About the SAT
The SAT is a standardized test that colleges use to evaluate applicants. Over two million students take the SAT every year and it is accepted by every college in America for evaluating a student’s college preparedness. It is designed to measure a student’s ability to understand and process elements in three subjects: reading, writing, and math. SAT scores are calculated based on a student’s performance relative to other test-takers, and have proven to be an indicator of collegiate success.
Test Format
The SAT consists of the following sections:
| Section | Number of Questions | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Reading and Writing | 54 questions | 64 minutes |
| Math | 44 questions | 70 minutes |
The Reading and Writing section is divided into two 32-minute modules and the Math section is divided into two 35-minute modules. There is a 10-minute break between the Reading and Writing section and the Math section
The sections of the SAT are module-level adaptive, which means that performance on the first module of a section determines the difficulty of the second module. Each question on a particular module is weighted the same as every other question on that module. Different modules, however, may impact a student’s score differently. The better a student’s performance on the first module, the more difficult the second module of that section will be. The greater the overall difficulty of the questions, the greater the potential for a higher scaled score.
The Reading and Writing Section
The ability to read and write well are a critical skills, both in college and in the workforce. The Reading and Writing section is designed to test several components of reading and writing:
- Information and Ideas: these questions assess your ability to understand and analyze the central ideas, details, and evidence presented in a passage. You’ll be asked to make inferences, identify relationships between ideas, and summarize key points.
- Craft and Structure: These questions test your understanding of how an author uses language and structure to convey meaning and achieve a specific purpose. This includes analyzing word choice, tone, and rhetorical devices.
- Expression of Ideas: These questions assess your ability to revise and edit text to improve clarity, coherence, and effectiveness. This includes adding, deleting, or changing words, phrases, or sentences to enhance the flow and impact of the writing.
- Usage and mechanics: these questions test how well you can correct errors in sentence structure, usage, and punctuation.
The Math Section
The math section measure a student’s ability to reason quantitatively, solve mathematical problems, and interpret data presented in graphical form. The math required for these sections is typically covered in the first three years of American high school education: Arithmetic, Algebra and Functions, Geometry, and Data Analysis.