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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?"
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.
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
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)