Last Minute Tips for the Last "Old" SAT
So you’re taking the last “old” SAT on Saturday, January 23, but you don’t feel prepared yet. What do you do? PANIC! Start looking into the military or colleges that don’t require the SAT for admission. No, wait- I’m just kidding.
This blog entry assumes you are using the Barron's SAT review guide. If you're not, use the corresponding parts of your SAT guide. If you're using the Official College Board guide, you won't have things like the flash cards or vocabulary section, and you should actually GO GET the Barron's guide. The Gruber SAT guide would also work - Kaplan, Princeton Review, and others are probably okay, but generally, I recommend the Barron's guides for most tests (the worst thing I have to say about them is that sometimes the problems are actually much harder than the on the real test, as is the case with their ACT guide, but I digress.)
Review the Math Section – Chapter 9 – Do the review questions at the end of each subsection, and review the part of each subsection that deals with each question you got wrong and/or know you don’t understand (a lucky guess in practice won’t help you on the test!)
Review Chapter 8 – the math tips and tricks – especially “Draw a Diagram,” “Trust Diagrams that Are Drawn To Scale,” “If the Diagram is Not Drawn to Scale, Redraw it to Scale,” “Add a Line,” “Add Equations” “Don’t Do More Work Than You Have to,” “Substitute Easy-to-Work-With Numbers for Variables in Equations,” and “Eliminate Absurd Answer Choices.”
These in a nutshell:
1. Draw a Diagram: If you’re asked just about ANYTHING about geometry, but there’s no diagram with it, DRAW A DIAGRAM. It’s much easier to work out a geometry problem when you can see circles, squares, triangles, lines, transversals, etc.
2. Unless the Diagram is Labeled "Not Drawn to Scale," You Can Trust it!- If a diagram doesn’t say “NOTE: Figure not drawn to scale,” it IS drawn to scale, which means you can estimate lengths of lines (use the edge of your answer sheet, a little piece of paper torn from your test booklet, or your eraser, extra pencil, calculator, etc. as a “ruler”), angle measures, etc.
3. Redraw Figures Not Drawn to Scale: If the diagram DOES “NOTE: Figure not drawn to scale,” it IS NOT drawn anywhere near to scale, which means you CANNOT estimate lengths of lines, angle measures, etc., using the diagram. It’s easy to redraw a scalene triangle to appear equilateral, or a 30-60-90 triangle so that the 30 degree angle appears to be the 60 degree angle, as a trap for the unwary student who knows his or her special right triangles (Barron’s uses this example several times). Fortunately, that means the College Board thought the question would be too easy if they drew the diagram to scale. So redraw it! Use the edge of your answer sheet, a little piece of paper torn from your test booklet, or your eraser, extra pencil, calculator, etc. as a “ruler.”
4. Draw a Line: Many questions show figures that are basically two right triangles squished together, or a rectangle inscribed in a quadrant of a circle, with one corner at the center and one on the edge of the circle, but the given diagonal connects the OTHER two corners – all you need to do is draw a diagonal to see that the weird quadrilateral is two right triangles or that the diagonal of the rectangle is the radius of the circle.
5. Add or Subtract Equations: If you see two or more equations with the same number of variables (e.g., two equations with the same two variables in each, three equations with the same three variables in each) – as in 3a + 2b = 6, 2a + 3b = 8 – what is the average of a and b? Just add the equations and see that 5a + 5b = 14, so a+b = 14/5, and since the average of a and b is (a+b)/2, the average is (14/5)/2 = 1.4.
6.Don’t do more work than you have to – Notice that in the problem in 5., above, I didn’t bother to solve for a or b. The question didn’t require it, and adding equations made it unnecessary. So don’t bother – save some time and do another question you otherwise couldn’t.
7. Plug Easy Numbers Into Questions that Use Variables. For example, the question “If Jack can mow a lawn in m minutes, and Jill can mow the same lawn in n minutes, in how many minutes can Jack and Jill mow the same lawn, working at the same rates?” This is HARD for most people; most of us don’t think in terms of variables. If Jack can mow a lawn in 20 minutes by himself, and Jill can do it in 30 minutes, then we know Jack mows 1/20 of a lawn per minute, and Jill can do 1/30 of a lawn per minute. So then we just need to add 1/20 + 1/30 to get the fraction of a lawn both can mow at per minute, working together. Since the lowest common denominator is 60, the combined rate is 3/60 + 2/60 = 5/60 = 1/12 lawn per minute, so the lawn moving takes 12 minutes. You can then plug in the numbers into each answer choice and pick the one that gives you “12” as the answer. Or you could just know the rate is “1/(time person 1 takes) + 1/(time person 2 takes).”
8. Finally, Eliminate Ridiculous Answer Choices. We know areas of circles, squares, and other geometric figures can’t be negative, so eliminate any answer choices like “5 - 3π,” since 3π is more than 5 (it’s about 9.42), or say if one of the choices to the problem in 8, above were “40 minutes,” we’d know it’s wrong, since even the slowest worker can mow the lawn in 30 minutes…
Review My Previous Blog Posts on Math – there are lots of them – why not use the information I’ve put right here for you? It’s good and it’s free – I want you to do well (Why wouldn’t I ? I probably don’t know you personally, so it’s unlikely I have any personal problem with you that would make me wish bad things on you). The same applies to the verbal section – I’ve made many posts about the verbal section, last-minute SAT prep, and the like.
Review the Word Roots Section , and practice the High-Frequency and Hot Prospects words – look them up in the handy glossary right there in the book, or use a dictionary (dictionary.com is fine); read all the word lists and/or use the flash cards in the book for practice - this is great to do when taking a break from studying math.
Review the Essay Section after reading my blog entry on how to write an essay (12/8/2014) – you’ll have to hit the “Previous” link a few times – do the “topic builder” exercises where they give you topics and you have to come up with examples from your life and not from your personal life.
Review the Critical Reading Section. Do the exercises. Know that extreme answer choices “This is ALWAYS true” or “This is NEVER true” are usually wrong. Also know that “word in context” questions really DO require you to go to the lines referenced and read a few lines before and after. If you’re still stuck, know that if two or three choices seem to relate to a common meaning of the word, they can’t all be right, so they’re almost certainly all WRONG – e.g. “run” can mean “move quickly,” “speed,” “race,” but if those are three choices, I’d put my money on “streak” (like a “run of losses by the local team”) or “sudden demand on” (e.g., a “run” on a bank), or “manage” (“Mr. Witherspoon runs the local bank.”).
Review the Grammar Section. Make sure you know subject-verb agreement, the past perfect, the verb tenses, what happens to the verb tense when one subject is singular and another is plural, and they’re joined by an “and or an or,” and American idiom, all listed in the book. Do the practice grammar sections.
Alternate the English and Math Parts of the SAT – as I mentioned above- the flash cards are a great break-time activity, and you’ll burn out much less quickly if you intersperse verbal sections between math activities.
Do a Full-Length Practice Test Under Timed Conditions. Either do one of the tests from your book, or do the practice SAT at https://sat.collegeboard.org/practice/sat-practice-test .
Do the Hard Thing. If you’re a verbal person, don’t skip the math. If you’re better at math, don’t skip the verbal. Your coach, sensei, or personal trainer wouldn’t let you skip the hard things; you shouldn’t either. Basically, if you don’t want to do it, you SHOULD do it.
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I know that this is a lot to do in a week, but hopefully, you’ve already done some of this prep, so much of this will be really quick and easy for you. I wish you the best of luck on the SAT, and I’ll be posting about the new SAT and the ACT soon. Definitely contact me if you have any questions.
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