hey everyone I'm Laura Whitmore founder of Strategic Test Prep and today I'm going to walk you through my ultimate SAT summer study plan so you can stop stressing start studying and walk into test tape feeling 100% confident whether you're taking the SAT in August or the new test in September or October summer is the best time to start prepping you don't have any distractors in the way with school assignments and classes so you have an amazing opportunity to make great progress if you do it right but you need a good study plan not some haphazard one day here one day there and some random Tik Tok videos [Music] first let's talk about your schedule here's what I would recommend designate four days per week to the SAT i don't think you guys need to do every single day i mean have a life give yourself a break please have some fun this summer but if you can choose four days as your SAT study days and put them in your calendar and your phone and commit to them that is going to be huge make sure each study day you designate 90 minutes to 2 hours depending on your goals what I would recommend is alternating between English and math so have a day for English a day for math and continue that way unless you only need to focus on half the test for a super score then by all means go all in and make all four days English days or math days okay i don't want you to burn out so again I can't stress enough you shouldn't study every single day but consistency is key so if you can set up a routine this summer which is difficult to do but super important to maintain this SAT prep consistency that will really help you stick to the plan so what I would recommend is do some kind of physical activity in the morning before you sit down to study that way you'll get your energy out you'll be feeling uplifted and you'll be in a good mood and then have something to look forward to after your study session whether it's hanging out with your friends or going to get an ice cream just make sure that there's something after to reward yourself for your hard work okay now let's talk about what you're going to do week to week so let's talk about your first week week one what I want you to do is take two diagnostic tests i think that two diagnostic tests will give you more data so you can be better informed about where your weaknesses lie what I would recommend doing is test four and test five in Blue Book what you can do after you take test four and test five is enter your data in our student progress tracker it's an amazingly sophisticated Google sheet that can tell you exactly what types of questions you need to work on in more detail than a silly College Board score report that just shows you how many bars you missed in four very generic general categories so what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to link down in the description for all of you guys to access our SAT progress tracker for free so I'm really excited for you to use this tool as you use the test tracker what I want you to do is write out the categories that you need to work on the most so think categories where you have less than a 70% success rate okay in weeks two and three now you're going to do drills in order to work on your weaknesses so remember that list I told you to write out of ones that are less than 70% success rate now you're going to go to College Board's question bank and you're going to pull those specific question types to practice please be mindful of what level you're on score-wise so if you're scoring less than you know let's say a 550 you might want to start with the easies and mediums if you're scoring above a 700 and you're trying to get to an 800 well then obviously just do the hards so make sure that it's within your skill level or slightly above it in order to help you start to build up now when you're using College Board's question bank make sure you check the box to exclude active questions otherwise they're going to include questions that are also on the blue book tests and I don't want those to be spoiled for you when you go do a practice test later all right the key is when you're doing these drills to figure out patterns and things that are going to work best for you to attack each type of question so you want to come up with some strategies and some ideas to make those question types easier now I know that this is kind of hard to do and I think some students are naturally better at coming up with strategies and at pattern recognition than others if you want some help in this arena we have two amazing self-paced courses one for English and one for math that walks you through each question type and the best approaches and strategies to make them so much easier to tackle so I will link up here right now so you can go check out our self-paced courses since you're a YouTube viewer I'm offering a special discount of $50 off each course just use the promo code 50 off at checkout all right after you've drilled down on those weaknesses and you've gotten better and you feel more confident in those areas in weeks four through six I want you to start taking fulllength practice tests plan to take two tests a week so that you can learn from your first test and correct for the second test so for example let's say in week four you decide you're going to take tests six and seven test six go over your mistakes and you know analyze your timing and then make little tweaks before you do test seven so for instance you might have realized you were running out of time on module two because you spent way too long on the words and context questions so set a new intention for test seven that you're going to move a lot quicker through the words and context questions and see if that modification helps boost your score obviously it's going to be imperative after each practice test to go through every single question you got incorrect and find out why your answer was wrong and why College Board says another answer is right please be sure to learn from your mistakes so history doesn't repeat itself on the real test day okay in weeks seven and eight now you're going to refine your strategies so these are the weeks where it's just about fine-tuning what I want you to do is solidify your execution plan so based on all the practice tests you've done because you should have done all 10 blue books or up from four up to 10 now I want you to figure out what your execution will be on test day are you going to start at number 27 and work backwards on the English modules are you going to um skip the hard geometry questions and save them for last this is a time to really drill down and figure out what attack plan worked best for you and commit to it also during this time I want you to have basically go back through a diary of your mistakes so something you should be doing starting in week one is keeping track of all of the questions you've missed on your drills and on your practice tests so screenshot the questions keep them in a document somewhere and then in week seven and eight I want you to go back through each question and redo it to make sure you know how to do it correctly because it's so important that you learn from your mistakes so that you don't make the same ones again also in the final week so after you're done refining in the last week leading up to the test what I want you to do is take one more practice test so utilizing the plan you've committed to and making sure that you have your timing and your time management down take one more practice test now you will have used all of the blue books at this point if you did two tests per week back in that um stage where I told you to do full tests so you have a couple options you can loop back and do one of the diagnostics again because remember you did test four and five before you did any prepping so what I would recommend is go back to test five and take it again and then compare your score with your beginning score how much did you improve this is going to be a great acid test for you to see how much progress you've actually made the second thing that I would recommend is taking PAT test two i know it sounds crazy but PAT test 2 is an excellent test that if you haven't used will allow you to see more unique questions and get ready i have seen math questions show up on real SATs from PAT test 2 and I felt like the English difficulty was completely in line with the SAT difficulty it's the test that I took before I went into the November 2024 DSAT and scored a 1590 also guys in this final week it is super important to practice self-care make sure you're going to bed early eating healthy uh working out if you feel good in your body you're going to feel good in your mind and you want to be cognitively on point on test day when you do that last practice test whether it's test five or PAT test two you want to have a really solid finish where it feels like an amazing straight drive straight down the fairway i hate leaving the driving range with a bad shot it's the worst so the same goes with your SAT test make sure you hit a home run to boost your confidence before you go into the test all right lastly you can layer into your prep plan some daily practice so you probably are going to be traveling this summer you might be busy with um some sports or things like that so when you can't actually sit down to prep formally like at your desk with your computer what I would recommend is downloading the Preply app because Preply is something you can do when you're out and about from your phone which is great there's over a thousand questions in English and math and they are literally just like College Board questions so if you want to do let's say 15 20 minutes of daily practice Preply is a great supplemental tool to use and they just added in brand new questions for 2025 so I will link up here go download Preply and use that as an extra resource for your prep all right guys lastly if you find that you're struggling prepping on your own please do not be discouraged is completely common sometimes it's easier to have a coach that is an expert to guide us and direct us so if you're interested we have a entire tutor team and we are taking new students for the summer you can book a consultation and meet with me and we can discuss tutoring options for you whether it's taking one of our live classes or working with a tutor one-on-one i'll link up here to our website so you can go fill out that book a consultation form all right guys that's it for this video remember the SAT doesn't have to be scary if you have a solid prep plan and you walk into the test feeling fully prepared you will crush it on test day just remember to be consistent review your mistakes and keep showing up if you put your head down and you work hard you will see the results all right guys if this video helped give it a like and comment below let me know what tip you found to be the most helpful in this video and also let me know if you are planning on prepping on your own or how you're going to prep this summer i'm interested to hear if you have any specific things you're going to do for your prep plan also drop your test date in the comments what test are you taking are you going to take the new one that they're offering in September or are you aiming for August or October i'm interested to hear where you guys are at all right guys thanks so much for watching until next time happy prepping [Music]