hi homie listen up if your SAT exam is in a month a week tomorrow it doesn't change the fact that there are only two ways to immediately improve your score the last minute topics you study and the mental gymnastics of test taking technique I took an SAT practice exam about 3 weeks before my real exam and I scored a 1430 it's not a terrible score but when the Harvard average is a 1520 that just wasn't going to cut it so in those last 3 weeks leading up to the real exam I came up with a strategy to get my score up over a 100 points to the, 1550 I ended up scoring on the real test I don't care if your sat is in 2 days if you lock in with me for the next 10 minutes I'm going to tell you every single trick I implemented so we can give your score that last little boost it needs the math section is objectively easier to improve and if you're not already scoring consistent 800s let me put you onto a little game college board has no rules regarding calculator programs if you're going through the math section of the exam and you think it would save you time to have an automatic program on your calculator that would solve the side lengths of a triangle for you or just automatically give you the roots based on a quadratic formula go ahead and download it you want to have every possible Advantage you can get and if having these programs installed is going to save you an extra 2 minutes or get you an extra 10 20 points on the exam having these as reference is worth your time to get people out there have made sat math calculator programs for literally every use case imaginable just go online go on to Reddit and find someone who has like a compiled nice guide for you with like a good number of upvotes download that onto your ti84 it will help you now if for some reason you're not already using a graphing calculator if your scores are less than 750 in the math section there is no excuse use here go on to Amazon buy yourself a ti84 plus like everyone else has it's the same calculator I use I'll leave a link in the description for you just keep in mind to only download the programs that you actually need what you don't want to end up happening is you download like eight different programs you don't know what any of them do or which one is the one that actually solves for the quadratic formula like you want and then on the real exam you're fumbling around or you're excessively using your calculator for a problem you could solve in 5 seconds on paper now if your score on the math section is less than a 700 you are likely missing questions on every practice exam you take because you don't understand certain Concepts what you want to do leading up to your exam is study every single question that you get wrong it doesn't matter if it was a careless mistake or not you're going to go over it identify exactly what you did wrong and how you're going to improve on it in the future to keep myself accountable i' take like a notebook you could also just do this on your iPad and keep track of every problem I was getting wrong and that way by the end of like a week a week and a half you have like a list of all the mistakes you're making and you know exactly what to do so that they don't happen again the other reason it's important to keep track of your mistakes is because this helps you identify what the actual problem areas are like for example if you struggle with probability questions not because you're bad at math but just because the wording on the SAT is kind of weird you can make that like a a focus area for you in the next week or so go online go on to KH Academy use free resources and just grind a bunch of probability problems until you're not making those mistakes anymore also link all the SAT textbooks I recommend do not waste your money here but get any of the books that you feel would be useful for you to get those couple extra points in the math or reading and writing section always keep in mind that when it comes to this math section unlike the reading and writing it takes you maybe 15 minutes to understand and learn a new algebra concept ramping up your score here is way faster and you can literally do it in days if you want to get your score up fast focus on this first and then move over to the other section one more last minute tip for the math section and this is even for my viewers who are scoring like 750 plus at some point in the week before your exam go over the list of sat provided formulas that you're going to have with you when you're taking the test and in addition to that make sure that you know all of your basic geometry related formulas so area and volume of a cube cone cylinder all that good stuff oh I can't even tell you how many people I know that showed up to this same SAT exam as me they didn't know how to solve for the surface area of a cone it was like a question about like a soda can and immediately they just got the question wrong immediate 20 point deduction and a massive L do not be that guy I'm not here to sugarcoat anything if your reading score is like a 600 and your SAT exam is literally next week there is nothing I can tell you in this video that will get you to an 800 overnight but there are some quick tricks you can Implement that will save you up to 50 points one of the most commonly tested topics on the SAT is reading comprehension and it's also the area that most students tend to struggle with unlike the math section which is very formula based and the grammar questions which you can just learn the rules to and get all of them right the reading comprehension questions are more out of your control you just need to learn the skill to be able to consistently do it for any questions about structure or meaning of the text just start by reading the little blurb at the top of the paragraph that one little italicized sentence at the top can give you context for the entire paragraph sometimes it can help you eliminate answer options it's just useful to reference the next thing here is that the SAT is objectively boring the passages are whack they pick the weirdest topics no one enjoys it part of the reason why you might feel like you're struggling with reading comprehension questions is because it's so hard to just lock in for the entire passage you're zoning out halfway through you're rereading the same thing multiple times and it's just not clicking in your head if you want to get better at these questions you want to develop some kind of a system in your head that helps you get interested in what you're reading just imagine for a second that you weren't reading an SAT passage but instead you were just reading an article about some hobby that you have maybe a sport maybe a club that you're in if you relate to what you're reading it's way easier to be engaged in the text and actually remember what you read you might have an opinion on it it might just stick with you and resonate with some experience you've had that's the goal here you're struggling with reading comprehension questions because you're not comprehending what you read college board is not giving you any sort of trick question here the answer is right in front of you if you just understand the passage better answering the question without having to reread everything is just going to become that much easier as soon as you start reading the paragraph or you look at the little blurb at the top find a way to connect to it and you'll be able to retain a good enough understanding of the passage as you go through it to where you won't need to reread it in order to answer the question for the overwhelming majority of people the science passages are going to be way easier to do this with because they're actually like relatable they're not that complicated and you've probably seen a lot more passages like this when you're in school just doing like your everyday homework the worst passages by far are the old English ones I do not care what some dude from 1762 wrote in his diary bro what it's just straight Yap like I used to get pressed just trying to figure out what the dud is trying to say can you speak a coherent sentence your best bet for going through those more tricky passages when you're you're just trying to lock in on what the hell they're trying to say is to actually go ahead and annotate the text digitally using like the little tools they give you in Blue Book you can highlight key sentences as you go and also just leave little notes on anything relevant you find in the text the actual notes that you leave don't really matter the goal here is just to stay engaged as you make your way through the paragraph as soon as you see one of these like Old English passages and they have like three vocab words you've never heard of before in the first sentence that's when you know it's your time to slow down a little bit pace yourself get through the paragraph without having to reread it four times and actually have some level of comprehension about it and you can make up the time later in the exam with an easier like science-based passage our goal here is accuracy over everything and if that means spending an extra one or two minutes by all means bro go for it there are a couple test taking technique strategies that I definitely feel are worth integrating into your repertoire a super important part of the exam is keeping track of the amount of time that you have left it's how you pace yourself when you're going through the questions it's how you make sure you have a couple minutes at the end to go back and do your review you want to stay locked in on this but here's the deal C board has that little timer that's built into the center of the screen that's just constantly ticking down in the corner of your eye I personally hate that timer you see the little numbers like moving down when you're in the middle of the reading section and you're trying to look at the passage it's just annoying it can also be stressful when there's like 5 minutes left and you still have two questions to get to cuz now every time you're in the middle of the question you're looking at the timer like every 20 seconds to make sure you don't go over budget if you feel the same way as me go ahead and just hide the timer on your test while you're taking it and then instead develop some kind of a system for yourself where you're periodically checking the time at different points during the test for example check the time once when you get through a third of the questions and then again when you get through 2/3 and then again when you feel like you just finished the section and you don't want to know how much time there is to go back and do your review now once you finish the reading writing section you should obviously know that you get a 10-minute break before the math section starts but you should also plan out exactly how you're going to use that break keep in mind that even if the exam is only 2 hours long by the time you get to the testing center they assign you a room they assign you a seat you get any paperwork you need to filled out and then you start and go through the Section it's going to take a lot longer than 2 hours you will probably get hungry bring food and 100% bring water you can just sip during the test it's a nice little 10 15c break if you need it helps you reset the mind I'm a huge advocate for taking your practice test almost exactly like you would the real exam that means you practice of course with ful length sections with the exact 10-minute break but also I used to practice eating the exact same snack I would during the real exam I finish up the reading writing section and then I'd sit every single practice exam and eat almonds and dates I don't even like dates I'm pretty sure it was like 99% psychological but I felt like eating like dates would give me a sugar rush when I went into the math section and so I just do it every single time doesn't matter whether or not it actually works whatever you feel works for you go ahead and do it when I'm taking the exam I want to be ultra locked in I'm not trying to talk to friends or think about anything except for the test but when you're in the testing room you can't control what other people are doing there's almost always going to be someone in the back maybe it's one of your homies maybe it's a random yapping about how they forgot the Pythagorean theorem like bro you're a dumbass okay that's fine what does that have to do with me why are you telling me this now just tell your testing proctor that you need to go use the bathroom and then go take a little walk outside the room you can stretch yourself out a little bit go drink some water just be at peace for a couple of minutes with no one in your ear and then when there's about 2 minutes left go back to the testing room and get settled the evening directly before your exam you don't want to do any heavy studying my best recommendation is to do like 30 minutes of light practice questions where you're basically just going through them to get the brain juices flowing to keep your confidence up as you go into the exam just so you guys get a little more perspective here I want to tell you a story of what it was like for me right before I took my SAT exam I took my SAT during Co when everything was canceled so I ended up driving out 5 hours to the middle of nowhere Oregon just to be able to get a shot at taking the exam SAT exams are always hosted on Saturdays so I finished school drove out showed up in like a random motel and that evening I did exactly what I'm telling you to do I pulled out two reading Passages at the time so about 30 minutes worth of practice question work did it just to make sure I was feeling good going to the exam took a nice good night's worth of rest woke up the next morning and then showed up at a random school that I've never personally been to before and took the test it's relatively common for people to travel or at the minimum take their sat at a school that they've never been to before if you're going into that experience don't be super nervous everyone's really friendly you can ask them for scratch paper they'll give you what you want it's not something to be nervous about going into don't let it stress you out the night before your exam I also recommend doing a 5 minute sleep meditation right before you knock when you're feeling anxious it's like 10 times harder to actually fall asleep so doing this will make sure you fall asleep faster and it'll also make sure you get better quality sleep so you wake up the next morning nice and rested pack up everything you'll need the day before at the minimum that means you're bringing a pencil for any scratch work you need to do a charge calculator make sure to bring your student ID as well as your admissions ticket and then of course bring a snack and a water bot ladies and gentlemen this is your chance to lock in go give the eam Your Best Shot get your dream score and make our community proud if you're interested in one-onone consulting or you want me to review your resume for college apps and give you feedback on it click the link below and if you have personal questions feel free to follow and DM me on Instagram or just leave the comment down below I'm happy to help thank you all so much for watching go get those 1500s this has been your boy prique peace