SAT Examination
It is best to apply for some SAT preparation classes so you could get good grades because your SAT scores are very important especially if you want to get to good universities. SAT is used as a basis together with your high school grade point average or GPA to measure a student’s critical thinking skills which is needed to get good academic grades for college. Great universities require a student to be intellectually capable to handle their intensive learning process and thus they require a certain GPA and SAT score in order to get in. It is a great plus if you graduated from one of these decent universities when you apply for work after graduation.
Of course it is best if you are already a good student in the past, as your ability to analyze different problems would be reflected in your SAT scores. The SAT results does not lie and they have created the test to correctly evaluate the test takers so, studying at the last few days won't really help you get good scores on your SAT tests. Stock knowledge is vital not just for SAT tests but from other entrance exams so you really have to build up your stock knowledge as early as you can if you want to make the cut.
The SAT exam is made up of 3 major sections. On each section, you can receive scores from 200 to 800 and all scores are multiples of 10 so you can have a score of 210, 220, 780, 790 and so on. Each of the 3 sections are divided into 3 parts and there is an addition of an experimental section or the equating section that can be included in any of the 3 major sections so all in all there are 10 subsections. The test is timed for 3 hours and 45 minutes only but some schools add 10 to 24 minutes for instructions, orientations and material distribution and for other administrative steps.
The three sections are Mathematics, critical reading, and writing.
In mathematics, the 2 subsections are for 25 minutes each and one is for 20 minutes only. One of the 25-minute subsections is completely just multiple choice and is made up of 20 questions. The second 25-minute subsection has both multiple choice questions and grid-in questions. The second 25-minute subsection has 8 multiple choice questions and with 10 grid-in questions. The 20-minute subsection is made up of 16 multiple choice questions. All Math questions are straight forward and the SAT administrators have already removed the quantitative comparison questions to prevent the students from getting confused with the deceptive nature of quantitative comparison Math questions.
In Critical Reading, it is made up of 2 25-minute subsection and 1 20-minute subsection. The critical reading section is made up of sentence completions and there are reading passages with follow-up questions to determine if you have the ability to compare related passages and analyze the given data for each passage. Sentence completions is a test to check the student’s vocabulary and how they understand the sentence structure by selecting the appropriate words to complete the sentence properly.
In Writing, it tests the students writing capability and checking for their knowledge in grammar. The test is made up of multiple choice questions and essay. The first part of the writing test is the essay section. You are provided 25 minutes to finish the test. The questions asked for this test are usually very general and no advance knowledge on a certain knowledge category is required from the student. The student can even take examples from his or her own personal experiences. As long as the essay is exact and answers the essay question logically, the trained readers would assign essay scores of up to 6 points. The next section after essay writing is all multiple choice. Usually, in multiple choice you are given sentences with errors so you are to figure out which part of the sentence structure is incorrect and what should be its replacement to improve the sentence. The paragraph improvement questions will test the student's ability to understand the organization of ideas by having essays that are poorly written which is to be analyzed in order to answer the series of questions to figure out which parts of the paragraph needs to be improved.
When you are ready to take the SAT Reasoning Test, you are obligated to pay $43 and $68 for the international test takers. If you are unable to pay this, the College Board gives out fee waivers to students with a low income family.
Knowing the types of tests given on the SAT tests is important as it allows you ample time to prepare your skills for each test. You must give yourself enough time to study for this test. Although it is an evaluation test to check for your stock knowledge, reviewing before the exam is really important. No matter how bright you are, it's still great to give yourself the time to review and refresh everything. Remember, it's a timed test so speed is equally important so you must practice answering questions with good speed. If you answer questions slowly, most likely you would end up failing the test because you are not provided extra time to finish. Once the time is up, all questions unanswered are considered wrong.
Take time to relax a few days before the SAT exam itself. It is not advisable to study the night before the exam proper as stress and fatigue could ruin your concentration and no matter how hard you have studied, once your body could not handle the stress and long test periods, there's nothing else you can do. So, take your time to relax and have a good night sleep the night before the SAT examination.