SAT math strategy prerequisite June 2, 2008
Posted by Jason McDonald in : SAT tips , trackbackThink with your pencil!
No matter how rusty students’ math skills are, they could benefit first from learning SAT math strategies to increase their score. When I tutor students for the SAT, they often start our tutoring session with “I had NO idea how to do lots of those problems.” I can often tell which problems they couldn’t get right before they even ask me a question.
I simply look at their test booklet and over 80% of the time, if a problem has no writing near it, they didn’t get it. I don’t ask them which of the six essential strategies they tried because I know they didn’t. Why didn’t they? They were like a deer in headlights.
Whether you know the essential six math strategies or not, you need to know where to begin when you’re stuck. The saying in whitewater kayaking is, “When in doubt, move your paddle.” This helps someone struck with fear and not sure which way to go.
Heading in any direction is better than not moving at all, even if it’s the wrong direction! Simply recognizing you’re moving in the wrong direction is enough to tell you to change course! Physical movement keeps the brain involved and doesn’t allow you to “freeze up.”
The SAT question writers have an amazing ability to write questions that lead you to think, “I have no idea what to do here.” The saying that applies to the SAT is, “When in doubt, move your pencil.” If you’re stumped on a geometry problem with a diagram, create a crude protractor or ruler and start measuring! Sketch your own diagram if it doesn’t have one! If a problem is “wordy” or confusing, display the information differently. Make a table or a chart. Draw a tree diagram or a simple picture.
If you’re stuck on a problem with variables, make up numbers or plug in answer choices; and more importantly – write them down and work them through (think with your pencil)! Do anything that gets your pencil moving! If your pencil is moving, your brain is engaged. If your brain is engaged, you are one step closer to a solution; even if that solution is, “I’ll come back to this problem later if I have time.”
The most important fact you need to experiment with is it takes little to no more time to write stuff down than it does to do it in your head. The points you gain by avoiding errors and sparking ideas when stumped, by far, outweigh the time it takes to move your pencil. If you review your practice test and find yourself saying, “I should have got that right,” or “that was a stupid mistake,” you need to write more stuff down and let your pencil do the thinking.
Don’t let the limited blank space intimidate you – use scratch paper. Ask for it before the test begins.
Comments»
Tricee,
Average in each section is around 500. Good news is it’s much easier to gain 100 points per section when you’re below the average rather than above. Poke around this site, you can get your score up quite a bit.
Regards,
Jason
i made a
410 on Reading
360 on math
280 on writing idk if its good or bad
I just sent you an email, Julia. I’ll “see” you in the member area.
How should I study for the SAT Math portion over the summer?
I’ve been taking practice tests from the Princeton Review book and the Collegeboard book, but no matter how much I solve these math problems I feel like I’m not improving.
The last time I took the SAT, I studied a lot for the math part. I basically took a SAT course where I had to solve lots and lots of problems. But I still got below 700. Is it just me or am I studying wrong? Now I’m trying to analyze why I got the problems wrong, but I don’t know if it’s working.
I always run out of time too. What should my study plan be over the summer?
Anonymous,
1940′s pretty solid. To get 2100 you really gotta know strategies for the test. Best place to start with the math section is my free e-course.
I recently received 1940 on my SATs. Is this a good score? I did not do well on the math section- I go only 590, how can I get my score up to over 2100?
Great question, Chris. You need to have a plan every time you take a practice test. This is a great place to start.
You need to figure it out for each of the three subsections. I’ll do the math section for you and you can do the others . . .
For starters, guessing is a wild card so be sure to read my guessing post to address whether you should guess or not. Guessing isn’t a factor in the formula you’re after, but leaving questions blank is.
Here’s a formula you can use to toy with how many questions you need to get right to hit your target score in a given section:
RS = Raw Score
AQ = Attempted Questions
PC = Percent Correct of attempted questions
RS = (PC)(AQ)/100 – (AQ)((100-PC)/400)
Now from a math point of view, we could clean this up by factoring and such but I think it’s clearer to leave as is so you can see the raw score is simply the number of correct questions minus 1/4 of the number of missed questions. Your actual score may be slightly higher as there’s no 1/4 point deduction for missed grid-in questions (10/54).
To get a 600 in math you need a raw score of 38 (from pg. 439 in The Official SAT Study Guide). You can get this raw score many different ways. At one extreme, you can answer every single question (54), get 76% correct (41) and get a RS of 38 (from above formula). Another example is leaving 1/5 of them blank (so AQ = 43) and getting 91% of those answered correct (39/43).
You’ll notice for the writing section that there’s one more variable — the essay score. I’d suggest running the numbers with a 4 or 5 on the essay if you’re a candidate for 600 overall. Toy with the numbers and let me know if you have any more questions!
Is there a formula or strategy that can be used to get a certain score?
Say for instance, I wanted an 1800, is there a method that i can use to know exatly how many problems that I can get wrong and how many I can guess on to get the score I desire?
Jamez,
To get your overall score you just add the three subscores. So yours is 1250. A 250-point gain is doable with some prep.
The best place to start is to buy the only printed SAT book worth purchasing: “The Official SAT Study Guide” exclusively for its 8 full length practice tests. Take one and score it. You’ll then know specifically where to need to improve. Be sure to take my free ecourse if you haven’t already. Happy to help you if you have any other SAT questions.
how do i boost my sat scores. i have to make a 1500 on my sat score in order to be accepted in western carolina university.
-i made a 410 on critical reading
-a 430 on math
-and a 410 on writing.
whats my overall score( for an example 1500,1100,1300)
please help!
Robert — here’s an excerpt from day 4 of my free 5-day ecourse. Be sure to sign up if you haven’t already.
Many students are aware that memorizing vocabulary and word roots will boost their verbal and writing SAT scores. However, there is a lot of misinformation out there regarding whether memorizing anything math related will boost one’s math score.
MYTH: You shouldn’t memorize math information as all required formulas are provided on the test
I’m here as a professional math tutor to tell you, you should memorize formulas (not only the given ones, but a few more!) while preparing for the SAT math section for three reasons:
1. There are a handful of formulas that they do not provide that make problems a breeze when used.
2. You’re wasting valuable time if you need to flip back to the reference page to hunt for a formula.
3. If you don’t have formulas memorized you might turn back to that page looking for a formula that isn’t there.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
my sat prep teacher told me that i need to work on my memorization skills with squares and things i wanted to know whether that is a good idea or not.