ACT & SAT Prep and College Admissions Blog

Studying for the SAT can seem like a daunting undertaking, but all you really have to do to master it is break it up and take it one section at a time. Today, we will be highlighting the Math section of the SAT.

As the ACT has come into its own over the past 10-20 years as a fully recognized college admissions test alongside the SAT, students increasingly weigh both of these exams to assess which one may be better suited for them, sometimes opting for both.  Preferences (and rumors) abound, of course: “There are too many trick questions on the SAT math!” or “I'd take the ACT, but the science section is a deal-breaker!”  While these sentiments may (or may not) be true, depending on the student, what's certainly true is that they contribute heavily towards apprehension over which test to take!  There is, however, one section that is nearly identical on each test, and offers a way to kill two birds with one stone in your college admission exam prep.  That's the grammar/rhetoric section, referred to as the “English” section in the ACT, and the “Writing and Language” section on the SAT. CollegeXpress offers an in-depth analysis of the similarities and differences between the two tests.

Three little letters: SAT.

For many years now, those three little letters have evoked feelings of dread, fear and anxiety in the minds of countless high school students across the country. We are speaking of course, of the Scholastic Aptitude Test. It is a standardized exam offered by the College Board used in determining college admissions and, in many cases, scholarships to a given institution. The ACT (American College Testing) is also offered and accepted at all four-year institutions just like the SAT.

As many of you may know, the SAT has been around for quite some time now, with the first test being administered on June 23, 1926. To this effect, for the first time in 11 years, the writers of the exam figured it was time their exam was updated and thus, the newly reformatted SAT hit test-takers desks March 2016 for the first time.

This article will give you the full scoop on this new exam, its structure and breakdown, and more specifically, what you need to do differently to make sure you succeed on this new test.

The SAT sometimes approaches math a bit differently than we’re used to in math class.  One of these differences in approach is in the way some SAT math problems ask us to solve for relationships between variables, rather than the value of one particular variable.  These problems can seem very challenging, or even downright impossible, at first glance, because they often give us multiple variables but only one equation.  

One thing we learn in math class when studying systems of equations is that in order to solve for 2 variables, we usually need 2 separate equations; to solve for 3 variables, we need 3 separate equations; and so on.   Certain SAT math problems will appear to violate that general rule and ask us to do something that’s supposed to be impossible, like solving for 2 variables with only 1 equation.  When we look more closely at such problems, though, we realize that the SAT is not really asking for the value of each individual variable involved.  Instead, we’re asked to find the value of the sum, product, or some other relationship involving 2 or more variables.