An SAT study plan

Start with one full practice test in the College Board’s free Bluebook app. Take it timed, in one sitting, somewhere quiet. Don’t study first. The point is to see where you stand right now.

When it is scored, look past the total. Write down your two section scores, then go through the questions you missed and sort them by skill. Most students find that a handful of skills cause most of their mistakes. Those skills are your plan.

Look up the middle range of SAT scores at a few colleges you are interested in. Many colleges post it on their admissions pages. Aim for the middle or top of that range.

Then split the gap between your diagnostic and your goal across the two sections. It is usually easier to gain points in the section where you are weaker, so plan more time there.

Eight to twelve weeks is a good window for most students. That is long enough to fix real weak spots without burning out. If you only have three or four weeks, you can still improve: use the same steps, just spend less time on each one.

Short, regular sessions beat long cram days. Thirty to forty-five minutes, four or five days a week, adds up to a lot of practice. Pick set days and treat them like a class.

Here is a ten-week plan. Squeeze or stretch the middle weeks to fit your time.

A drill is a short set of questions on just one skill, like transitions, punctuation, systems of equations or percents. Ten questions is plenty. Working on one skill at a time lets you spot the pattern in your mistakes much faster than a mixed set does.

• Before you drill, review the rule. For punctuation, know when a semicolon or a colon is allowed. For linear equations, know how slope and intercepts show up in word problems.
• Read the explanation for every question, including the ones you got right. Sometimes you were right for the wrong reason.
• When you score 80% or more on a skill twice in a row, move on to the next one and come back to it later to check that it stuck.
• Khan Academy’s official SAT practice is a free place to find questions sorted by skill.

This is the step most students skip, and it is the one that helps most. Every time you miss a question, write a quick line about it. Over a few weeks, the log shows you exactly what to fix.

Take a full timed test in Bluebook every two to three weeks. It builds the stamina to stay sharp for over two hours and shows whether your drills are paying off. Bluebook has several free full-length tests, so space them out and save one for the last couple of weeks.

After each test, spend as long reviewing it as you spent taking it. Add every miss to your mistake log. A practice test you don’t review teaches you very little.

Practice with the tools you will have on test day. Learn to use Desmos for graphing, finding where two lines cross and checking answers. It can save a lot of time on Math.

• Don’t try to learn anything big. Skim your mistake log and do a few short drills to stay warm.
• Take your last full practice test about a week before, not the day before.
• Install Bluebook on the device you will use, finish the exam setup it asks for, and check that the device is charged and up to date.
• Print or save your admission ticket and check where and when your test center opens.
• Go to bed at a normal time for several nights in a row. One good night of sleep before the test isn’t enough if the week before was short.

By test day the work is done. What is left is a calm routine, so nothing small throws you off.

1. Eat a normal breakfast and arrive early.
2. Bring your admission ticket, a photo ID, your charged device and charger, pencils for scratch work and an approved calculator if you want one. Pack a snack and water for the break.
3. Give the first module of each section your full focus, since it sets up the second one.
4. Flag hard questions and come back. Never leave one blank: there is no penalty for guessing.
5. Use the break to stretch, eat and reset. Don’t replay Reading and Writing in your head during Math.
6. Afterward, if it didn’t go the way you hoped, that is fine. Most students take the SAT more than once, and many colleges look at your best section scores across test dates.