For an extremely clueless student who is unsure where to start, how would you recommend preparing for the SAT subject test for Maths 2? Thank you for your time!!
First, get this book. It contains four old tests, which is awesome. There used to only be two!
Take the first test and see where you land. After you’ve taken it, break the questions into the following categories:
- Got it right and should always get questions like it right
- Got it right but felt rusty doing it
- Got it wrong but I know the concept
- Got it wrong and have never seen anything like it before
Read the solutions in the book for EVERY question. Feel free to submit questions to me in the Q&A for any you’d like additional help on. Seek out help from your math teacher in school, too. Spend most of your time shoring up categories 2 and 3.
Once you feel like you’ve addressed your biggest problem areas with content review, take the next test and repeat.
A few important things to keep in mind about the Math 2:
- You can get an 800 on the Subject Test even if you miss a lot of questions! If you only have one or two questions in category 4, you might choose to just ignore them. Be strategic!
- Unlike the SAT, on Subject Tests there is still a penalty of -0.25 raw score points for each wrong answer. Don’t worry too much about this, and don’t let it discourage you from picking an answer when you’re not 100% sure. For basically every student I’ve ever tutored, this penalty has been a nonissue. For more information, read this old post of mine from back when the regular SAT had the guessing penalty.