Day 1 e-course May 23, 2009
Posted by Jason McDonald in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so far
THE EASIEST, QUICKEST WAY TO IMPROVE YOUR MATH SCORE
Most students’ pacing plan is to go as fast as possible and answer every question on the test. They think speed is more important than accuracy. The truth is they can increase their scores without even learning any new math skills or strategies! If only they would just slow down and realize that for the SAT . . .
Accuracy is more important than speed
The primary concept you must understand to improve your accuracy is order of difficulty. The questions in each group start out easy and get "harder."
Believe it or not, what determines a question’s level of difficulty is not how complicated a solution is or how long it might take to solve. This distinction is based on how many students got it right on past tests. In other words, the "harder" ones are trickier. If they weren’t tricky, more people would have got them right and you’d find them in the easy or medium portions!
SO, how can you use this information to your advantage? Good question. Two ways:
- Once you know your target math score (add 50 points to your most recent score), look at the pacing chart below and decide what fraction of questions you should omit/skip/never look at! If the chart recommends omitting 1/5, that would mean not doing four questions in a 20-question section. It would be wise to omit four "harder" questions (the ones in the last third) to free up time to spend on the less tricky ones.
- Since all of the questions are worth the same one point, you should not spend too much time on individual questions. This is especially true when you are in the "harder," AKA tricky, portion of questions. These questions will suck you in! Circle a question in the booklet if it’s taking too long. Often times coming back to a problem gives you a fresh perspective or you see a quicker approach.
SUMMARY
Unless you are already scoring greater than 700 in each section making your target score 750 or 800, you should not complete every section on the SAT! Accuracy is more important than speed. Use the pacing chart below to help you figure out how many questions you should skip/omit/IGNORE in the math sections! This will free up precious time to improve your accuracy on "doable" problems, which WILL increase your score!
Math Pacing Chart
| Target Score (800 possible) | Attempt this many questions (54 possible) | Accuracy on attempted questions | Omit this fraction of section |
| 350 | 11 | 67 % | 4/5 |
| 400 | 17 | 75 % | 2/3 |
| 450 | 28 | 75 % | 3/5 |
| 500 | 29 | 90 % | 1/2 |
| 500 | 36 | 75 % | 1/3 |
| 550 | 35 | 90 % | 1/3 |
| 600 | 43 | 90 % | 1/5 |
| 650 | 48 | 92 % | 1/10 |
| 700 | 51 | 95 % | 1/20 |
| 750 | 54 | 97 % | 0 |
| 800 | 54 | 100 % | 0 |
YOU MEAN I DON’T HAVE TO FINISH THE TEST?
That’s right. In fact, you should NOT answer all of the questions if you want to maximize your score (assuming you’re not a realistic candidate for 800). If you’re reading the chart carefully, you’ll notice you can skip HALF of the math questions, MISS some of those, and still get a 500 (the average SAT math score)! You can score 550 by never even looking at a third of the problems! You should only feel the need to even glance at the last third of the questions if your target score is above 550.
Of course, this strategy is just a launching place. As you study, you will learn why many of those questions are tricky, and you will make time to answer more and more of them. Before you do though, you have to master the easy and medium ones.
As with each of my suggestions — don’t take my word for it. Try this out on one of the sections in The Official SAT Study Guide. Compare your score to one you took before. If you haven’t taken a single test yet, take one attempting to finish it, and then take one using the above suggestions. Send me an email and let me know how much your score increases!
Look for my email tomorrow titled: An SAT math shortcut so easy, even a sixth-grader can do it.
To your ever expanding abilities,
Jason McDonald
Study smarter, not harder.
If you’re serious about increasing your SAT math score, visit member area to get started right now. I offer a one-week trial so you can see just what’s possible!
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