Students' Experiences with the SAT Exam

Peace be upon you.
Here I'll talk about my experience with the SAT. I'll try not to make this too long. "I'll try"…
My experience was full of mistakes and confusion… I took the SAT 5 times — it took me a year or two (11th and 12th grade)..
Before I started studying for the SAT, I could already speak English. I started in 11th grade and on my first practice test I got a 900… I was studying just academically (and I would waste a lot of time, sitting at the desk for like 7 hours and only studying for an hour or less). I took the test and got 1130 (600 Math, 530 English). The second time I barely studied and got 1100. The third time: I pushed myself a bit more, restudied the Math lessons from scratch, and started solving problems… I took the test and got 1230 (690 Math, 540 English), but unfortunately I was still wasting a lot of time and getting distracted.
The score wasn't enough to get me into what I wanted… I rebooked, studied better than before, and worked through Princeton, McGraw-Hill and Kaplan books… and did two or three of the official tests. I got 1300 (700 Math, 600 English). I decided to retake and improve! I printed out all 8 official tests and did them. I printed CollegePanda 10 practice tests and did 5 of them. Unfortunately I didn't give Math the importance I gave English, so I got 1350 (710 Math, 640 English)… That's my story… Now I'll tell you how to get higher than my score on your first or second attempt, God willing.

1- Start studying math lessons from a book called College Panda Math.
2- Start studying Grammar lessons from Erica Meltzer's Grammar guide.
3- After you finish the lessons, make an account on KHANACADEMY. Take your first OFFICIAL test. Then pay attention because this is the most important point…
4- After finishing the test, take every question you got wrong and re-solve it 3 times.
5- Buy a small notebook and write down "the lessons you keep making mistakes in", lesson by lesson — don't skip anything.
6- Go to KHANACADEMY (besides the tests, they have practice exercises lesson by lesson) and solve the lessons you keep making mistakes in. (I recommend solving everything on Khan Academy because it's the best thing you can study from — they're real questions placed there by the College Board. So solve everything, but focus on the lessons you're weak at.)
7- Then you have to repeat. Keep doing tests, correcting your mistakes, and attacking your weak points.
8- If you understand all the lessons, your Math score will reach 650-700. At this point your problem will be that you need more practice. Then you'll be able to solve almost every question, and your mistakes will be limited to two things: 1) questions considered "harder" than the others, 2) silly mistakes.
9- For hard questions, you need to start solving level-4 questions on Khan Academy. As for silly mistakes — the cure is doing more problems.
10- English is roughly the same situation…

Most importantly, never waste time and don't get cocky. You need to study about 6 hours a day! I'm not joking! Do you want a score that gets you into Medicine or Engineering?! That's how you have to study.
As for prep centers — I never tried them. If you can afford it, sign up at a center, but the center won't guarantee your score. If you decide to study at a center, listen to what they tell you, but you also have to practice at home like someone who isn't enrolled at a center. In short, if you can't afford it or don't want to, don't sign up. My friend got 1400 (800 Math, 600 English) without any center or private tutoring. I got 1350 without a center. And you, if you follow what I told you and practice consistently (around 4-6 hours a day), you'll get higher than me and higher than my friend. Don't listen to people who tell you not to study a lot. You have to study as if your test is tomorrow!
I know you can do it. The SAT is not an intelligence test. The SAT tests how prepared you are… You need to plan to give yourself at least 6 months before booking your first test.
And don't forget PRACTIIIICE + PRAAAACTICE on your mistakes. If you don't practice on your mistakes, you'll never get a good score in your life.

Resources:
Join a Facebook group called Right Way To Sat. The group has over 50,000 members and any test or book that drops, they send it to you. Follow a YouTube channel called Supertutor TV — very useful. YouTube has everything. Anything you don't know, open YouTube and look it up.

Please write any questions in the comments and I'll try to answer as much as possible. We don't need ratings — I'll talk to the admin and hopefully they make a pinned post for us. Anything I forgot or didn't say, I'll add or put in a new post.

Advice from a retaker for new students or those planning to retake
(There will be a second part for Writing and a third for Math, so the post isn't too long.)
First thing you need to know is that the SAT is not difficult and everyone can get the score they dream of… The thing just needs a bit of effort, fatigue and patience!

The most important books and websites I recommend for Reading are:

• Erica Meltzer
• Khan Academy (a collection of 58 passages taken from the site, gathered into a book)

Websites I recommend:

• ReadWorks (the best site for strengthening reading, hands down)
• Big Think
• The (Reason Prep) series on YouTube

Reading is generally the hardest section and the one most students struggle with. Most know it consists of 5 passages, so if we focus on just 3 and try to get a full score on them, we get about 35 out of 52, which gets you to a good score.
Another important point is to look at more than one solving strategy, because Reading especially has many ways to approach and understand the passage. The important thing is to research the methods available in books or online.
The Khan book is very important, and what's important is that you do every passage in it and understand why each question was solved correctly and why this question was solved wrong.
Of course, this talk is nice and easy in theory, but in practice everything is hard. The hard part will only be hard for a short time, and after a while you'll feel you've improved and the hard stuff has become a thing of the past.

Links:
Reason Prep
Big Think
ReadWorks

Everything you need to prepare for the SAT 1 exam:
The program is my own design, as follows:
1- Study the Panda Reading and Writing workbooks.
2- For Reading, Erica's book "The Critical Reader".
3- Read at least two articles a day on sites such as Scientificamerican.com, Bigthink.com
4- Tests, with several types:

• Official tests from the College Board — preferably take one test each week at the same time as the actual exam, on Saturday at 9 AM, with timing. I usually got my real score this way. After taking the full test, return to your mistakes, solve the missed questions and try to learn how this kind of question is solved… In short, you must know your weak points each week and try to fix them.
• Unofficial tests such as
  Panda 10 tests, IES tests, Ivy Global tests
  For strengthening Math (books and tips by John), etc…

5- Follow the Khan Academy site: Khanacademy.com
To develop your abilities in a specific topic, or to create custom tests similar to what you'll see on exam day.
And finally, strengthen your level in every section of the SAT… I recommend always following the site and never neglecting or postponing it.

Books I really recommend:
The complete guide to grammar tests (Erica's book that explains Writing questions with their solutions — very useful)
PWN — a workbook for developing Math.

Mistakes I made:
- Don't finish a book and toss it onto a mountain of books — it won't benefit you more than the ideas you focused on while studying that one book.
- Don't get distracted by other things (FB, Instagram, YouTube shows) — eliminate them entirely from your life.
And don't forget that entertainment is not by tiring your eyes — it's by resting them with a short nap or contemplating the sky… for example.
- Don't ever rely on a prep center; take ideas from it but don't neglect your own program…
Remember that every teacher will play a fatherly role with you, while in fact they may be exploiting you or may not have enough knowledge of the SAT. In short, always be the judge of yourself.
- Choose a place to study alone and remember that 3 hours of studying is better than holding the book all day with the Wi-Fi on.
- Don't waste a single minute… Believe me, you may be rejected by some university over a 10-point gap with your classmate, and lose the dream.
- Remember that no one will have mercy on you in the tercih, so instead of waiting for a miracle… get a score that secures you and let others sit in that confusion. (This is directed at those looking for medical or engineering colleges at strong, prestigious universities — you must get a high score that qualifies you for that.)
- Trust in God… and whatever pressures you face, just say "it's all good".

#Sorry for the length, and a prayer from the heart for me and my parents is enough. Best of luck. GL

By God, brother, I started late. My English knowledge was good, you could say upper-intermediate or B2.
At the end, when only two months were left, I pushed myself hard, even my health suffered. So I advise you to start with time to spare, so you don't trap yourself in a tight schedule like I did. Study at ease, it's better.
I took an SAT course; I only benefited for English in terms of solution strategies and how to understand and read the passage. The English instructor was very skilled, but in the end when I expanded into the books I saw that the Erica Reading book replaces the SAT English course for you and is very useful, but its level is a bit high.
Math was entirely personal effort, frankly. Math is well known: you have to study, understand, see and practice; but it's overall easy and compared to the English on the SAT it's actually easy.
Of course English has two sections, Reading and Writing. Writing is of course easier than Reading. Rules and you go by them, but they need focus and practice too, because you need to try to score higher there than on Reading, since it's more achievable.

Books:
Reading:
If you want to solve this problem properly and have it become easy, you need to turn yourself into someone who loves reading. Buy stories and novels and read them — also websites such as electronic newspapers, etc. Among the books that help you well: Erica Reading, in addition to practicing on the question style from official or real exams. I recommend you start with official because it includes explanations of why correct and why wrong, so at least you know what the question is asking.
Writing:
Two very good books — study one, and once you see your level has improved, start practicing; if you see you still need more practice, study from the other book. (Of course I'm saying it this way because I don't know your level.)
Erica Grammar Writing, Panda Writing
I recommend starting with Erica Writing, of course along with practicing on official or real exams. I recommend starting with official first because it has explanations.
Math:
This is the broadest, but I can recommend several books, and I recommend being comprehensive in Math, frankly: Panda Math, Panda's 10 tests, Barron's workbook, Dr. John's exams — only collect the hard ideas from them; useful.
Of course, all of this should go alongside practicing on official and real tests.

Important note: after you see that you've started to handle a skill smoothly, start measuring time and solving against the clock. Then you'll get to the point of solving a full Math test on time and with timing — same for Reading and Writing.
Reading: 65 minutes
Writing: 35 minutes
Math, no calculator: 25 minutes
Math, calculator: 55 minutes

In the end I hope I didn't mess anything up or give you wrong info. I want to say also: with everything I told you, double-check it with students; if you can improve you'd better take their opinions and so on. Mashallah we have excellent students in the group https://t.me/SAT_TR

I studied for about 4 months.
Every Saturday I'd wake up at 8 AM and do a full test as if I were exactly in the exam hall.
I used the eight official tests as well as the leaked tests in the link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Sat/comments/9544rw/all_qas_tests_and_scoring_in_pdf_form/
On the other days I'd practice on Khan Academy.

For Math:
First I reviewed the school curriculum we had studied — like a quick review, going over the rules and equations.
After that I memorized the multiplication table up to 15, the squares up to 20 and the cubes up to 10.
You have to memorize them like your name; better to compute in your head than to use a calculator.
At first I was slow and would think and waste time recalling the answer; later, with practice, I became very fast and it made a huge difference in time.
I would solve 60 Math questions a day with a timer running. Of course not all in one batch — I'd solve in batches of 15 or 20 questions, then take a break and review.
My goal was to solve each question in one minute, so I'd have extra time at the end of each section for review. So the first Math section, 20 questions in 20 minutes, with 5 minutes of review.
Second section, 38 questions in 38 minutes, leaving 17 minutes for review. When I first started I couldn't finish all the questions in time; later I improved a lot. Frankly, I couldn't solve every question of the second Math section in one minute, so I set a new goal: 38 questions in 45 minutes.
After finishing the questions I'd write down all the questions I got wrong or wasn't sure about in a notebook.
First I'd write the question and choices, then my solution (even if wrong), then the correct solution, and try to understand why I got it wrong.
For example, if a question used a rule I didn't know or had forgotten, I'd memorize the rule. If I got a question wrong because of a multiplication slip, I'd go over the multiplication table and have someone read it to me, etc.

For English:
First I focused on Writing; for me I felt a person can improve their level in it faster than Reading because at the end Writing is just a bunch of grammar rules — memorize and apply them and we're done.
Writing rules are here
If a person just memorizes these rules and understands how to apply them, they get a perfect score on Writing easily. Of course they have to keep practicing the rules a lot until they memorize them like their own name. I'd solve only 20 or 25 questions a day.

Last, Reading — which is the hardest section for me:
I'd take a passage and solve it, and like Math review my mistakes, but I wouldn't write the questions in a notebook. I'd solve 3 passages a day, so roughly 30-33 questions depending on the passage, 10 or 11 questions each.
After a while I noticed my problem was with history and social science passages — the historical pieces; you find written above in the introduction "by the author" or "delivered by such-and-such person in the year 1800 or 1700" or so.
Even though my English was good, I couldn't understand these passages because the old English used in them is very complicated. So I focused on them — every day I'd solve two of them, and the last passage Science. The Science passages are the easiest if a person is good at Biology and Physics, because they often talk about theoretical information in those two fields, or an experiment by some scientist.

Frankly, Reading is just practice — there's no other way:
You can have a sheet on which you write the words whose meanings you don't know, with the meaning, and review them every day before sleeping. The SAT focuses on academic words and you'll find many words repeating, so it's useful to know their meanings. Of course not every word you don't know — just the basic ones.