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10 SAT/ACT Test-Taking Tips

Here are some free SAT ACT test-taking tips. Call us on 914-238-4193 and we'll show you how to put these and other SAT/ACT tips in to action to help you reach your full potential.

Math

1. Underline the question:  We encourage our students to underline the actual question and make sure that their answers correlate with what is actually being asked. Often, the test will mislead you in the direction of another value. Always ask yourself this question: "Am I answering the question that is actually being asked?"
2. Read slowly:  Reading a math problem is very different from reading a juicy love novel. Each problem is filled with useful information that can be extracted and neatly rewritten. Adopting this strategy of careful reading will greatly reduce careless errors.
3. Pace yourself:  Rather than expending time on difficult problems that will inevitably weaken their confidence, we encourage our students to spend more time on the questions they know well, making sure they answer them accurately. Our approach teaches students how to distinguish between problems they can answer efficiently and those that will only consume time and create frustration.
4. Organize your algebra:  On standardized tests, the time saved by doing computations in your head is not worth the trade-off of reduced accuracy. When students organize their work, many common errors that result from not distributing a negative or losing a value are greatly reduced. In our lessons, we teach our students how to quickly and neatly work through problems on paper.

Critical Reading

1. Improve your vocabulary:  In order to master the critical reading section of the SATs, a strong vocabulary is essential. We highly recommend Vocablibs [link to buy], and the Vocablib Vixen monologues [link to free examples] to help you build – as she would say – “a fab new vocab.” Building a better vocabulary will not only help students choose right answers, but also help them eliminate wrong choices.
2. Ways of increasing your score:  Recognizing the most difficult problems and when to skip them is an effective way to increase your score. It is a waste of time to debate the meanings of words you definitely don’t know. We provide strategies that will help you determine when to hold and when to fold.
3. Underline important facts and create an outline:   Underlining and circling important information is an effective way of engaging readers and helping them read actively. We teach our students how to outline the passages as a way of digesting them. Creating a quick outline of the paragraphs helps organize the content and makes answering the questions easier.

Writing

1. Learn the rules:  Learning grammatical rules about subject-verb agreement, modifiers, clauses, and parallel sentence structure, among other things, is essential for students looking to master the writing section of the SAT.
2. Break apart sentences:  Carefully focusing on the differences between the answer choices and applying your knowledge of grammatical rules will help you narrow down your options, increase accuracy, and save time.
3. Master idioms:  We help students learn all of the idioms (common English phrases) that are tested. This is one of the topics that most commonly throws students off, as it is easy to be misled by errors in spoken English.

For other tips, check out the College Board SAT Test Taking Approaches.