It’s not uncommon for a question or two involving three-dimensional shapes to appear on the SAT. Luckily, most of the time these questions either deal directly with the simple properties of three-dimensional shapes (like surface area and volume), or are just 2-D questions in disguise. It’s pretty rare to come across a truly difficult 3-D (more…)
I’ve only been at this a few months, but if there’s one thing that site analytics have shown me reliably over that short time it’s that traffic booms in the days following an SAT score release. Consider this your official welcome, June SAT score recipients! I hope, sincerely, that you’re pleased as punch with your (more…)
Like the average (or, as some say, the arithmetic mean), the median and the mode are useful properties of a set of numbers and can give statisticians great at-a-glance insight into the nature of copious data. When the SAT gets its hands on them, though, they are usually stripped of any analytical utility and instead (more…)
There are two kinds of proportionality (some call these problems “variation” problems, but I’m sticking with proportionality) problems that you might see on the SAT: direct and inverse. I’m going to cover both here since I’m in the business of preparing you for any eventuality, but you should know that the the former is much (more…)
A quick note before we begin: I’m positively elated to have teamed up with Tumblr all-star The YUNiversity for this post! Everybody knows that eye-popping visuals are a great boon to students trying to learn otherwise dry material, and nobody does them better. If you like the illustrations he provided for this post, you simply must make (more…)
Because there’s a penalty of ¼ raw score point for incorrect multiple choice responses on the SAT, many students experience extreme trepidation about guessing when they aren’t sure about an answer. I’ve stated my general advice on guessing before, but the truth is that while I almost always find that my students benefit slightly from (more…)
My sincerest hope is that when you loaded the page at College Board’s site that contained your May SAT scores, you were elated. If, however, the numbers on the screen left you dismayed, you shouldn’t waste time sulking. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start plotting your revenge. Here, I’ll help: Is the June (more…)
You don’t need to move mountains to significantly increase your score; you just need to focus on weak areas, a few at a time, and make them strengths. This entire site is dedicated to the specifics of doing just that, but I wanted to take a bird’s eye view today and point out that in (more…)
Credit: the very talented Mike R. Baker I’ve already covered the importance of a good vocabulary, and I hope that you’ve been clicking the red vocabulary links on this site as you meander through. They’re meant to teach you a few good words, and to show you that strong vocabulary doesn’t have to be shoehorned (more…)
As anyone who’s ever chewed on a pencil knows, it doesn’t take much force to put a dent in a regular old #2 pencil. You might have an opportunity to use this to your advantage on the SAT. Occasionally, a geometry question will appear that asks you to figure out the length of a segment (more…)
Disclaimers: 1) Probability problems are some of the SAT’s most difficult, but they’re also some of the most rare. There’s a pretty decent chance you won’t see a very hard question like this on your test, so prioritize your prep time; don’t worry too much about this stuff until you’ve really nailed the basics. Ironically, this (more…)
Jesse Lacey of Brand New. Found this here. It’s important, on the SAT reading section, to be able to nail down the main idea of a passage, even if you’re not sure what every single word means. There’s no quick remedy for this if you’re struggling; you’re just going to have to practice. A lot. (more…)
Disclaimer: this is really minor stuff as far as how often it appears on the SAT, so if you’re looking for quick tips to really raise your score, I suggest you start elsewhere. This kind of question is pretty rare. I trust you already know the very basics of absolute value: that |5| = 5, (more…)
Source. So here’s the thing with ratios and proportions on the SAT: they’re really easy. No, seriously, where are you going? Come back! They’re easy, I swear. All you have to do is keep very close track of your units, and you’ll be good to go. That means when you set up a proportion, actually (more…)
It’s important to be ever-cognizant of the fact that on a multiple choice test, one of the 5 answers has to be right. Because of this, it’s sometimes possible to answer a question correctly by starting at the end, and ending at the start. Most in the prep world call this “backsolving,” and it’s even more (more…)
