‘SAT Unlocked’ gets nice video review

Rodney Daut of sat-essay.net has produced a very flattering and informative video review of my SAT Unlocked study guide.

Thanks for the kind words Rodney. I really appreciate it!

What are SAT Percentiles?

SAT Percentiles tell you the percentage of SAT test takers you performed better than. For example, if your score is in the 75th percentile, you performed better than approximately 75 percent of students who took the test.

Although percentiles for each SAT subject vary from test to test, scores generally break down into the following percentiles:

Notice that there is a 50 percentile jump between 500 and 700.

As you can see, improving your SAT score by even just a few points can have a big impact on your overall percentile rank.

From my SAT training guide: SAT Unlocked.

SAT Writing: Adverbs

About once per test, an SAT Error ID question will leave the ‘ly’ off the end of an adverb. An adverb is a word, usually ending in ‘ly’ (like ‘clearly’, ‘mostly’ or ‘faithfully’), that helps describe (or modify) an adjective, a verb, or another adverb.

Incorrect:
Researchers examined the constant changing river bed for signs of invasive species.

Problem: The adverb ‘constant’ is missing ‘ly’.
(The river bed can not both be ‘constant’ and ‘changing’ at the same time.)

Correct:
Researchers examined the constantly changing river bed for signs of invasive species.

Tip: The phrase ‘constant changing’ is an SAT favorite when testing adverbs.

From SAT Unlocked, which includes a complete list of the practice questions in The Official SAT Study Guide that test this SAT Writing rule.

SAT Math: Sets Terminology (w/ example)

Here are the SAT Math ‘Sets’ terms you should know.

Set questions ask you to compare overlapping groups to determine which members are in each set.

Example:

See comments for answer and explanation.

From my SAT guide SAT Unlocked, which includes a complete list of practice questions in The Official SAT Study Guide that test this SAT Math topic.

SAT Writing: Watch Out for Sentence Fragments

Complete sentences always contain both a subject and a main verb (or “predicate”).

About two times per test, SAT Writing will include question containing a ‘Sentence Fragment’ – in other words, a sentence that is simply not complete.

Incorrect:
Jesse Owens, the first man to win four gold medals in a single Olympiad, and setting world records in three of four events at the 1936 games in Berlin.

Problem: The sentence is not complete because it lacks a main verb.

Correct:
Jesse Owens, the first man to win four gold medals in a single Olympiad, set world records in three of four events at the 1936 games in Berlin.

Tip:
Sentence fragment questions appear almost exclusively on Improving Sentences questions.

From SAT Unlocked, which also includes a complete list of the practice questions in The Official SAT Study Guide that test this SAT Writing rule.

How are SAT Math Sections Organized?

SAT Math consists of 54 total questions tested in three sections.

SAT Math includes 2 types of questions:

• 44 Multiple Choice (MC): Typical SAT question with 5 answer choices.
• 10 Grid-In (GI): Enter an actual value on your answer sheet, instead of simply filling in a multiple choice oval.

SAT Math questions appear in order of difficulty from easiest at the beginning to hardest at the end. In the section with Grid-In questions, the Multiple Choice questions end with hard questions and then the Grid-Ins start over with easy questions.

Tip: The harder the question, the less obvious the answer. Because questions at the beginning of the section are easier, the answer choices tend to be straightforward. However, as the section progresses, the test makers throw in trick answers to try to fool you. At the beginning of a section, the most obvious answer is usually the right one. Near the end of the section, the most obvious answer is often the wrong one.

From my SAT training guide: SAT Unlocked.

SAT Math: When to Plug-in Numbers II (w/ examples)

Previously, we talked about the strategy of plugging in a number whenever an SAT Math question mentions a number or integer. This number plug-in strategy works equally as well for questions with equations in the answer choices – questions that are often among the hardest on the entire SAT Math section.

Whenever you see an SAT Math question with equations in the answer choices, plug in a number.

Pick a number and plug it into the question to get a value. Then plug the number into each answer choice to see which one produces the same value.

Remember:
When plugging in numbers, be sure to pick EASY numbers and ALWAYS plug in for ALL answer choices.

Example 1:

The number plug-in strategy also works great for word problems with equations in the answer choices.

Example 2:

Answers and explanations in the comments.

From my SAT guide SAT Unlocked, which includes a complete list of practice questions in The Official SAT Study Guide for which this number plug-in strategy is effective.

SAT Critical Reading: How to Answer Definition Questions

Common to SAT passage reading, definition questions ask you what a specific word “most nearly means” in the context of a short or long passage.

To answer definition questions:

• First, eliminate answers that are not definitions or synonyms of the word in the question.
• Next, substitute the remaining answer choices into the sentence itself and see which one works best as a replacement.

Remember: a correct definition answer has to BOTH work in the sentence AND actually mean something similar to the word it replaces.

From my SAT training guide: SAT Unlocked.

SAT Writing: How are Writing Sections Organized?

SAT Writing includes an essay question and two sections of multiple choice questions.

• The Essay is always the FIRST section on the SAT.
• The bulk of multiple choice questions then come in one big, 25 minute section of 35 questions, and which appears somewhere between Sections 2-7.
• Additionally, a short, ten minute section of 14 Improving Sentences questions is always the last section of the test (Section 10).

The multiple choice (non-Essay) part of SAT Writing includes three types of questions:

• Improving Sentences (IS):
  Part or all of a sentence is underlined and you have to decide which is the best version of the underlined part.

• Error Identification (EI):
  Four different words or phrases are underlined in a sentence and you have to decide whether any of these underlined parts contain an error.

• Improving Paragraphs (IP):
  Questions on how to improve parts of a poorly written passage.

Improving Sentences (25 questions) and Error IDs (18 Questions) make up the vast majority of SAT Writing MC questions, while Improving Paragraphs account for only 6 out of the 49 total questions.

Improving Sentences and Error ID questions tend to appear in order of difficulty, with the easiest questions of each type appearing at the beginning and the hardest questions appearing near the end. Improvement Paragraph questions, by contrast, do not appear of order of difficulty.

Tip:
On the long Writing multiple choice section, answer Improving Paragraphs questions first. Then go back to the beginning of the section and answer the rest of the questions.

After slogging through 11 Sentence Improvements and 18 Error IDs, test fatigue and time pressure combine to make the Improving Paragraph questions far more difficult at the end of the long Writing section than they would be if they were positioned earlier.

By moving to the back of the section and answering these questions first, you can pick up easy points that other students often miss. This strategy also helps you better manage your time because the final questions will then be shorter Error IDs instead of the longer Paragraph Improvements.

From my SAT training guide: SAT Unlocked.

SAT Writing: Improving Sentences Tips

Each Improving Sentence question provides a sentence and asks to you to change the underlined portion if necessary.
Once in awhile, the underlined portion may include the whole sentence, but usually only a part of the sentence is underlined.

Answer choice (A) is always ‘no error’.
Answer choice (A) simply repeats the underlined portion of the sentence as it appears in the question prompt. If there is no error in the sentence, (A) is the correct answer.

Improving  Sentences Tips:

• Improving Sentence questions appear in order of difficulty.
  The easiest questions appear at the beginning of the section and become progressively harder as the section moves along.

• Read the sentence carefully and try to figure out what the issue is before looking at the answers.
  When you know what improvement to look for, you can often eliminate incorrect answers with just a single word. Rewrite the sentence in your head the way you think it should appear and then look for your rewrite in the answers.

• Start with the shortest answer first and work toward the longest.
  Correct answers tend to be shorter.

• Watch out for extra pronouns (it, they, that, this, etc.) and strange uses of the verb ‘to be’ (being, had been, were being, etc.).
  These are usually sure signs of an INCORRECT answer.

• Trust your gut.
  The best sounding answer is usually the right one. Especially among the easier questions at the beginning of the section, choose the answer that you would most likely use if you were writing the sentence.

• Don’t be afraid to pick (A).
  Statistically, each answer choice appears approximately the same number of times (one out of five), so there will almost always be a number of Sentence Improvement questions where (A) is the correct answer.

From SAT Unlocked.

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