March SAT difficulty

I never did a post for this survey at the time—just promoted it on social media. However, for posterity, here’s what we learned about the March SAT—the first of the new format—when it happened.

The Math Guide for the new SAT is (finally) available!

At long last, the fourth edition of the Math Guide is available for purchase at Amazon.com, Google Play, and this site (although I’m struggling a bit to keep inventory in stock on this site, so please be patient if you buy directly from me). It will eventually be available at other online locations (e.g., B&N) (more…)

Updates on the new Math Guide: Digital version available now!

The digital version of the 4th edition of the Math Guide is available now from the Google Play store in every country where Google Play sells books. I will have an announcement about the paperback version soon. (One thing that’s not done on the Google Play book is the cover. I’m working with someone to update (more…)

Poll: How hard was the January SAT?

If you took the January 2016 SAT, and want to help inform the argument about how lenient or punishing the scoring table might be with some data, answer this simple poll.

Relative to other tests you’ve taken (real and/or practice), how hard did you find the January 2016 SAT?

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1nMwgSORaYPzpWd5Ywh2VGzTrOif1X-X0pviDXxRLvA8/viewform

View results to past such polls here: December, November, October.

Poll: How hard was the December 2015 SAT?

This is becoming tradition at this point (see results from October and November). As long as you guys keep responding and finding this useful, I’ll keep it up. If you took the December 2015 SAT, and want to help inform the argument about how lenient or punishing the scoring table might be with some data, answer this simple (more…)

What the Beta for the New SAT Math Guide looks like

I’ve received a few questions in my email asking about the Beta I’m running (full info here). Specifically, people want to know what they get if they sign up. I figured that the best way to answer that question is just to post one of the chapters up here in public. If you join the Beta, you (more…)

Poll: How hard was the November SAT?

This survey resulted in some useful (or at least interesting) data when I did it for the October SAT, so I figured I’d do it again. Relative to other tests you’ve taken (real and/or practice), how hard did you find the November 2015 SAT? This survey is over, but you can still view the results.

October SAT scores are out today

…but if you took the test, you probably already knew that. In all likelihood, if you’re reading this blog, you were probably up clicking refresh on the College Board website at 5am so that you could see how you did the very second scores went live. I really, truly hope that when you did see (more…)

Good luck on the October SAT!

(An actual fortune cookie I got a few days ago.) I know a LOT of you are taking the October SAT. By the time I’m posting this, hopefully many of you will already be in bed, sleeping soundly in confident anticipation of your morning victories. I wish you well.

Site hiccups

Those of you who have been using the site regularly over the past few days might have noticed a few site hiccups—either images not loading, or the whole site not loading, logins not working, etc. Let’s be clear: all that happened because I’m a tutor, not a web developer, but I still insist on doing (more…)

New SAT Math: Experimental design

The new SAT will occasionally ask you questions about experimental design—whether the results of an study conducted by some students, for example, can be generalized to an entire population, or whether some experimental intervention has a causal impact. These questions will not be rocket science, and will not require any math at all, even though they’re in (more…)

Solving systems of linear equations

The new SAT places a heavy emphasis on the “Heart of Algebra,” which is a bizarre and tortured euphemism for, mostly, working with linear equations. One of the kinds of questions you know you’re going to see, probably more than once, on your SAT is solving systems of linear equations. For example: Which ordered pair satisfies (more…)