On the new SAT

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…)

College Board to reveal details about new SAT tomorrow

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…)

5 bad SAT prep ideas

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…)

PWN the PSAT

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…)

Make your own SAT

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…)

The Thermometer Experiment

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…)

In which I read, critically.

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…)

The SAT is not like other tests.

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…)

Actually read the question.

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…)