Are you self-prepping for the digital SAT and wondering what steps you can take to get the most awesome results possible? If so, in this blog, I’m going to talk you through the nuts and bolts of what you can do to maximize the value of your SAT prep.
The first thing that I’m going to say about self-prepping for the SAT is that this is not for the faint of heart. I would say that in most cases, 90% of students who set out to self-prep do not succeed to the level that they expected to when they started. So, I will say this is not for everyone. Self-prep is not the path for a lot of students, but that doesn’t mean that it is not successful for those who can pull it off. But to that end, if you are planning to self-prep, I recommend starting early because, in the case that you don’t follow through or it’s not working, I want you to have enough time to change courses. That’s just the first caveat that I’ll add to this.
Use Real Practice Materials
My first tip in terms of how to actually start the self-study process is to use as many real practice materials as possible. This is one of my mantras as a tutor overall. What’s a better way to practice than with materials that were written by the people who are writing the questions that are going to be on your test? That’s the best way to practice and the best material to practice with.
So how do you get that material? There are two sources that I want you guys to look up. The first is called the Blue Book app. You can find the Blue Book app from the College Board, and it’s free to download online. It’s actually the app that you have to download in order to take the SAT. So even if you didn’t want to practice with it, you have to put it on your computer if you’re going to take this test anyway. There’s six available exams. There’s also two PSATs, which is pretty close to the SAT difficulty-wise. I recommend that you use that also as practice materials, so that gives you eight tests to work with. From a College Board rep, word on the street is that there may be more tests available by Winter 2025. I would expect that by January or February, we might have one or two more practice tests. But this is all speculation. It’s not official, but they are trying to create more practice tests that they can release on Blue Book for students to practice with, so keep your eyes open for those.
The second big real practice material windfall that we have from the College Board is something called the Question Bank. So you can just google College Board Question Bank or SAT Question Bank and you will pull this wonderful Question Bank up. When using this, I strongly recommend that you exclude what they call active questions, which are questions that are in official full-length practice tests. Now, caveat: there are two practice tests online, and don’t get confused by them. You want to practice with the Blue Book app unless you have accommodations and you’re taking the test on paper, which is very rare. You do not want to practice with the PDF download because it’s not the same experience and it’s not the adaptive test. Do not burn through those PDFs because those PDF linear tests have the same questions as the digital adaptive test. So, you do not want to burn through questions from there and then try to take the digital test. It’s going to be a mess. There’s six linear tests, but don’t touch those for the most part, or at least not until you’ve gotten through all of the Blue Book practice tests, because there’s tons of overlap. There may be a few linear questions that are not in the Blue Book practice tests that get excluded when you check this box. I’m not 100% sure, but you might be missing out on a few questions. So, maybe you can take a look at those linear tests if you’ve exhausted all the other material from the College Board.
When you get into the Question Bank, you can actually hone into specific skills. If you’re missing inference questions, you can go in here and look at just inference questions, and then you can actually sort by difficulty level. You then export into a PDF, and my recommendation is to do two PDFs, one with no answers and one with the answer choices. Then you can do the practice set and then go over your work.
Take Practice Tests
Number two, the second tip that I have besides gathering all of your official materials is that I want you to take practice tests. And then you’re going to engage in what I call the cycle of learning. You’re going to take a practice test, you’re going to identify your weaknesses from that practice test, and then you’re going to drill them down. So how do you do that? Well, go over your practice test at mypractice.collegeboard.org. This is where you’re going to review any questions that you missed.
The problem is that they don’t actually tell you what type of question this is, so it might be a little bit challenging if you’re new to the game. So, we built an online platform that basically is the perfect tool for self-studiers to use in order to replicate a lot of the things that I do as a tutor, or the knowledge that I have floating around in my brain. What it allows you to do is you can actually import the results from your official practice test, and then we give you a review page where you can look at your test and know exactly what category the questions you missed are in. We also have this tool where you can add marked areas to the study list, and then you can go through all of our lessons that relate to what you missed on your test. We also have a score report feature that’s coming out soon with analysis on what you missed most often so that you can target your learning to those things. If you want to check out our online course, it has a five-day free trial, but whether you use our online course or whether you do it yourself, the idea is you want to be able to categorize what type of question each question is, and then you want to drill those types of questions down. Again, if you don’t take our online course, the other option is that you can familiarize yourself with what the different types of questions are by reading material from the College Board. There’s a packet of sample digital SAT questions that gives you an example of each question type, so if you don’t have the resources to pay for our online course and you need to try to categorize things, you can study this document and then learn how to categorize it yourself, which is kind of a pain, but it’s possible. So again: take a test, diagnose your weaknesses, figure out what type of questions you’re missing, and then drill down that type of question.
Make a Mistake Journal
So my third tip is to make a mistake journal as you review your test. I know I told you about the cycle of learning already, but in addition to that, I want you to be going over your tests and making a mistake journal as you go. What’s a mistake journal? Well, as you go over each question, you want to read the explanation, understand why you got it wrong and write down why you got this wrong and why the right answer is correct, and really try to understand and learn from all of your mistakes.
Immerse Yourself in Strategies from Experts
My fourth tip is that you should immerse yourself in strategies from people who know this test well. Where can you find strategies from experts? There are a lot of different sources, one being our online course. I have a bunch of videos where you can tag the thing that you missed and go watch those videos.
Two, there are other online courses out there where you’re going to have strategy videos and things like that to help you ground yourself in how you should be approaching this test.
Three, there are books on the subject. My favorite kinds of books are usually written by independent tutors. I would be very wary of books from big, huge brands that your mom heard of and that she prepped with 58 years ago because their materials aren’t always the best. If you’re an independent tutor and you write a book, if you want to sell that book, it’s got to be really good and be based on your one-on-one work with students understanding the problems that they have and how to solve problems. Some of the big brands are trying to make a profit; they’ve got a big name, and I can’t guarantee that their materials are always going to be as incisive and insightful as those from people who really know the test and are working independently with students.
Fourth is right here on YouTube. We have a YouTube channel and have lots of other digital SAT tips, lots of calculator hacks, and things like that. There are also other channels here that you can check out.
And finally, there’s Reddit and online communities. Whether it’s a Facebook group or a Reddit group where you turn to to try to get more information, that’s another way that you can trade notes and find out strategies or even ask why you missed a question. Now, I will say that you can’t always trust the advice of random people on the internet. So, be a little bit careful with that, but it is another resource you can turn to.
Practice with Outside Materials
The fifth point that I’m going to make here is practice with outside materials. So obviously my number one tip is practice with official materials, but if you’re going to be practicing for more than four to six weeks at this point, you’re probably going to need material beyond what you have from the College Board. There are two types of practice material that you might be looking at. One is practice drills, and the other is practice tests. There are several online providers that offer these. I’m not necessarily going to name names or go through them. Full disclosure: I am one of those providers. I have an online course; we have drills by category and we have practice tests, because for me, those are the two ingredients you need. I wouldn’t just do one, and I wouldn’t just do the other. There are some people that only take practice tests and go over their practice tests, but if you don’t drill down the exact type of question that you’re missing, you are missing out on potential learning. So, I recommend that you do that too. You’re going to need to identify some more practice tests or some more practice drills—whether that’s our course or somebody else’s—so that you can be prepared and so that you practice, practice, practice.
I generally recommend prepping for a minimum of 8 to 12 weeks to achieve the most on a really nice learning curve. What happens with most of my students that are prepping for the SAT is we have a pretty good track record with our learning curve, meaning the more work you put in, the better you get. But at a certain point that starts to cap off, and in my estimation, for 50% of students, that’s 8 to 12 weeks. That’s probably about 10 to 11 practice tests, and I like to do a practice test a week. Do this cycle of learning, drill down everything you missed, and make sure that you have the materials that you need.
And that’s the basic overview of how to self-prep. Now I will make a few caveats here, and that is that if self-prep isn’t working, be ready to switch gears. Self-prep doesn’t work for everyone. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Find help. We have private tutors, and we have classes. And if you might not be able to afford that, schoolhouse.world has totally free peer-led tutoring classes. I’ve heard of people improving 50 or 100 points on their SAT.
You can also check out our blog post on Free Test Prep Resources!
So all hope is not gone. If this process didn’t work for you or you didn’t figure out what you needed to figure out, there is still hope for you. Join a class, get a private tutor, and do something. I hope you guys enjoyed this blog and found it helpful!
