How to Improve Your SAT Scores Without Really Trying
We've all had that teacher in High School. Every year he or she would give out the exact same test, only with different numbers. The more industrious students among us would round up a copy of an old test and get a serious leg up studying for the new version. Knowing what the questions will be is one quick way how to improve your SAT scores without really trying. It's really just a question of drilling before you can increase your confidence that you'll get the answers correct.
In many ways, the SAT is the same as the tests given out by our unoriginal teacher. The tests from year to year don't change that much. The numbers do, but not the concepts. Studying old and retired tests is a time tested method of kicking butt on the new test.
Year over year, the basic content is repeated on approximately 90% of the questions tested. Only about 3-5 of the questions in any one section will be "new" in the sense that they test concepts and formats that haven't been seen before on other tests.
So, how can you take this information to heart? Simple, make sure you have completed the basic canon of SAT questions in the public domain. That is, make sure you have completed all the tests in the College Board's official SAT study guide (the "Blue Book"). Any less and you will be leaving the gate at a disadvantage because the competition isn't slacking off and you can bet that anyone serious about the SAT has worked their way through the entire guide.
The Blue Book looks big, but there's good news. Once you finish it, you can be confident that you have seen 90% of the material that you can expect to experience on the SAT. After all, the real SAT you get will probably be the same test with different numbers.
