes before she had the sense to yell "I don't like it either, but that's how they score it and that's that!"
/ end example>
You can always get faster at math and learn more vocab words, but the quickest way to get the most reliable benefit from your study time is to find the common question topics broken down and explained. That example stuck with me because it seemed so odd and caused a big to-do in our class...they aren't all that foreign-seeming, and you'll probably know the majority of them backwards and forwards already. Once you take several practice tests, you might be able to find these consistently addressed topics yourself, but having them spelled out will be so easy.
---
I believe the GRE writing is out of 6.
From the ets website: "an analytical writing score reported on a 0 to 6 score scale in half-point increments."
I agree with both parent and grandparent posts. I graduated high school in France, only to move to the US 3 weeks later, and having to go through yet another senior year of high school. Took the SATs unprepared. Assuming the UK high schools are decent, which they should be, you don't need to study anything extra, you already know much of what you're going to have to deal with. I took the test not knowing how it was graded, nor much of what was going to happen on it, and ended up at 1250, because my written english basically sucked (gotten better since!), but I was fresh off the boat from a country where the language isn't the same. Now, watch out, because some words have radically different meanings in this country.
That's just a friendly reminder that it wasn't just tea leaves we dunked in Boston, but also most grammar books!
Knowing how the test works is all you need to know, the rest your instructors have done a very fine job of hammering down to your brain, usually.
So don't worry about what to study, just know HOW THE TEST WORKS! That's what matters.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
"A prep course isn't absolutely necessary."
No, much like a driver's education course isn't necessary to teach someone how to drive. However, it has serious potential to be helpful when it's time for the real thing. You can do fine without a prep course, but statistically, you can do a heck of a lot better with one. To me, every point in your favor gets you one step closer to things like scholarships.
If $75 for an SAT prep course can save me $20,000 on college thanks to scholarships, then that's one hell of an ROI.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
WD Caviar® SE16I D=159
;)
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?Drive
My advice: find out if your targeted universities will accept the ACT (http://www.actstudent.org/). Almost all big and small schools will, sometimes with a conversion table to turn it into an SAT score. I took both the ACT and the "old" SAT (the 1600pt one) in Fall 2004, and my ACT score, once converted to a SAT score, gained 280 points (to the 1500s).
The ACT and SAT are really quite different, and I much preferred the ACT. While the SAT tended to test on things you *knew* (analogies, vocabulary, etc.), the ACT seemed to test your *ability* to learn. For example, the ACT had a "science" section, where you would be presented with some kind of science-y report, complete with graphs and fairly dense language. You would then be given some questions requiring you to interpret the graphs and draw some kind of conclusions from the report. The reports were real, but about things like DNA traits and river pollution, and were far beyond the knowledge level of most high schoolers, so the test was on how well you could interpret a subject that was completely foreign (but in a familiar format).
So--if at all possible, try taking the ACT. You might not do any better, but if the SAT seems evil beyond your taste, it might be a nice break regardless.
**--All of my experiences are based on the SAT and ACT as of two years ago. While the SAT has changed substantially, I don't believe that the ACT has changed much, except for the (mostly) required addition of a writing portion. Also, I've had a pretty eventful two years, so my memory may be hazy and not fully correct.
FOREIGNERS STAY OUT.
1. How old are you people when you take the SAT? Is it really that important as some make it up to be?
2. Is there reasonably cheap/free way to take the SAT over the internet/something for foreigners? I know it's not available here atleast. It's not that I need it, but it sounds like fun :)
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
Here's some of the best advice you will find on 'verbal reasoning', specifically the 'A relates to B as X relates to Y' questions. I was very much stuck, twisting my head around every possible way in which two things can relate to one another, until figuring out how to solve them mechanistically.
Example:
FEATHERS : BIRD;
(Feathers is to Bird as;)
1) WETSUIT : DIVER
or
2) SUIT : BUSINESSMAN
Which is the correct answer? If you base yourself on 'feel', number 1 is the best bet. But probably you can't state exactly why it is not 2, and some of those questions are much more similar, so much that 'feel' is not enough.
What you do is _try to construct a dictionary definition for term A that includes term B, and then replace the words with those in the alternatives_.
E.g.: 'Feathers are the cover of body of the bird and help it navigate in and covers it from its environment'.
Trying with 2 - 'A suit is the cover of the businessman (okay, could pass) and helps it navigate in and covers it from its environment (no). With 1 - 'A wetsuit is the cover of the diver (pass) and helps it navigate in and covers it from its environment (pass).
If you can manage to construct definitions like this and use the 'replace the words' method, every question should be a piece of cake.
I am not sure if this still the case, but when I took the SATs 15 years ago, the rule was that your SAT score was the best combined score meaning if you took the SATs more than once and scored better on Math the second time you took the test, that second score would be the one that counted. My catholic grade school (grades one through eight) did a poor job at teaching math and when I first took the SATs, I scored poorly on that section. The next time I took the SATs, I spent all of my time doing the math, and even durring parts when I was supposed to the English, I worked on the Math sections. With 20 minutes left in the test, I went back to the English sections and filled in all "B"'s. It didn't matter as I had scored very well on the English sections the first time. My eventual best combined score was great once I did this. Spending extra time on particular sections is NOT ALLOWED, but I did it anyway.
I had known before taking the SATs that I would have trouble with the math section. When taking the PSATs, I had scored perfectly in English but had done poorly in math, so I sat down for a while and thought about what I could do to improve my score in math and had come up with that. Doing this raised my SAT scores by over 400 points overall. Some of the math problems were of things I had never been exposed to, but with the extra time, I was able to reason out the logic.
Also, there were definitely a few advanced algebra, trigonometry and calculus questions on the math portions of the SATs which I did not learn about until I took honors math courses durring my junior year in High School. A couple kids in the school had taken that class by the time they took the SATs but most students never even took that advanced of a math class in high school at all. This was the second largest high school in Massachusetts at the time.
Being a UK student, unless you got full marks in every subject you ever studied, I would forget about it.
Sure, this is a dig at the UK school system (and the University system), but if you had to work next to people who passed this system everyday, you would feel a lot of animosity towards it as well.
You seem to have totally missed the point. The SAT is an American standard. The person asking the question is from the UK. Despite Tony Blair's efforts, the UK is still not part of the USA.
Exactly why do you think that a person from the UK would know the content of American tests, and how many prep classes for American tests do you think that there are in the UK?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375765441/ref=pd _cp_b_title/104-7416757-8067151?ie=UTF8 (11 Practice Tests for the SAT and PSAT, 2007)
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Don't go to college in the US, go anywhere else except there. As a non-US citizen, it is now trivial to have you declared an enemy combatant, deny you your right of habeas corpus and have you thrown in detention indefinitely.
Friends don't let friends to to the US.
-- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
I didn't take a single prep class for the SAT, but my scores on the SAT were about the only reason I was accepted to any college at all...
Palm trees and 8
Seriously, please just do what everyone else on Earth does for this thing
Congratulations, you win today's Arrogant American Award.
Hint: "everyone else on earth" does not take American SAT exams. Only Americans do that. The vast majority of "everyone else on Earth" lives outside the USA and most certainly does not take SAT prep classes.
Now STFU.
I didn't need to take the SAT, or anything else. I just showed them my A-levels and they said "okay, that is 35 credits". I graduated 2 years later.
As an F(1) student get on campus employment asap, then get an internship off campus afterwards. At the end of you degree you can work for 1 year (Optional practical training - OPT), which I did at a wall street bank.
Now the other advice I'd impart is that you should go to a serious party college. If you've done a gap year, and have anything like a decent british childhood, you can drink most american freshmen into the ground and probably have 'the chat' down to such a fine art compared to american blokes that pulling will be easy! You're going to *want* to spend 4 years and $30K a year doing this.
Some US posters can fill you in on which one to go to.
I'm impressed that you've figured out how to use the internet, seeing as how you were clearly put into hypersleep 30 years ago and were just thawed out yesterday. I think you're going to be surprised how many other things have changed since 1976.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
... I just couldn't believe how easy it was. I only did 1 practice exam and found it very easy, because what i expected was a somethng more like Spain's "selectividad" exams, which are in-depth exams about six to 8 topics (spanish, english, history, math, chemistry, physics...). My advice is Have fun! because you will probably score better tha many of your american classmates. My 2 cents
When my Karma level reaches 0 I feel in piece with the Universe
The best way to score well is to familiarize yourself with the test. Get a copy of The Official SAT Study Guide. It's the only book with real tests from the company that administers the SAT.
<shameless-plug>You might benefit from this SAT prep book that I am affiliated with. It covers all aspects of the test, but focuses on the verbal section (which most people find more difficult to improve than the math section).</shameless-plug>Take a prep course. I'm a Canadian student, studying in the US for the last 4 years. My marks at Canadian institutions were only OK, so they advised me to take an SAT when I applied for American schools. My first, unprepared PSAT (Practice SAT) scored 1260. After a two month weekly prep course, I scored 1540. It was enough to make a $30,000 difference in the amount of scholarship they offered me over the course of my degree. I know those prep courses can be expensive, but THEY'RE WORTH IT! SATs are not about what you know, they are about HOW YOU TAKE THE EXAM. Prep courses teach exactly this subject, including information based on how the test is written etc. Coming from a good school system (one that encourages critical thinking, ie not the US), you should not have to learn much at all, save a few vocab words. What you will REALLY learn is a test-taking strategy that increases your chance of a right answer when you don't know the answer (or don't have time to do the math). Good luck! PS - don't just buy a prep book. Though they often have most of the same information, what's the likelihood of you ACTUALLY completing the course, as opposed to when you have a set regular time with an instructor?
**** You never REALLY learn to swear until you own a computer. ****
The "A" in SAT stands(*) for "aptitude" as the test is meant to measure your scholastic abilities, not what you learned already. The only thing you can do to prepare is to know what kind of questions will be asked so you don't spend time figuring out instructions.
I'm an average student, but as a foreigner in US for about a year I did well above average in both English and Math. I'd say Math was trivial for anyone with a non-US education and English part wasn't all that bad.
I'd also make sure you are not going to get screwed on your writing score for using British English.
(*) I believe they renamed the test and "SAT" is no longer an acronym, but whatever..
> Does anyone have a link to a list of exactly what I am expected to know
> and in what detail I need to know it
No.
The SATs are not intended to test what you know. They're intended to test how you think. A certain amount of knowledge _is_ necessary, mostly of math and English vocabulary, but it's your ability to figure stuff out that is being tested. It's not the sort of test you can cram for very effectively, if that's what you're asking. You'll see what I mean when you take the test.
Now, my experience is not with the SAT Reasoning test, but with the regular garden-variety college-entrance SATs that I took when I was applying to college, the ones people mean when they say "the SAT" without qualification. The analogies sections, for instance, aren't something you can directly study for, other than by learning enough vocabulary to know what the words mean. (I guess if you've got time to read through a big fat dictionary...) I suppose you could study better for the math sections, by boning up on your algebra and stuff, but even there it's pretty general. It's not like there's some grocery list of math techniques you're supposed to know; they just throw a lot of problems at you and see if you can solve some of them.
Nonetheless, I can't imagine that the Reasoning test would do less in terms of testing your reasoning ability and more in terms of testing knowledge, as compared with the regular SATs I took. I suspect rather the reverse.
If you want to take a college entrance test that goes after what you _know_, take the ACT. It tests your knowledge of four major academic subject areas, and there are study guides for it everywhere, and some of them are actually pretty decent, OSIAT. The SATs aren't geared that way. This doesn't stop every publisher on the planet from putting out study guides, of course, but I'm not convinced they'll improve your score much.
My recommendation is to get a good night's sleep the night before, get up at least an hour before you have to leave to go take the test, wake up thoroughly, and eat a good breakfast. Seriously.
And if you have any chemical habits (e.g., caffein), kick them at least two weeks before the test.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I'm a 1570 scorer on the SAT, back when it was a 1600 test. I've also coached a few kids on how to take the current SAT. Here are my tips:
1) When writing your essay (definitely the most stressful part of the new SAT), remember that the graders are looking for a specific format. It is a persuasive essay that should fall into the standard 5 paragraph: Thesis, Support, Support, Support, Conclusion format. Do not be equivocal (even though intelligent essay writers tend to equivocate)... focus on supporting your initial thesis. Be opinionated, but don't try to pose a hidden agenda... you are answering a test question, not sowing the seeds of rebellion. Read the question fully and be sure your essay answers the question. Organization gives you more points than content or wit. Grammar and punctuation count, as well as spelling. If you have problems with American spelling, you might want to find some way to light a torch over that and mention your British heritage, if possible. Check out this link to get some insight into the essay part:
http://scienceblogs.com/challenge/
2) You can tell most of the above posters are males, because they have a lot of tips for the math section. In general, the math portion is Algebra and Geometry, with the occasional time-based (as in clock) problem thrown in. You shouldn't have to use any trigonometry, although I found it to be useful. Know how to read and interpret ratios. Answer every question, even if you are just guessing... a lot of points can be earned if you can narrow it down to 50/50. Some math problems can be reverse-engineered by reading the answers first instead of the question (this is true of the language section, too, on some occasion)
3) The language section focuses on your reading comprehension, vocabulary, and attention to detail. Unfortunately, there is very little way to train this other than reading a lot, using critical reading skills. Eliminate the obviously wrong choices (and there will be quite a few). If you have a low vocabulary (most high school students do, no offense), you might try to "cram" vocab words before the exam, but most of the words probably won't stick unless you use those words on a regular basis or can maintain an emotional connection to the word somehow. If all else fails, use "Phil's Law": Pick the longest answer. It's just as (in)effective as marking "C" for everything, but it gives you a strategy that you can use so you don't waste time on difficult questions that you can't possibly answer.
4) I have never taken a course in the SAT. Instead, I simply used practice tests. You can find these at your local library or bookstore. Try to replicate the actual experience of the SAT (the appropriate amount of time, breaks, etc.) to condition yourself. It used to be that taking the SAT multiple times would help you improve your scores, as colleges would look at your highest. While this is certainly true of the vast majority of colleges, some are starting to look at your initial SAT scores. Be warned.
5) The most important preparation you can have is the night before. Get plenty of sleep, eat good well-balanced meals, and drink plenty of fluids. Pop a vitamin or two. Don't use any drugs if possible (prescription or otherwise). If your house is chaotic, make sure everyone in the house knows that you have an important exam and that you need their support (and silence) on the night before.
6) Be sure to treat yourself the night after the exam. It gives you something to look forward to when your brain is turning into mush. Seriously, it will help psychologically, and improve your time management.
7) Double check what answers you've marked every 20 questions or so. I've personally saved myself a lot of grief on exams by double checking and finding that all my answers are off by one. If you do it every 20 questions, then you won't have the "end of exam panic" when you realize that you've made a horrible mistake.
8) I don't know how many "linear" test takers are out there
How does an F student get an internship?
"Hey, look, I flunked all my classes! Can I get a job with you? I tried to go to college. I'll bring pot."
Buy a book of prior tests. That may be harder than it sounds -- If the book doesn't claim to contain questions from prior tests then it doesn't. Lots of folks produce practice test books filled with questions from distinguished professors that never were and never will be asked on a real SAT. Take it from a guy who scored well: they're not the same. They're not even close. You need a book of tests composed from questions actually asked on prior SATs.
Also you'll need a recent book because the SAT changed radically just a few years ago.
Anyway, buy the book, take one test untimed and two more timed. That'll give you both a feel for the questions, some idea how much time to allocate to a question before skipping it and moving on and an approximate idea how you'll score on the real thing.
That's it. You're done. The SAT is an APTITUDE test, not an achievement test. You can "study" until you can't take it anymore but its unlikely to improve your score by more than a few points.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
We get a SAT-like test nearly every other year from age 10 to 17. So in my opinion the SAT is just another one, except it really counts. Testing has grown even more this decade with federally mandated ones.
I'm not sure what the testing level is in the UK. But I recommend takeing the SAT twice. The first is for practice and maybe you can take it a year early. I think I read somewhere that people taking it twice have 8% higher score on one of the two than whose who take it once.
In my junior year of high school, I took a prep course, and I think it helped, though not immensely, maybe 10-30 points added overall. I always scored fairly well on those kinds of tests, and I think the courses are more useful for below average students or people who, for various reasons, don't "test well."
However, the following year, I worked as an assistant in one of those prep classes, and I took the tests along with the students, one math and one verbal, 4 days a week, and helped explain difficult questions to some of the students. It was like a game after a while, I'd see how fast I could finish one day, or triple-check my work to try and get a perfect score on another. Over the course of a few months, my average score went up by 80-100 points.
The funny thing was, one of the tactics they taught was to take the test multiple times, and focus on the math one day, and verbal another, since your final score is considered the best of each. I found that when I took the "official" test a few times, when I focused on one, I'd do better in the other. I took it a few times my senior year, and I think I got my highest scores when I didn't even need it anymore, and didn't seriously expect to best my earlier scores. What that tells you, who knows, but it seemed to be more a test of self-relaxation for me.
A totally extraneous side note: My school encouraged us to take it in tenth grade, a year or two before most students do, and I scored very, very well, only bested by a math genius in my class who was taking college-level calculus at age 12. My teachers and counselor were convinced I could get in the 1500s within a couple more years, but I did *worse* my junior year, and only bested my score after taking hundreds of practice tests.
So to answer your original question, the best way to figure out what you're supposed to know is to simulate the activity as much as possible. Or don't look at the test at all and take it cold.
F1 not F.
It is the visa class for a student. F1(B) to be exact, i think.
Me and Jethro Bodine; soul brothers.
*sound of other shoe dropping*
Depends on the school and who you are.
Preach on bother man, truer words never spoken and all that. However, gp is slightly correct in that this "advice" is dangerous, at least to some.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
. . .gp is slightly correct in that this "advice" is dangerous, at least to some.
Information missapplied is always dangerous, but again, I never advised not taking the SATs.
I have, however, advised people not to attend college at all, but not under this "story," where I am under the assumption the questioner is not interested in such advice.
KFG
I can't think of a single scholarship I've ever heard of that makes award decisions based on a one time, 4 hour test.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
National Merit Scholarship is awarded to students with good scores on the PSAT.
Back in the late 90s when I was subjected to such things (before the writing section came around, thankfully) I took the test four times. This repeated exposure to the test upped my score by several hundred points, and I had no problem getting into an Ivy League school (Cornell), despite having gone to one of the worst (and very rural) public high schools in PA.
Learning vocabulary words can help, but the most important thing is to learn to get a good feel for the test. Go and take it several times, and do practice tests (in as similar of an environment as possible - encoding specificity causes memory to be context-sensitive).
Personally I think the SATs are a big game, but apparently there is some significant statistical correlation between SAT score and learning ability/intelligence, as low as it may be. Also I think the prep courses are a big waste of time, but that may be different with the new SATs, and it may be possible that some people need them more than others.
I don't care what your employer tells you, but when I took the test, this is how it worked. The Princeton Review called the "Joe Bloggs attractors" in their book, since they can't really call people idiots. They noted that they were answers derived from something that would seem somewhat "common sense" as in the numbers in the problem would easily work out to that. On the beginning questions to a section, those were the right answers. The other answers were obviously wrong. On the last questions, they were put there to screw you. You could essentially always write them off as wrong.
I'll put it simply. Suppose I ask the question: "A study revealed that 55% of students like math, but of those only 42% liked trigonometry. What percentage like trig?" I can vary the difficulty simply by varying the answer choices. If I presented the choices as: a) 23.1% b) 0% c) 100% d) 100000% it's real easy. There's only one answer that could possibly be right. However if the answer choices are a) 23.1% b) 13% c) 97% c) 42% it's harder. The answers contain "idiot attractors". Things like repeating one of the numbers as an answer, or simply subtracting them as people unfamiliar with percentages might want to do.
Now my example is overly simplistic, but it shows what I (or rather the Princeton Review) am talking about. As the questions increase in difficulty, they try to put more "gotcha" answers on there. So it allows you to do things more efficiently. On the first questions the obvious answer is what you are after, on the last ones don't go for it until you've checked your work and if you are making a guess, don't guess the obvious one(s).
They made this claim based off of studying every SAT test ever released (after a certain time they are retired and made public) and I found it to be very true when I took the test. Their tips seem to have worked, at any rate, they made a big improvement on my score and placed me in the top 2% statistically so I'm going to say they weren't lying.
I know test writers love to think they've unlocked the secrets to the brain and can design a really good test that has no tricks and is a pure intelligence test but you just can't. Tests are just games and like any game, when you learn the rules you can learn how to use them to your advantage.
In europe, we have a defined "level" that you're supposed to achieve to be able to graduate to the "fit for university" level. This "level" comes with a set of subjects and how far you need to be in each subject to be able to pass.
/what/ level you've achieved in highschool, not a pass-or-fail at a certain specified level.
In the United States, each highschool graduation level is more or less different. So what the SAT tries to measure is
According to the tests at the college I attended, my highschool educated me to 4 semesters worth of French (min 3 required to pass as: "knows a foreign language"). I was able to skip lots of math classes with my Dutch highschool math. Similar for phisics.
I ended up taking the SATs because a friend talked me into it (he was very enthusiastic about getting into an American college, me not so much). The *only* really prepping I did was reading through the SAT book a week or two before the test, and doing a few example tests from the back. I can't stress enough how much the book helped "up" my score. My favourite part was figuring out which one or two of the answer were impossible (for instance, in "difficult" questions, there was almost guaranteed to be one answer which was simple, obvious and wrong). Once you'd eliminated those, you're odds of getting the right answer, even through random chance, was already higher than your coexaminees, which is all you really need.
Of course, this was the pre-2004 SATs, so your mileage may vary.