If you haven't done the practice test on the website (intentionally a bit harder than the actual SAT), and you haven't seen an ACTUAL SAT, I strongly urge you to spend a couple of minutes and download the FREE sample test from www.collegeboard.com . You should NOT take the test the night before the test, but at the very least leaf through the various sections to get a sense of the overall “feel” for the test.
Click here to read Adam's thoughts on the March 12th SAT test.
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LAST MINUTE ADVICE
The Essay. Remember to decide tonight on the 2 or 3 literary sources that you intend to use no matter what essay topic comes up tomorrow. You'll have 2 pages with a total of 52 lines that you want to fill up as much as possible, and having some sources that you know really well will make it much easier to write quickly—and intelligently—about the topic. Use the first couple of minutes to outline your main points, and then write fast! Resist the temptation to use everyday examples or your own personal experience, and stick with ACADEMIC examples. Use a few impressive SAT words in your essay as icing on the cake, but don't go crazy—you don't want to sound like a thesaurus. Finally, make sure your conclusion does more than simply restate your argument. Try to expand the scope of your paper, perhaps by finishing your essay with a rhetorical question. See page 98 in the book for some simple reminders.
The Grammar/Proofreading Questions. Remember that some of the questions are error free, and to beware of using “your ear.” You're going on a scavenger hunt for specific error types—pronoun errors, idiom errors, comparison errors, and so on—so use careful process of elimination.
The Math Questions. Remember to TAKE PAINS. Write every step down. REREAD THE QUESTION! NEVER sacrifice accuracy for speed. Don't worry about the hardest questions at the end—instead, make ABSOLUTELY SURE you get the easy and medium ones right. DON'T LET THE PROBLEMS BULLY YOU. Use the techniques you learned in Math Experience Sets 4 and 5. FORCE yourself to push past any question you don't immediately know how to solve, and return to it later. That takes IRON WILLPOWER because the strong temptation is to spend time on tough questions. YOU WILL EITHER GET A TOUGH QUESTION QUICKLY OR NOT AT ALL, so don't waste time. Be careful, but don't be afraid to guess if you must.
The Sentence Completions. These are arranged in order of difficulty, easy, medium, and hard, BUT the questions are likely to get hard quickly. DO NOT WASTE TIME WORRYING ABOUT WORDS YOU DON'T KNOW. Get the easy and medium questions right, and then use PROCESS OF ELIMINATION on the hard ones, and guess. REMEMBER THAT HARD QUESTIONS HAVE HARD ANSWERS (and if you're stuck on an easy or medium question—it happens—remember that the answer should be an easy or medium word. You want to get through the sentence completions quickly because you'll need all the time you can get on the reading questions.
The Passages. Remember to get through the passages as QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE, just getting the basic idea, and then spending MOST OF YOUR TIME ON THE QUESTIONS, going back and forth between the passage and the choices, again like a scavenger hunt. DON'T RUSH, and if you must leave a few blanks, so be it. Better to attempt 8 reading questions in a section, say, and get 7 right, then to attempt 12 questions, and get 6 right.
So good luck. Expect the test to be hard, but be resourceful. Take pains. Never sacrifice accuracy for speed, but don't be afraid to guess when you must.
Let me know how the test went so I can share your impressions with everyone (I won't be listing students' names, just sharing everyone's impressions after the test).
