<p>So I am great at math in school, maxing most of the time. But on the SAT math I always end up getting around 650, whereas on the act I only miss one. Why do I perform so bad on the SAT ?? </p>
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<p>Idk what level math you’re in, but the sat is a lot of geometry/trig. For me, I was in calculus when I took the sat so i wasn’t as familiar with the math. That might be your problem too.</p>
<p>SAT likes to throw in trick questions, so look out for those. When I took the SAT, I was already very familiar with exams such as the AMC12 and AIME, so SAT math was a breeze. If you read the questions carefully you can get an 800.</p>
<p>It’s very simple. You are being tricked. The ACT is a more straightforward test with a few more advanced math topics than the SAT. The SAT has more basic math but with trickier questions. If you want to perform better on the SAT, then you need to learn SAT specific math strategies so that you no longer get tricked. That said, if you perform much better on the ACT, then you can probably just stick with that test and not worry about the SAT.</p>
<p>^ I mean they like to throw in answers that the student will obtain if he does it using a plausible, but incorrect method, or misreads the question. I still remember the one question I had during the actual test…I don’t think I’m allowed to post the actual question but I’ll post a similar question:</p>
<p>Q: A high school has 1200 students. 60% are male. 50% of students in the school took calculus. How many males in the school took calculus?</p>
<p>A: 120
B: 360
C: 600
D: 720
E: It cannot be determined from the information given</p>
<p>I respectfully disagree. I tutor SAT math on an almost daily basis, and every single day I watch as students make the same errors over and over again. For example, students scoring under a 600 simply do not get Level 5 questions correct. The questions aren’t particularly difficult, and the subject matter is basic. So why are they getting them wrong? As you’ve said, they require slightly out of the box thinking. Thinking slightly outside the box is easy for someone with a certain level of mathematical maturity, but it doesn’t come naturally to the average math student. They must train themselves to do this.</p>
<p>Perhaps I should define what I mean by tricky. If a student gets an answer wrong, and I give a 10 second explanation of how to do it right, and they completely understand that explanation, then I would say that the student got tricked. This happens over and over again with SAT questions. Very often students just don’t even understand what the question is asking.</p>
<p>And by the way, I don’t think that very many SAT questions REQUIRE you to think outside the box. However, the straightforward method may lead to the student getting the answer wrong or using too much time. Therefore knowing alternative methods to solving SAT math problems often leads to better results.</p>
<p>@KansasGuy This was the exact wording of an actual question, with the numbers and the scenario changed. I answered E on the exam, and I was confident of that answer, even though I had to read the question like ten times. And that was the first and only time I had seen “It cannot be determined…” as the correct answer.</p>
<p>Yeah, it was a basic question but you had to read it carefully to get it right. But true, you don’t need any other formulas or whatnot.</p>
<p>If you went to an awful school, you can still self-study everything if you have the initiative.</p>
<p>So if I score ok on each section of the SAT, like 650ish on each section, would scoring high on subject tests make up for it?</p>
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