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How to Ace Your SAT

Contributor
By Sabah Karimi
eHow Contributing Writer
(8 Ratings)
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Instructions

    Learn General Strategies

  1. Here are some tips that will also help you achieve your top score overall:

    * You must practice.

    * If you think you did poorly, you can cancel your score before finding it out. You can also take the test again as often as you like. Many educators say there is little improvement after the test is take twice, however, and is probably not worth the effort or expense.

    * You get 1 point for every question you answer correctly; you get 0 points for any questions you leave blank; you lose or 1 point (or 1/3 of a point on certain math questions) if you answer a question incorrectly. However, on the math "fill in your own answer" questions, you will not be penalized for a wrong answer.

    * If you can ever eliminate even one of the choices, you should guess. Statistically, you'll in the end.

    * Within each section of the test, the questions at the beginning are the easiest and become harder as the test goes on. This means that the first "reading comprehension" questions are easier than the ones at the end; the first "sentence completion" questions are easier than the ones at the end, and so forth. This also means that at the beginning of each cluster of questions, the answer that seems obviously correct is probably the right answer. However, toward the end of each cluster, the answer that seems obviously correct is probably wrong because the test is trying to trick you.

    * In answering your questions, circle the correct answer in your test book in groups of 5, and once you have completed 5 questions, bubble in those answers on your answer sheet. This is because it takes a lot of time to go back and forth, so you can save time by bubbling a bunch in at once. Just make sure that you match your bubbles to the right questions.

    * If you find yourself wasting time over a question, skip it and move on. It's not worth it to lose 10 minutes answering one question when that will keep you from getting to the 5 questions that you could have gotten right.

    * There will be a total of 7 sections on the test: 3 math, 3 verbal, and 1 "experimental." The experimental will be either another math or verbal section. However, you won't know which section is experimental. The good news is, though, that it won't count towards your score. So if you think that you bombed one section, take heart in the fact that it might not count.

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on 7/21/2009 Here's a fantastic article on CRITICAL READING:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5193165_attack-critical-reading-section-effectively.html

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