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Welcome! Our job is to help you get the best possible score on the SAT. This chapter tells you what to expect from the SAT and some specifics about the test. It will also explain how to make the most of all your Princeton Review materials, including a bunch of cool stuff online.
You may have bought this book because you know nothing about the SAT, or perhaps you took the test once and want to raise your score. Either way, it’s important to know about the test and the people who write it. Let’s take a second to discuss some SAT facts; some of them may surprise you.
Just because the SAT features math, reading, and writing questions doesn’t mean that it reflects what you learned in school. You can ace calculus or write like Faulkner and still struggle with the SAT. The test writers claim that the test measures “reasoning ability,” but all the SAT really measures is how well you take the SAT. It does not reveal how smart or how good a person you are.
Even though colleges and universities make wide use of the SAT, they’re not the ones who write the test. That’s the job of Educational Testing Service (ETS), a nonprofit company that writes tests for college and graduate school admissions. ETS also writes tests for groups as diverse as butchers and professional golfers (who knew?).
ETS is often criticized for the SAT. Many educators have argued that the test does not measure the skills you really need for college. In fact, several years ago the University of California, one of the nation’s largest university systems, decided that the SAT didn’t provide enough information for admissions. ETS scrambled to change the test and introduced the current version of the SAT. It’s almost an hour longer than the old SAT and—unlike the old version—tests grammar and includes an essay.
The SAT runs 3 hours and 45 minutes and is divided into 10 sections. These include
The Essay section on the SAT is always first. Sections 2 through 7 are the six 25-minute sections, in any order. Sections 8 and 9 are the two 20-minute sections, in any order (Math and then Critical Reading, or Critical Reading and then Math). Finally, the 10-minute Writing section is always section 10, the last section on the test.
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Each subject area on the SAT—Math, Writing, and Critical Reading—is scored on a scale of 200 to 800. Some colleges look at each individual score, but others look at the highest combined score, of all three scores added together. The combined score ranges from 600 to 2400. The average SAT score is about 500 per section, or 1500 total.
You’ll receive your score report about two to four weeks after you take the test. It will include your scaled score as well as your percentile rank, which tells you how you performed relative to other people who took the same test. If your score is in the 60th percentile, it means that you scored better than 60 percent of test takers.
One way of thinking of your SAT score is to imagine yourself in a line with 100 other students, all waiting to be seen by an admissions officer. However, the officer can’t see every student—some students won’t make it through the door. If your SAT score is in the 50th percentile, you’d have 50 other kids in front of you. Maybe you’ll be seen, maybe not. Wouldn’t it be nice to jump the line? If you can boost your SAT score, even by a couple of points, you move up the line and increase your odds of getting through the door. We can help you do that…
The College Board restarted a program called Score Choice. Normally, colleges get to see every single time you take the SAT. With Score Choice, however, you can tell the College Board which test date or dates (as many or as few as you want) to send to colleges. At first glance, this seems great. “Hey, colleges don’t have to see that one bad score from the first time I took the SAT without preparing? Great!” But there are some major problems with it, which you may want to consider before using Score Choice.
First and foremost is that some colleges require that you send them all scores from all times you took the SAT. They want to know about every single time you take the SAT, and they don’t want the College Board telling them which of your SAT scores they’re allowed to see. For these colleges, you must submit all scores, and Score Choice is not an option.
Second, many colleges actually just look at your highest scores either for one sitting of a test or, in many cases, per subject across several sittings. If the college just looks at your highest sitting, Score Choice doesn’t make any difference, and it’s not worth bothering with it. The college admissions officer will just look at your highest-scored test date and ignore the other scores. But for the colleges that cherry pick your scores by subject, Score Choice can actually hurt you. For instance, let’s say you take the SAT in March and get a 510 in Math, a 400 in Reading, and a 450 in Writing. You retake the SAT in May and get a 410 in Math (ouch), a 500 in Reading (much better), and a 470 in Writing (OK). Many schools look at your best scores per subject and would consider your SAT score to be 510 Math, 500 Reading, and 470 Writing. But if you submitted only one score, the colleges wouldn’t have the high points to choose from.
Whether or not you decide to use Score Choice, plan on taking the SAT two or three times. Many colleges frown on taking the SAT four or more times.
A searchable list of colleges and their requested SAT score submission requirements, as well as more information on Score Choice, can be found at the College Board website at www.collegeboard.org.
The SAT schedule for the school year is posted on the College Board website at www.collegeboard.org. There are two different ways to sign up for the test. You can sign up online by going to www.collegeboard.org and clicking on the SAT hyperlink directly underneath the purple “Students” link, or sign up through the mail with an SAT registration booklet, which should be available at your school guidance counselor’s office.
Try to sign up for the SAT as soon as you know when you’ll be taking the test. If you wait until the last minute to sign up, there may not be any open spots in the testing centers closest to your house.
If you require any special accommodations while taking the test (including, but not limited to, extra time or assistance), www.collegeboard.org has more information about applying for those accommodations. Make sure to apply early; we recommend applying six months before you plan on taking the test.