‘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!

How is the SAT Organized?

The SAT is organized into 10 individually tested sections:

• 3 Writing
• 3 Critical Reading
• 3 Math
• 1 Equating (does not count toward your score).

1. The Essay always comes FIRST (SAT Section 1).
2. Next, six 25-minute multiple choice sections in random order (SAT Sections 2-7): Two Critical Reading, two Math, one Writing, and (usually) the Equating section.
3. Then two 20 minute sections (SAT Sections 8 & 9): Critical Reading and Math.
4. Finally, a 10 minute Writing section is always LAST (SAT Section 10).

The chart below shows you the total number of each question type for each SAT subject.

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 Essay: What can I write about?

What can I write my SAT essay about?
In a word, anything. The SAT is not particularly interested in what topic you write about, only that you write well about it. Ideas can come from anywhere, so do not feel constricted to academic or literary examples. Friends, family, current events, extracurricular activities, even your favorite TV show are all fair game to write about for the SAT essay.

What should I write about?
The old adage applies here: “write about what you know”. You should always write about topics with which you are very familiar – topics which, if you are not expert in, you at least know more about than most people. When you write about what you know, your writing not only is more descriptive but also flows more freely because you are able to focus on simply telling a story rather than struggling to remember facts and events.

Can I write about personal experiences?
Absolutely. In fact, personal experiences are many times the best examples to use because they are the ones about which you have the most detailed knowledge.

What if I can’t remember a specific name or date?
No problem. Factual precision is not one of the criteria for grading essays, and graders are specifically told NOT to fact check. Still, if you are having trouble remembering a lot of basic facts, you may want to rethink using that specific example, since you probably don’t know enough about the topic to write a strong essay.

Can I just make something up?
There is nothing stopping you from just making up an example. The graders do not fact check, and, especially with personal experiences, there is really no way for them to know whether or not the event actually happened. However, unless you are a budding fiction writer, it is almost always preferable to use actual events and experiences, since these are the topics you know most about and can describe in the most detail.