S.A.T. PREP

BACKGROUND

I began helping students prepare for SATs (and PSATs) in the late 1970s with a modest pamphlet of 4 old tests from Educational Testing Service (ETS) who designed the tests for the College Board. At that time, ETS proclaimed that you could NOT "prep" for these tests.

Well…we did. We really studied those old tests and how the questions were designed. We studied Latin and Greek roots and vocabulary. We tried different approaches to problems and learned to find essential facts in reading passages. (We studied only verbal portions. I'm hopeless in math.) We ate popcorn and drank gallons of Coke.

Test time came and my group did very well. We even had a spillover effect into the math portions of the SAT. Both math and verbal scores rose. Hallelujah!

That was the beginning of what became 3 classes a year and then the book SAT Success (1982), which Michael Crystal and I wrote and updated until 2000, when we sold its copyright to Peterson's, now A Nelnet Company. Currently I have 3 textbooks with Peterson's.

Two of my books help students to develop larger vocabularies, and they are autodidactic--students can teach themselves with just the book--no teacher or classroom is necessary. Just right for home-schoolers. All my books work well in schools, but highschools typically fail to invest in vocabulary books or seem to think they are not necessary.

The third book is called PANIC PLAN FOR THE S.A.T. It is a boiled-down version of larger SAT prep books. It contains all you need to know and one practice test. Added to the practice exercises, that's plenty.

 
Currently Out of Print
Currently Out of Print

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ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS

First, visit the website of the College Board, which administers these tests, as well as the Achievement Tests in specific subject areas.

www.collegeboard.com

Q. WHY DO WE HAVE SATs AND PSATs ANYWAY?

    The SAT--once called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, now called the SAT Reasoning Test--was developed nearly 80 years ago at the request of the colleges. They needed one uniform measure by which to judge applicants, who come to college from a wide variety of educational backgrounds. Your score on the SAT predicts success in the freshman college year with about 50% accuracy. Your high school transcript is still the most valuable piece of information for the college admissions office, and it also predicts freshman success with about 50% accuracy. Clearly, two predictors are better than one.

Q. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE PSAT?

    The Preliminary SAT Reasoning Test acts in two ways, at least in my opinion. It serves as a wake-up call for students. Low scores say, "Oops! Time to put nose on grindstone. Colleges expect you to be ready to do college level work!"

    The PSAT also allows students to qualify for National Merit Scholarships, which means big smiles from college admissions folks. Doing well on the PSAT is a worthy goal. Students who then become Merit Scholars (after taking the SAT) receive scholarship money, and those who score highly are welcomed into college and typically earn other scholarships more easily.

Q. WHAT ARE THESE TESTS LIKE?

    Both PSATs and SATs assess your:
      • Knowledge in math and your ability with the
         English language
      • Logic and reasoning skills in math and English
      • Vocabulary and reading comprehension
      • Attention to absolute accuracy

    These are life skills--not fancy extras, and not just for the college-bound. Questions are multiple choice, but on the math section you'll derive a few answers on your own and enter them on a grid. You will write a 25-minute essay early in the test.

    These are timed tests, and that is a major factor. You need to know the material and be able to work math problems and read passages with reasonable speed. Practice with old tests gives students a good feel for pacing.

    You do not have to finish all of the questions in every section, but you should finish all of the questions to which you know the answer!

    Students with learning problems need guidance office help so that they may take these tests untimed. If you haven't seen a PSAT or SAT, go to the College Board website now and examine some sample questions. Ask your school guidance counselor to lend you some old tests to examine.

Q. DO ALL COLLEGE-BOUND STUDENTS TAKE THE PSAT AND SAT?

    No. Students in the midwest and west often take the American College Test (ACT), which comes from Iowa City, Iowa. Colleges usually accept scores from either the ACT or SAT, but a few prefer the SAT. Check with the schools you're contemplating to see which, if any, test(s) they prefer. A few colleges, such as Bard, have decided that neither test is necessary.

    The ACT is also a timed, multiple-choice test. While the SAT offers 5 answer choices, and exacts a penalty for a wrong answer (by deducting ¼ of a right answer), the ACT offers only 4 answer choices with no penalty for wrong answers. Now that the SAT includes an essay portion, the ACT offers an optional essay, for those who want or need to write one, based on college entrance requirements.

Q. HOW OFTEN DO SATs CHANGE FORMAT?

    Education and society change. The SAT needs to flex to accommodate varying needs, so yes, its format changes every few years--in large and small ways. For some time, critics have noted that U. S. students write very poorly. Perhaps the 2005 addition of a written essay on the SAT will help to emphasize the critical skill of writing.

Q. WHY DO WE HAVE TO WRITE ON SATs?

    If you cannot write clearly, you are not thinking clearly. Writing in a coherent way teaches us to think logically and coherently. Surely, that is a life skill. But there's a problem.

    In order to teach writing, instructors must understand the writing process and be able to write competently themselves. We have never given our English teachers (or our K-8 language arts teachers) professional writing help. Thus, we are asking them to teach something that few of them know well or even like. That's like asking me to teach wrestling.

    Worse yet, our junior high and high school English teachers often have 150 students a day. It takes 20 to 30 minutes to correct one short essay.

    One assignment takes 60 to 75 hours to correct.

    Now you know why teachers rarely--if ever--assign written work.

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Test Prep in the Classroom

Without changing the curricula, instructors can teach testing competence from kindergarten through 12th grade, for all standardized tests. Here's how:

• Discuss testing with your students. Life is stuffed with various kinds of tests, and we need to accept the inevitable. (Job applications, driving exams, tests for various licenses, etc.)
• Model your test questions (at least some of them) on those that appear on standardized tests, especially college entrance exams. Comfort with question format is critical.
• If you're a high school English or math instructor, and your students want to go to college, take an SAT and an ACT yourself. Know those tests well.
• Involve the entire faculty in your project to raise school scores on standardized tests. The idea that only English teachers should correct grammar and punctuation is RIDICULOUS.
• From 7th grade onward, put one SAT (or ACT) question in math and one from English on the board every day--in the appropriate classrooms, of course. (This is an entertaining way to prove the importance of a wide vocabulary. It's fun to "play" with a math teaser question.) This exercise takes about 5 minutes, and every one of those questions tests something you need to teach anyway.

I've spoken with teachers who give "mini SAT workouts" daily. They testify that the results are dramatically higher scores with far less test anxiety.

• Play "sports and games" in class. Use questions from old tests and create teams. Play JEOPARDY and baseball games with the questions. This can be a 30-minute Friday afternoon treat when kids' attention lags anyway. If you think about it, much of what we teach can be turned into some kind of game or contest.
• At the end of your regular classroom quizzes and tests, pose one actual SAT question. Award extra credit for any student who answers it correctly.
• The loss of Latin in schools nearly polished me off. Between 60 and 70% of English words come from Latin and Greek roots! Learning Latin used to be the way students mastered English grammar and grew husky, wonderful vocabularies! Still…you can teach those roots with posters on classroom walls. Students write words derived from each root (along with their initials) on the posters. This becomes a game, and everyone wins. [Without realizing it, we all "know" many of these roots already, we just need to think about it. See my title, SUCCESS WITH WORDS.]
• Likewise, you can teach vocabulary with etymology. Everyone enjoys learning how we got our words. Hackneyed derives from the boring, repetitive rounds of the English hackney coaches. Homogeneous literally means "same kind," a word directly connected to its roots. Romeo comes from the lovestruck boy in Shakespeare's play…and so on.

ESL (English as a second language) students really benefit from vocabulary help. But heck, everybody does!

• Most standardized tests require logic and reasoning skills, something you can teach in the classroom. Surely thinking is our most critical life skill!
      One New Jersey teacher I interviewed said she uses "deductive thinking exercises" regularly. "From the given, what can you deduce? For instance, why are polar bears ears so small? It's tough at first, but we can teach kids problem-solving skills."
• Repeat, repeat. We don't learn or "own" words unless we use them. Write the week's vocabulary list (Students can do this.) on big cards and run through the list every day (3 to 4 minutes). Students say the words and their meanings aloud. Every word, every day. A new word must be used at least 6 to 8 times to be planted in the brain.

At least one-third of us learn best through our ears.

• Teach outlining. Outlines organize and rank our thoughts. Failure to construct logical outlines results in written work that lacks coherence and structure. If readers cannot find the "bones" of a piece, they often miss critical material. Anything written well has discernible bones--its outline--and readers subconsciously depend on that.

Outlining and reading comprehension and logical thinking are firmly linked.

TEST PREP...AT HOME

    If you have read Cheaper By The Dozen, you know that the father of the famous Gilbreth family from New Jersey never missed an opportunity to educate his brood. For example, while bathing, his kids viewed the sky and its constellations in posters on the bathroom walls. Taking a leaf from that delightful, witty book, you might try the following:

    1. First, sit down with your teenager and explain that the SAT and PSAT measure some educational skills, but certainly not all. They cannot measure speaking skills, musical or dance skills, and so on. Your test score is not YOU, in other words. Many highly successful adults had average or lousy test scores.

    2. Post Word-A-Day calendars opposite all toilets. Every-
      one benefits from a bigger vocabulary--it particularly helps on standardized tests. And in writing…. And in speaking…. In job interviews…. And on the job. After all, each word represents an idea. Those who have rich vocabularies are rich in ideas.


    3. Put a book of old SAT / PSAT tests beside the toilets. Kids can do one question per visit to the small private room.

    4. Play Stump-A-Parent at mealtimes. It's a most gratifying feeling for a kid to conquer a math or verbal problem (from SATs or PSATs) that a parent cannot. (Believe me, this will happen.) The side benefit is that younger kids absorb all of this material. They won't grow up dreading SATs. They will have been playing that game for years.

    5. A few months ahead of your child's SAT or PSAT, form a study group that meets twice a week for a couple hours each time. You will review old tests, share test-taking strategies from books like my Panic Plan for SATs, and practice test-taking under timed conditions. (Remember that test-taking "strategies" are actually logic and reasoning techniques--valuable for all, not just test-takers.) This kind of test preparation works. Best of all, students are learning skills that are lifetime skills--not just for a test.

    6. Host a college-prep party. Over winter vacation, spring break, or summer, invite high school graduates (kids now attending college) whom your teenager knows to visit with a few of your child's friends at your house. Provide popcorn, desserts, etc. (I'm talking major comfort food in the face of some serious truths that will surface during the evening.)

    • What do those graduates (now in college) WISH they had done before taking PSATs and SATs?
    • What courses or actions helped them the most on tests like these?
    • What skills did they need to succeed in college?
    • How did they select their schools? Did that process work well?
    • What would they change in their college prep process, if anything?

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Links for Further Information

Children's Book Guild     Joan Carris Direct     Children's Literature Comprehensive Database

Updated: April 4, 2008