I’ve been receiving reports from a bunch of March SAT takers (here are two examples) that they had strange experimental sections, most notably an 18-question reading/writing section that might be a preview of the new Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW) section that will appear on the new SAT in 2016. There were some reports of (more…)
If you’re preparing for the SAT right now, then you probably don’t need to worry about this—the test won’t change until March 2016. Even if you’re a sophomore right now, if you’re already thinking about the SAT then your focus should be on the current test, not the new one. Well, that was certainly interesting! I (more…)
If you’re preparing for the SAT right now, then you probably don’t need to worry about this—the test won’t change until March 2016. Even if you’re a sophomore right now, if you’re already thinking about the SAT then your focus should be on the current test, not the new one. The live stream tomorrow, March (more…)
There are three different kinds of SAT math sections, and it’s important to know which kind you’re working on. Lucky for you, it’s super easy to check without even having to flip through the section. Just look to the top of the first page of the section to see how many questions there are. If the (more…)
The January SAT marks the beginning of the year’s most frenzied test prep season. Seriously, between now and May, it gets real. Because so many will be ramping up their efforts in the coming weeks, I thought it’d be useful to put together a few thoughts on what not to do. Bad Idea #1: Rapid-fire (more…)
I’ve been asked a few times lately about the PSAT/NMSQT, and I figured it might be helpful to put up a brief FAQ about it. So…here that is. 🙂 How are the PSAT and the SAT different? For one, the PSAT, at 5 sections, is much shorter than the grueling 10 section SAT. The PSAT (more…)
If you don’t know li’l brudder you’ve got some viewing to do. I don’t know if this is going to work or if it’s going to blow up fantastically in my face, but I’ve been toying with this idea for a while now (my original thoughts here) and I’ve decided I want to give it (more…)
Source. I came across a great LinkedIn group discussion recently about an in-school SAT class (not a big prep company running a course at a school, an actual class during school run by school faculty) and it really got me thinking about ways I would try to engage students in the SAT in a classroom (more…)
I get asked about guessing on the SAT all the time. All the time. And I’ve written about guessing on this blog often enough that there’s a special label for those posts, so that you can always find them. But I wanted to give a quick tip to aspiring tutors who come to my site (more…)
Source. You know how when people are trying to raise money, they’ll make big fake thermometers and then color them in as they get closer to their goals? I’m sure you’ve seen these things around. They’re ubiquitous. I was just thinking the other day how it’s not a bad idea to approach the SAT with (more…)
I just listened to a Planet Money story that I wanted to share with you. It’s a 4:26 long discussion of risk aversion and how some experts see it distorting the American housing market. I’m not recommending it because I think you need to be thinking about the housing market, though. I’m posting this because (more…)
Since you’ve been paying such close attention, you know by now that the difficulty of math questions increases as a section progresses*. On a 20 question section, you can count on #1 to be super easy, #5 to be bit tougher, #10 to require more than a modicum of thought, and #20 to be a (more…)
Note: all of this was going to be a comment on this post at The Fat Envelope Blog but after I typed it all up I got server error after server error trying to submit it. Because I was so sufficiently fired up, I decided to post it here instead. My apologies if you didn’t (more…)
If you’ve been wondering why things have been a bit quieter around here for the past few weeks, there are 3 reasons: I’ve been scrambling to finish this book so that I can ship it off to print. I’ve been trying to keep up with all the great questions I’ve been getting at qa.pwnthesat.com. I (more…)
I’ll be honest: I hate that I’m actually devoting space on this site to reminding you to read each question very carefully, but I am because I’ve worked with enough kids to know that errors due to misreading (and misbubbling — ARGH!) are unspeakably common. Rest assured that, if there’s a way a question could (more…)