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A complete SAT reference: Pattern, Eligibility,
New SAT vs. Old SAT, Tips, Preparation and much more… A complete SAT bible
Pattern
SAT exam is standardized entrance test mainly taken by
those candidates who want to study in the USA. The exam score is obligatory for those students
who want to take admission in undergraduate courses in USA. The exam has a standard format and is
divided into four sections. The exam has a set pattern of questions,
curriculum, conditions of admission, and scoring etc. The exam is generally
held for the purpose of granting admission in the undergraduate courses across
the US. The exam is really important and almost all the colleges acknowledge
the SAT as
an entrance exam. The score of the SAT exam
will determine your admission in your desired college. This makes the exam very
famous among aspirants who want to take admission in undergraduate programs in
US.
SAT reasoning test:
Writing: This section has essay type question and MCQ type
questions. The essay section has been allocated 25 minutes of time.
Critical Reading: The critical reading section is divided into three
sub-sections. The questions asked in this section are based on either short
passage reading or long passage reading. The questions are multiple choice based
questions. These questions generally evaluate a student’s writing skills.
Mathematics: Mathematics section also consists of three sections.
The total time allotted to this section is 70 minutes.
Eligibility for SAT exam
Those who want to appear in this
exam must have passed their Class XII from
a recognized Indian university or education board. The students are required to
take up further tests, personality test, essay writing and much more depending
on the university or college you want to apply. The scores that are finally
considered depend upon the fact that in which college you want to apply. The
score ranges accepted by colleges consider the mathematics and verbal scores.
Students can reappear for the exam, but this action is not fruitful if higher
scores are not expected.
New
SAT vs. Old SAT
A lot of the focus on the SAT the last couple
of years has been centered around concerns about the so-called "new" SAT. Many students and
parents are confused about the nature of the changes made to the SAT by the
College Board and how colleges will react to different score curves on the SAT.
We’re here to tell you that despite the label "new," not much about
the SAT has changed, with a few major exceptions. We will list the four
important changes below, but just know this: colleges still expect you to score well on the SAT, new or old, in
comparison to other test-takers. That is, you should not spend your time
worrying about how colleges will view your performance - you should work on improving your performance
on the test regardless of your old score.
Here are the four big changes on the
"New SAT:"
It's no secret that the biggest change on the new SAT is the addition
of an entirely new, scored section on the test that covers grammar and English
sentence construction. This section is aptly titled the
"Writing" section; you will receive a separate score for your
performance in "Writing." It is scored on an 800-point scale and
includes an objective component as well as a short writing assessment known as
the "Essay Section." College
Board included the new section in response to the requests of many admissions
officers to make some sort of English assessment mandatory. In the past, SAT
Writing was a separate subject test structured very similarly to the current Writing
Section. Now that the subject test has been integrated into SAT Reasoning, colleges will look to the Writing section to
determine a student's skill with the English language.
Thanks to the Writing Section and extended Reading and Math sections of the SAT,
the test is longer as a whole - in fact, the total length of testing is just
under four hours. As such, the SAT has become something of a marathon, and many
students complain about "brain strain" after such a long test. The only way you can prepare for the length
of the test is by practicing under the timing conditions that you
will experience on test days: that means practice testing. Most studies show
that practice testing is the single most important factor in SAT preparation;
you certainly do not want to be among the people who are not prepared! So, the
best advice we can give you about handling the long time of testing is to
practice for it.
The College Board decided that the math
section on the SAT I of old was a bit too easy as many students were scoring
perfect raw scores, leading to test grade inflation. In addition, college
admissions officers complained that the test did not actually assess math
skills but how a student's nerved fared under pressure. In turn, the College
Board decided to make the SAT Mathematics section slightly harder, including
topics from Algebra II and a bit
more geometry. However, the changes were very minor, and actually
unlikely to severely affect the majority of students taking the test. Still,
you should be familiar with topics up to Algebra II including factoring, simplification, and
solving for roots of quadratics.
One of the big changes you should be pleased
with is the decision to remove analogies from the SAT Critical Reading section.
Analogies were questions that tested you both on your knowledge of vocabulary
and your ability to logically compare the meanings of words. Critics of analogy
questions complained that they would not be employed in "real life"
and that they were biased towards certain socio-economic groups. In response,
the College Board replaced the analogies with sentence completion questions. Sentence Completion questions test
a student's knowledge of vocabulary in context, which is considered more
appropriate and indicative of a student's knowledge
Tips and
Strategies for SAT 2011
The mere thought of cracking the SAT test can be never
wrecking for most of the students. However, the test itself is no rocket
science. Mentioned below are a few simple guidelines that can help you attain a
good SAT score.
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It is essential to start studying well in
time for the SAT test. You should consider studying at least 4 months before
the SAT exam
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SAT has various questions to test diction and
reading comprehension skills in the verbal section. Reading newspapers, novels,
watching English movies will prove to be quite beneficial. Make sure to check
the dictionary for unfamiliar words
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You should try to incorporate the new learned
words in your every day usage
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It is advisable to make a note of every word
that you learn along with its meaning in a small diary. Make sentences with
those words so as to comprehend their usage better. Keep this diary handy and
scan through the pages whenever you get time
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It’s a good idea to learn groups of words in
multiples. Learn prefixes, suffixes and root meanings. Take for example the
prefix “ex”. It means out or away. Now think of similar words such as exterior,
exit, extrinsic or extrapolate. You can easily guess that extrinsic means
external to as it is another ex word
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It is important to hone your writing skills
for the writing section in the SAT test. The easiest and most reliable way is
to maintain a journal
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It is important to work on logic puzzles. SAT
is known to test logical reasoning skills of a candidate. You can easily
purchase logic puzzle books from bookstores and practice on an everyday basis
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During the course of your SAT preparation if
you use calculator frequently, feel free to take the calculator to the exam.
However, students who are not well versed with the use of calculator will gain
little from its use during the exam
-Nimit Shah
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