Subscribe to our newsletter. The CollegeBoard has emphasized time and time again that coaching or test preparation courses will not significantly improve your SAT score. However, keeping a few tips in mind before and during the test will definitely help. Timing Yourself Even though time is strictly limited on the SAT , working too quickly can damage your score.
Many problems hinge on subtle points, and most require careful reading of the set-up.
Because high school can put heavy reading loads on students, many will follow their academic conditioning and read questions quickly, looking only for the gist of what each is asking. Once they have found it, they mark their answer and move on, confident they have answered it correctly. Later, many are startled to discover that they missed questions because they either misread the problems or overlooked subtle points. To do well in your classes, you have to attempt to solve every, or nearly every, problem on a test. For the vast majority of people, the key to performing well on the SAT is not the number of questions they answer, within reason, but the percentage they answer correctly.