6 SAT Mistakes Not To Make

While some of these may seem not to apply to you or your student, I encourage you to check because you may be surprised at how common these errors are.

1. Perimeter, Area, Volume
2. Subject predicate agreement
3. Watching people solve SAT problems
4. Taking practice test after practice test
5. Becoming a wrong answer machine
6. Not drawing a picture when one is presented

Content Errors

Errors 1 and 2 are content errors we see again and again and again when helping students prepare for the SAT.

1. Knowing the formula for a perimeter, area, and volume is NOT enough. Conceptually understanding what a perimeter, area, and volume are is critical when you get complex questions that require you to use that knowledge on your way to solving the problem.

2. The subject of a sentence and the verb around which the sentence hinges isn’t always obvious. For example, “The team of scientists have published their findings” is wrong because the subject is “the team” which is single which means the predicate “have published” should be “has published.” Here’s an even harder example: “Neither the teacher nor the students was aware of the change in schedule.” In this case, the “neither…nor” creates a compound subject and the second subject is the one that needs to match the predicate, so this should be “Neither the teacher nor the students were aware of the change in schedule” because “students is plural. Explicitly being able to identify the subject and predicate of sentences comes up often in the SAT.

Study Errors

Errors 3 and 4 are errors students make while studying that lead them to feel hopeless and defeated because they work incredibly hard without improving their scores.

3. Watching people solve SAT problems might make you feel like you understand how to approach the problem differently next time, but it doesn’t. Watching someone ride a bike doesn’t teach you how to ride a bike, you actually have to get on the bike.

4. Taking practice tests is super important, but you should do work in between practice tests to ensure you correct the errors you made while taking the test. For every wrong answer, you should analyze why you got it wrong and how to get it right next time. This involves identifying question types and whether you made a content knowledge error, and procedure error, or an approach error.

Test Errors

Errors 5 and 6 are errors students make while taking the test. These are common pitfalls we see when students do great on practice tests but then underperform when they take the test for real.

5. Time pressure, stress, and exhaustion can turn you into a wrong-answer machine. The biggest waste of time is spending time on a question and getting it wrong. Make sure you spend the time to get the answer right and don’t rush through. When you practice for the test, practice under time pressure in a quiet environment. If you find yourself becoming a wrong-answer machine, take note of when it starts and adjust your approach. When you get questions wrong, study them without time pressure before attempting another practice test. Master problem identification and become well-practiced in your approaches.

6. Math problems will often present you with a figure and instead of interacting with the figure: drawing, labeling, and mapping information onto the figure some students just look at the figure provided. This leads to mistakes that are easy to prevent by drawing, labeling, and interacting with your own figure. It puts you in a different mode than viewing a figure and helps you think through the problem.

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