In this blog, I’m going to go over what ruined the March Digital SAT for so many students and how to avoid a dumpster fire level score on your next SAT. So, the most common comment that I came across on Reddit was that the more difficult math section 2 was very hard. It was a massacre, according to one Reddit user, and I’m going to try to deconstruct why that happened, how that happened, and how you can protect yourself next time from that kind of math section completely rolling your score.
You Could Not Desmos Everything
The first thing that happened was that most of the students realized that you couldn’t just Desmos the whole math section like you could on the practice test. Sometime between the time when the College Board rolled out all four of the first few practice tests that are on the Blue Book app and now, the test makers figured out that around originally, 30–40% of those questions could just be thrown into Desmos and it would solve them for you. You didn’t even have to know the underlying principles of math for a lot of the questions, and that made the test really fast and easy for a lot of students. And so the College Board has stepped up and changed the test a bit to make it so that you can’t just Desmos everything. That doesn’t mean Desmos isn’t still a good tool to understand and to know how and when to use, but it means that you shouldn’t just throw everything automatically into Desmos like you do on practice exams.
The remedy for this is to always know more than the Desmos way in terms of how to solve a problem. Never walk away from a practice test problem saying, “Oh, I’ll just Desmos it.” Whenever you have a problem that you can Desmos, make sure you know how to do it without Desmos as well, because chances are that if the College Board repeats a question like that, they may do it using crazy variables instead of using a bunch of numbers. They might try to get you to engage in logical reasoning. They might make the question more complex and time-consuming in such a way that using Desmos isn’t the smartest way. The other thing that I’m going to say is that you have to evaluate questions before you dive in and choose which method to use to know when to use Desmos and when not to use Desmos. As a gift to all of you out there, my next YouTube video will go over when not to Desmos.
Some Concepts Were Not Represented in the Practice Tests
The second problem that a lot of students had with the digital SAT this March is that some math problems were not represented in the practice tests, and then they came across them in the actual test, and it took them a lot of time to get up on their feet with these problems. In particular, the kinds of problems that students struggled with tended to be geometry, problem solving, and data analysis problems. Now, when it comes to the SAT, the majority of questions on the SAT fall under the umbrella of algebra. And what that means is that if you’re prepping for the SAT with minimal time, the best thing you can prepare for is algebra problems. But therein lies a problem. There is a great breadth of problems that exist within the genre of problems, which is problem solving and data analysis, as well as geometry, that could still be tested on the SAT but may never have occurred on any practice tests so far because those areas are not tested very frequently. So, when they’re not tested very frequently, guess what? The questions that you have seen are not necessarily representative of what you are responsible for knowing. And so with that in mind, if you are prepping for the SAT and you’re getting a 770 or 800 on your practice tests, beware; there are two areas of the test where you probably should do a deep dive and do all the hard questions you can. SuperTutorTV has an online SAT platform where we have lots of practice math questions that are in those geometry and problem-solving verticals, so you can cut your teeth on those questions beyond what’s just available from Khan Academy or the College Board. You will be able to drill those lesser-tested elements down and make sure that you’re on top of them as much as you’re on top of that algebra, which occurs more frequently.
Math Questions Were More Time-Consuming
The third thing that students noted is that a lot of the math questions seem to be more time-consuming. Now, first of all, I’m going to blame this in part on the methods that students are using. You guys have to understand how to use shortcuts on the SAT, and I think a lot of people are just relying on Desmos as their shortcut, and then when that didn’t cut it, they didn’t have anything else to fall back on. So my advice to you guys is to bulk up on all the shortcuts you can. The good news for you is that the digital SAT is very similar in terms of content to the last version of the SAT, and so all of the hacks and tricks that I have up on our YouTube channel that teach you about how to hack the SAT math section are still potentially relevant for the digital SAT. So, I recommend that you go through all of my old math hack videos and learn all the little tips, tricks, and shortcuts, because all those little shortcuts are going to add up and help you get on top of the time as the difficult section becomes more difficult.
The second thing that I like to do is do a little exercise with my students where we do a practice set or a practice test, but instead of just going through it normally and doing each question once, what I challenge my students to do is pretend you have double time (you can put extra time when you take it on the Blue Book app) and then do every question in two different ways so that you practice your flexibility as a problem solver. That’s another skill that you need to have if you really want to excel on the SAT because you never know what a particular problem is going to require, so the more methods of problem solving you have to work with, the better off you’re going to be.
The Vocabulary Was Difficult
The fourth thing that ruined the March Digital SAT for some students was that on the reading section, some of the vocabulary was particularly difficult and, in some cases, more challenging than what they saw in the Blue Book app. So, although vocabulary is one of the last frontiers that I recommend students look at, I would say that you should be getting a word list and learning words from that word list. We have a word list at SuperTutorTV, and I will give it away for free to you guys. You can download it on our free resources page at supertutortv.com/free-resources.
Technical Issues
The last thing that I’m going to say is that there were also some technical issues that ruined the March Digital SAT for some students. In particular, some students who were on a Mac had problems with parentheses not printing on their math section. If that happened to you, you can reach out to the College Board and try to see if you can do a makeup exam, because that’s really uncool. There were probably some other technical issues, and there were some test centers that had their tests canceled at the last minute, and I know if that was you, that’s really a bummer, especially in places with test availability issues.
So, the rollout wasn’t perfect, but hopefully many of you are going to get your scores back sooner. I hope you guys liked the tips that I shared, and if you want more awesome tips, be sure to check out all the resources we have at supertutortv.com as well as on our Youtube channel. Good luck on your next SAT!
