These will need to be done in testing conditions, even if you simulate the testing conditions at home.
Sat practice test how to#
Read this post to know how to take it in testing conditions.īefore your first real SAT test date, you will need to take 3-4 mock tests during the 4-6 weeks before the test. Use SAT Practice Test #1 as your diagnostic test to understand where you are NOW and what you need to work on. The Right Way to Use the 10 Official SAT Practice Tests: So now that you understand you have limited official SAT’s to work with, and now that you understand WHY you need “real” SAT’s in your test prep plan in the first place, let me share my favorite way to get the very most out of these ten official practice tests! While you’ll recognize the song, you have to admit: it’s just not the real deal! And when you’re prepping for a test day as important as your SAT, that really makes a difference. In short, it’s like going to karaoke and singing “Blank Space” “in the style of” Taylor Swift. And their passages might be too hard or too easy compared with the real thing.because, by their very nature, they’re NOT the “real thing”! Finally, the curves of these tests, while being great guesses, will simply not be accurate: there’s no standardization or bell curve based on hundreds of thousands of actual test-takers to make them reliable-because NO past test-takers have actually taken them on test day. They tend to not have the correct amounts of certain question types, like “ Evidence Questions” or “ Vocab-in-Context Questions.” They usually don’t have the correct proportion of certain content topics in the test. They won’t have the right proportion of question difficulties (there are easy, medium, and hard questions) in them. These tests-while a VERY gallant effort at mimicking the real thing-will always differ from the real SAT in ways that make them less useful for your preparation and your testing strategy. Thing is, that’s not a reliable way to track your progress. See, any test prep company that writes practice tests will do their very best to make those practice tests just like the real SAT. I’m so glad you asked! I have to field this question a LOT with new students. “But Kristina! Why do you care so much about using “real” or “official” or “previously-administered” practice tests? Can’t I just use the ones from my Princeton Review or Kaplan book when I run out?” Test prep companies’ practice tests are NOT THE SAME (and NOT AS GOOD AS) official SAT tests. Please don't mess this up: these are limited resources and once you've used them all up, they're gone. That said, here’s the bad news: you still have only a very finite number of REAL SAT tests…which means you can’t waste them! Luckily for us, the College Board just released another two previously-administered official practice tests (#9 and #10) this past summer, so YOU have more wiggle room than your older friends did. This made things easier, but many students would still run out of tests to use for practice, especially if they came to me AFTER studying on their own and burning through them. These were actual, previously-administered tests with scoring guides based off the results of past test-takers. That made it QUITE difficult to work with to gets students prepared for test day, take it from me!Īfter over a year, the College Board released practice tests #5-8. You see, when the new SAT was first released, there were only FOUR official practice tests to use! Since the SAT had never actually been administered at that point, the scoring for tests #1-4 were based on the College Board’s analytics, NOT from bell curves from actual past test takers. Here’s the good news: you have ten College Board practice tests to work with to get your target SAT score. Not so for the SAT in its current form! For current SAT takers, official SAT practice tests are a finite resource, and you’ve got to make the most of the ones you have.
The ACT only undergoes minor changes gradually over time, so there are (again) dozens and dozens of real, previously-administered ACT tests in circulation. It might sound weird to obsess over the proper usage of practice tests, but as an SAT test taker, YOU have a challenge that didn’t exist for SAT test-takers pre-2016 (or for ACT test-takers, for that matter): there are only a few official practice tests available to hone your testing chops before the real test day! BEFORE the SAT was redesigned, there were dozens and dozens of past tests in circulation.
They have to do with how to properly utilize the 10 official practice SAT tests that the College Board makes available. Are you an SAT test-taker eager to get ahead and raise your score? If you already know that you’re going for the SAT over the ACT, there are some crucial things you need to know to prepare for Test Day that your ACT-taking friends DON’T.
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