People always tell you to eat a good breakfast. Honestly, I personally hate breakfast, and sometimes even get nauseous if I eat too early in the day. So if you’re like me, eat a good dinner the night before: high in protein, high in carbs, and has some natural sugars whether from fruit or vegetables. The morning of, drink lots of COLD water before and during. That way you won’t get a caffeine crash halfway through taking it. Cold water will help you wake up. Just don’t drink so much that you have to use the bathroom more often than you have breaks. Also, get plenty of sleep. Don’t sleep any extra than necessary. For example, do not get 12 hours of sleep the night before the test. Be sure to bring a couple high protein snacks for breaks if you know you’ll get hungry 
Don’t agonize over answering any question. Your goal is correctly answering as many questions within time period. Anxiety and/or drinking lots of fluids may cause one or more need for a bathroom break so…Ignore distractions unless the proctor gives an order. You don’t want to sacrifice any point or your focus by watching. Keep moving on the test and let the proctor worry about time. If you are sure of answers don’t revisit them. Your time is better spent answering more questions.
Between sections, sit back, flex, close your eyes and just relax. There is absolutely nothing you can do about prior sections. Even if you think you missed an item, it is irrelevant. If you earned zero points or a hundred points, remember you are a!ways you and not some score on the hoof.
Finally, there is nothing more to worry about so stop you’re elf if you start to engage in what if thinking. Next time you can think about your performance is when the actual scores arrive. The one thing I would do in the interim is look into an unfamiliar area with several questions for me. Even if you retest, you are unlikely to encounter that area again.
Dumb question: do you bring your things (calculator, snack, etc) in a backpack or other bag, or do you carry them in your hands and pockets? Where would the bag/snack sit during the test, at the front of the room?
@zannah Your comments come at a good time. S19 took a full practice test today for the first time in a month. He’s been doing great on individual sections of the test for a while now. I thought it was time to go back to doing the whole test at once.
I woke him up early. He ate breakfast and we headed to the library. The test did not go well. He scored 30 points lower on each section that what he’s been doing lately. He said he was tired. Did poorly on the reading section and was worried about it for the rest of the test. Writing went ok but then he got three wrong on the non-calc section where he never misses a question. Then he was so upset. I think he needs a break but he thinks he wants to study more. Not exactly sure what to do now. After the test, I insisted that we hang out as a family and he didn’t look at any SAT the rest of the day.
I’m sure the problem wasn’t a knowledge problem. Maybe it’s just that the test is getting closer? I don’t know. I certainly don’t want him to have a poor practice test close to the date of the test. Maybe we are just overthinking at this point. He’ll just review his wrong answers and move on. He still wants to take more full tests but we maybe take a whole week break before the test.
He has plenty of time since he’s just a junior and I’ve told him there’s no reason to stress about the August test. I just thought it would be a good time to study since he didn’t have any other summer homework. I’m not exactly sure what else to tell him other than this test doesn’t define him and he should just take it question by question and try to stay focused.
I just moved my son’s test date from Sep to October. He didn’t think he would be ready in Sep., but he does want to get it out of the way before junior year gets too crazy. Maybe move the test date. It’s better to not be stressed by thinking he isn’t ready.
Thanks, @Lindagaf. I didn’t think of that. Looks like we have until the 15th to change the test date. I’ll talk to him. If anything, it will relieve any pressure while studying for the next week and then he can decide.
Thanks all for the suggestions. Two days until the Aug test. Most of the time S19 finishes each section on time but a few times recently he doesn’t make it to the end of reading or non-calc math sections. Any suggestions for time management? My gut tells me to suggest he just keep his head down and keep moving. I feel like he might be checking the clock too much. Thoughts on that? And what about deciding when to skip a math problem. He’s shooting for mid 700s on math so he really does need to answer all of the questions. Just wondering if anyone has a good rule as to when to skip a multiple choice since you can always go back and guess on those and you cannot do that for the fill in answers.
You can always go back to the fill ins, it’s just that guessing can be trickier. But very often it’s not a total wild guess-- there are typically some context clues that narrow down your options.
So you don’t want to spend a significant amount of time on any question-- your first run through a section for most students should be a matter of either finding an answer quickly or skipping it, then going back.
For the SAT, last full prep test the weekend before. If there are particular sections/types of problems your son has issues with, maybe some light practices just to gain more familiarity/rep’s. If this would just add frustration, then don’t do it.
In addition to getting enough sleep starting 2 days before, starting several days earlier, if he is not in school, get him to wake up at the time he would otherwise wake up for for the test. As to the last practice test, do it at the same time as the real test.
Agree with high protein bar (not high sugar or carbs) and high protein breakfast. As a superstition, my wife would arrange 1 bacon strip and 2 eggs to look like 100. Water, not energy drink. If Gatorade/Powerade, non-sugar version, but water is best. If he already drinks coffee for breakfast, that is fine, but I would not start now.
Thx @BKSquared. He is indeed in school which is part of the problem. He’s been back for two weeks and has had very little time to look at SAT stuff. He studied a lot this summer so I’ve told him not to worry. Sleep is probably the most important thing right now. He wanted to do a quick non-calc section last night after finishing four hours of homework. I warmed against that but he did it anyway. His thing has always been that he’s a hard worker it feels weird to him to not study close to the test.
Anyway, he didn’t get to the last question last night and he’s realizing he doesn’t really take the test with any strategy…hence my last question. He was asking me what to do if he’s running out of time on the real test. Honestly I think he was just tired last night but I wanted to get some tips for him since he asked.
I probably already mentioned this, but the simplest and most important strategies are:
Do not spend time on a question you are struggling with. Guess, mark it to go back to, move on.
Eliminate as much as you can, and then figure out why an answer is WRONG.
For reading and English, when in doubt, choose answers that reflect the main theme of the passage.
In terms of time management, it is probably best at this point to not try anything new, but if he is taking it again, on subsequent practice tests, break each section in 2 parts of equal number of questions and allocate half the time (less 2 - 5 minutes) for each subsection. This forces faster pacing of answering questions in practice which will hopefully translate to real thing. As @Lindagaf mentioned, a lot of relatively “easy” points are lost when the kid wastes too much time and angst on a stumper. It’s a hard habit to break as a lot of high achieving kids are always aiming for perfection in anything they do.
Good luck to your son this weekend!
Thanks @BKSquared ! He did try one new thing yesterday that he really liked. On the math sections, he does the multiple choice in order but stops with five questions left. Then, he does the fill-in questions. When those are done, he goes back to the final five multiple choice. Since the fill-in questions are from easy to hard, the first three are super easy and he doesn’t want to be rushing through them. This strategy worked great yesterday. He finished both calc and non-calc sections with a few minutes to spare.
Plus, he realized his thoughts during the tests are saying “hurry”. I told him that probably not the best message to be giving himself. He knows how to do the problems so it’s a matter of being confident and focused, not rushing. So, he decided to think “calm confidence” when he starts feeling anxious. He thinks it helps.
And, yes, he’s in school mode when he takes the SAT. Needs to get every question right. SAT so different. He did skip a question on one of the tests yesterday (which he never does). Went back and figured it out at the end. I think that gave him some confidence that he can do that tomorrow.
S19 had a fifth “experimental” section on today’s SAT. Anyone have kids who took the test in the spring and got this fifth section? Does it definitely not count?
Ok. S19’s fifth section was math. Just odd that, after all of this “talk” on CC about the SAT, this extra section never came up!
D had the fifth section. She said the problems were the same, only easier.
@MACmiracle how weird. Why would CB bother with a section to easy math questions? Who knows.
I had the fifth math section too. I felt that the questions were far easier than those in section 4 though. Does anyone know if these are actually scored because our invigulator had no clue and the College Board has released very little about this fifth “experimental” section.
The fifth section is not scored. It’s like Form B for AP exams - completely experimental and has no affect on your overall score.
After a summer of studying and getting lots of good advice on CC, S19 felt good about yesterday. Finished each section with a few minutes to spare (which is not always the case in practice) and thinks writing and math should be solid scores for him. He’s not as sure about reading but at least he did not have any passages that gave him trouble. In practice, he would sometimes come across a passage that was particularly difficult and that didn’t happen yesterday.
No matter his score, I’m glad he felt good afterwards and didn’t get too stressed out during the test. He had some stumbles on practice tests where he lost confidence and that didn’t affect him yesterday. He said he’s looking forward to trying again in October. Hopefully, he will come away with at least a solid math score from yesterday’s test and he can look at the October test as another chance to bump his EW score if needed.
No more SAT studying for now…back to just homework and that’s a good thing!