SAT Practice Tests – The Best SAT Prep Method
- May 9, 2018
- SAT
- Posted by James Maroney
- Comments Off on SAT Practice Tests – The Best SAT Prep Method
Time is a very limited resource for everyone – and this holds especially true for high school students. School, homework, athletics, clubs, work – there never seem to be enough hours in the day. Taking three hours to take a practice test can seem like a huge commitment, and it is! However, let me make the case for why taking practice tests is important. They can have a significant impact on your score – both from what you learn while taking them and how they can help you maximize your studying time afterwards. Trust me, after years of helping students to prepare for standardized tests I cannot recommend them enough.
Getting the pace right
The SAT is a timed test – so time management is going to be crucial. Think of it like running a long distance race. You need to find what your optimal pace is first, then you need to learn how to tell if you are running at that pace or not. You want to get a sense for how far into the race you should be after a certain amount of time has passed. The exact details of this will vary from runner to runner, so to find your optimal pace you have to practice running a race distance. Similarly, on the SAT you want to be able to tell whether or not you are working at the right pace. You want to move fast enough to make sure that you get to every question, but you don’t want to rush and make mistakes. You want to hit your optimal pace.
But how do you know what your optimal pace is? This is one place where practice tests are invaluable. By taking practice tests, you can practice the timing with a proctor. You can get a feel for how quickly you should work in order to maximize your score. There’s no way to improve your timing skills without practice, and the earlier you start the better. The best practice is in test-like conditions – so it makes a difference if you are taking the test at home, timing yourself versus taking it around other students with a proctor. As much as the practice tests can be a pain, they are very much worth it in the end. Students who take several practice tests consistently improve their scores more than students who do not – even when they do the same amount of test prep.
Focus on your problem areas
Another key element of practice tests is that they can help you to focus your review. You can look at the question breakdown and see if there are any patterns to the types of questions that you got wrong. You can then use that knowledge to guide your studying. If most of the questions that you got wrong were algebra questions, then it makes sense to focus on algebra problems. If the majority of your issues were on statistics type questions, then reviewing algebra will be less helpful. There is a lot of material covered on the SAT and your time is finite – make sure you are being efficient. One of the services that we offer with our practice tests is a more detailed breakdown of the different question types. That lets us finetune our tutoring and studying plans – we can see if you need to focus on punctuation questions or on organization and topic sentences. This means that we can really focus in on the problem areas that will gain you the most points and help us to personalize your tutoring plan.
Practice tests are one of the best ways to prepare for the SAT. They are a chance to simulate the real thing, and give you a way to test strategies and see what you still need to work on. You can only reap the benefits if you take them, so make sure that you include them in your studying plans. We offer practice tests in our office on several Sundays during the month – check out our website for more details.
