About The SAT I

What is the SAT I?
When should I take the SAT I?
What is covered on the SAT I?
Are there penalties for guessing?
Should I try to complete every problem?
How many times can I take the SAT I?
How can I prepare for the SAT I?

What is the SAT I?
The SAT or Scholastic Assessment Test is a 3-hour college admissions exam given seven times a year, in January, March or April, May, June, October, November, and December.

When should I take the SAT I?
Most students take the SAT I during the winter/spring of their junior year, saving the fall of their senior year for retesting, if necessary. However, you should take it whenever you're most prepared to take it. You should figure out the best dates for you based on when you will have the time to prepare for it. For instance, if you have more time to prepare in the summer before your junior year, you should consider taking it in the fall of your junior year. If you won't be able to prepare in the summertime and want to study during the school year, a spring test date may be better for you.

There are several ways to register for the SAT I. Whichever way you use, be sure to register early to insure the best choice for test location and to avoid late fees.

  • online registration
  • mail registration
  • telephone (only if you've registered for an SAT program test before)
  • fax (only if you do NOT have a special need such as if you are a student with a disability, are requesting Sunday testing, or requesting testing from a location closer to home.
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What's covered on the SAT I?
The concepts covered on the SAT I come from sixth- to ninth-grade mathematics: Basic arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. (About one-third of the test questions are from each category.) However, the way that these concepts are used on the SAT I is substantially different from the way they are presented in grades six to nine. This means that even if you're on top of your basic math, this may or may not translate into a good performance on the SAT I. What is crucial is to know how these basic mathematical concepts are used on the SAT I--which means that you need to learn SAT-specific problem-solving techniques and practice your math on SAT questions.

There are seven sections that make up the 3-hour test: 3 scored math sections (a total of 60 problems); 3 scored verbal sections (a total of 78 questions); and 1 unscored experimental section.

  • The math portion of the SAT I consists of two 30-minute tests and one 15-minute test each made up of multiple choice problem solving, quantitative comparisons, and grid-ins.
  • The verbal portion of the SAT I consists of two 30-minutes tests and one 15-minute test made up of sentence completions, analogies, and critical reading.
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Are there penalties for guessing?
You may have heard that the SAT I has a "guessing penalty," and that you shouldn't guess on the SAT I. This is misleading advice. You should guess aggressively and often on the SAT I. Guessing aggressively means that if you can eliminate even one answer choice on a problem, you should take a guess. Here's why:

To generate your final "scaled" score (from 200-800), ETS first computes your raw score. ETS gives you one raw score point for every correct answer and subtracts one-quarter raw score point for every wrong answer on your bubble sheet. Blanks are not counted at all. This raw score is then equated to a scaled score on the 200-800 scale.

The SAT I (or most of it) is a five-option multiple-choice test. If you guess completely randomly on five questions in a row, you should--by random choice--get one of these five correct and four of them wrong. Since you'll get one point for the correct answer, and lose a quarter of a point for each of the four wrong answers, your net raw score will be zero, Thus, random guessing should not help or hurt you on the SAT I.

This means that you shouldn't waste your time by randomly guessing. However--and this is why you should guess agressively and often--if you can eliminate even one choice and guess better than randomly, then guessing will increase your score. So you should get in the habit of guessing aggressively.

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Should I try to complete every problem?
Most students think that you need to do every problem on the SAT I to get a great score. And most students hurt their score because they try to do too many problems. There are two reasons why it doesn't make sense to try every problem on the test:

First, it's very hard to finish every question while maintaining a high level of accuracy. During timed tests, people naturally rush--and they make careless errors and lose points. Almost everyone is better off slowing down, using the whole time allowed to work on fewer problems, and answering more of these problems correctly. You'll get a higher score if you do only 75 percent of the problems on this test and answer them correctly than if you do all of the problems and answer about half correctly.

Second, not every question is of the same level of difficulty. In fact, most of the problems on the SAT I are arranged in increasing order of difficulty: The earlier are easier, and they get gradually harder, until the final questions are so difficult that only a small percentage of test-takers answer them correctly. A hard question is worth no more than an easy question, so why waste time working on them? Most testers are much better off skipping many of the hard questions and applying all of their time to the easy and medium-level questions.

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How many times can I take the SAT I?
Students can take the SAT I as many times as they like, though there are two things to consider.

First, every score on the SAT I is reported every time you send your scores to colleges, so if you take it three times, your scores from all three administratiosn will be reported. This, however, isn't particularly worisome; most colleges will only consider your highest scores.

The second--and more important--consideration is your time and sanity. You've got much better things to do than spend your whole life preparing for the SAT I.

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How can I prepare for the SAT I?
The best way to prepare for the SAT I is to take challenging academic courses and to do plenty of reading throughout your school years. There are a number of test prep products that you might also find useful as you get ready. These products are designed to help you become more familiar with the types of questions on the tests, develop test-taking skills, lower your testing anxiety, and build confidence.

Free Tutorials
Online SAT Sampler
Diagnostic Mini-SAT
SAT Learning Center
Taking the SAT

Targeted Practice
One-on-One With the SAT
SAT PrepPack
Books and CDs

For additional information regarding the SAT be sure to check out the College Board website.


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