Comprehensive Guide to SAT Practice Test: Exam Structure Explained

What is the SAT?

The SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) is a standardised exam for college admissions throughout the United States. It debuted in 1926 and has since been a crucial scoring system that allows aspiring students to get into their dream colleges in the USA.

Since it began, the SAT scoring system and the test name have undergone many changes. While it was initially called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later renamed as the Scholastic Assessment Test, followed by the SAT I: Reasoning Test, then the SAT Reasoning Test, and finally the SAT.

Detailed overview of the SAT exam

Exam name	SAT
Type of exam	Paper-based standardised exam
Administrator	College Board by the Educational Testing Service
Skills/knowledge tested	Mathematics, critical thinking, and writing
Beginning	In 1926 (96 years ago)
Ambition	Providing admission in various undergraduate courses and programs of different colleges and universities
Exam duration	3 hours
Score range	The test gets scored on a marking scale of 200 to 800 (10-point increment) in two sections each. The total is 400 to 1600. The essay gets scored on a marking range of 2 to 8 (1 point increment in each of the three criteria).
Conducted	seven times a year
Regions of availability	Worldwide
Language	English

What is the importance of the SAT?

While the SAT exam is vital for getting admission to universities and colleges in the US, it also holds other benefits that can help define a student’s life. For example, many colleges and job hirers prefer to see your SAT score before giving you a seating opportunity in their organization. You also get scholarships and merit seats from various state schools and other educational institutions if your SAT score is higher. And so, we can say that the SAT holds significant importance and can be a beneficial career prospect for a student aiming to pursue higher studies at their dream US college.

Not only that, but it is even favourable for you to sit for the SAT exams because taking the SAT (or ACT) exam is one of the most rewarding decisions for most college-bound students. Not only does the SAT help you discover your way into college, but it paves a path to reach there through good scholarships that can pay for your studies. You can also subsequently get your dream job in the future, effortlessly.

Some added advantages of course structure and question pattern make SAT more approved and preferred, such as:

• The SAT has no science section.
• It gives you a math formula sheet during the exam.
• It tests fewer math topics.
• It provides a lined-up question pattern where you can give more time to each question.

Thus, the more you practise for the SAT exam, the better your chances of scoring high and getting admission into a prestigious university or college.

What accomplishes the SAT?

The SAT exam tests your writing and reasoning (or aptitude) skills and knowledge of mathematics. So, the more you focus on the SAT math practice test and essay writing practice, the higher the chance you have to score better on the SAT.

SAT math practice test

Math is an integral part of the SAT exam. Thus, the more you focus on it, the higher your chances of getting a score above 1000 on your SAT exam.

Old SAT papers to practice SAT. 

Lately, The College Board has been found to be completely reusing the previous year’s SAT exam papers in the US. Recycling the old SAT question papers has allowed the provision of cheating in the exams worldwide and the doubting of many students’ scores.

For example, on the 25th of August in 2018, a test in America was a recycled 2017 International SAT from China. This PDF file was leaked to the public before the August 2018 SAT exam began. It is also a fact that several SAT preparation companies in Asia provide complete test questions to their students immediately after a few hours of a new administration of the SAT exam.

Therefore, for your SAT practice test, you should also make it a point to revise the previous year’s papers. The more you go through the old questions, the better you get an idea of the exam patterns, what problems you can expect in the upcoming year, and how to tackle them to score more in simple steps.

Conclusion

Preparing for the SAT is not something you can do overnight. And neither can you follow a cheat code for your practice SAT to get an easy victory. But with dedicated practice of SAT math practice test problems and questions from the SAT practice test 1 and SAT practice test 2 papers, you can get a clear idea of how to tackle the problem, write flawless answers, and score better.

Frequently Asked Questions