SAT Vocabulary: High-Utility Academic Words Part II (Letter A) Click here for Part I of this video series! What is high utility? Basically, words that you need to know for college. In fact you may even know these words. You might not know, however, how to define them. And I don’t mean, “uh, it […]

There will always be one paired passage on every New SAT Reading Test. Here are the specific question types you’ll see and the strategies you should use.

Ever get a graded essay back from your English teacher and it’s bleeding red with passive-aggressive questions such as “Examples?” “Support?” “Evidence for this?” “How do you know?” or the backhanded compliment, “Interesting arguments, but they need support”?

If you are at all familiar with the SAT Reading test, you probably know that the passages vary in difficulty. You might breeze through some of them and then be sweating bullets through others not having any idea what the heck the last paragraph was talking about. This is ok. This is what makes the SAT hard, and you should know that there are a lot of other students struggling along right beside you. But, if you are prepared, there can be a huge difference between you and these other freaked-out students gnawing off their pencil erasers around you, and that is, the level of panic you experience when you encounter a difficult reading passage. Knowing what to expect can help you make strategic decisions about which passages to do first.

We won’t beat around the bush. There’s a lot to read on the new SAT Reading test. And if you aren’t careful with balancing your time between reading and question answering, you very well might find yourself in a panic when the proctor announces 5 minutes left. So let’s talk about how you can learn to pace yourself appropriately.

Think vocabulary is dead on the New SAT? Well, think again! Vocabulary is still part of the test, only know it’s a slightly different breed and goes under the annoying title “high-utility academic words.”

After the Literature passage on the New SAT, you’ll see two History/Social Studies passages and two Science passages–typically alternated. These passages should be approached a little differently than the Fiction passage. Here’s what you need to know:

On every New SAT exam, there’s one fiction passage from “U.S. or World Literature” (yeah, that does basically mean anything in the world, as long as it’s written in English). The literature passage is the first passage in the Reading Section. Let’s discuss!

The new SAT Reading section is in some ways even better than the old SAT at luring you into tempting wrong answer choices. Here are some of the reasons wrong answers on the new SAT are just so darn tantalizing.

The SAT has always loved agreement—it’s easy to test and it’s easy to make the question difficult. But first let’s talk about what agreement is: it is when the subject and verb are consistent in terms of number.