<p>Hello all,
I have found that my biggest problem is that I'm losing focus while doing the SAT.
After I complete an SAT test and review my mistakes, I'm pretty sure I shouldn't have done 90% of them, but I just can't keep focus, either I'm too bored or lazy or tired. I don't feel tired until I reach the last 3 sections of the test tho ...
The longest test I ever had to do in my life is a 2hrs maths test in school. I have completed 8 SAT tests so far, but I need to improve my focus.
Any ideas how ? I am also eating snacks and walking a bit in the 5min breaks I get. Not really helping..
Any help is appreciated !! Thank you !</p>
<p>Yeah, endurance is a big part of taking the SAT (as well as other exams you’ll take in college), so you’ll have to get used to it. I took the USAMO once, which is a 9-hour exam (split over two days, so 4 1/2 hrs/day, no breaks). The whole test had six questions, and I solved two. </p>
<p>For the SAT, definitely take advantage of breaks, perhaps stretch a bit, and eat snacks that don’t contain too much sugar.</p>
<p>I eat snacks and stretch a bit, but what I need is to strengthen my focus and my endurance specifically, I just don’t know how</p>
<p>Have you tried taking practice tests. If you do that, maybe you can get used to staying focused even if you don’t feel like it.</p>
<p>I have done 9 tests so far, still having the same focus problem…
I don’t feel not focused, I don’t feel tired, it just happens while I’m not aware of it.
I try to be aware of my self at all times but that kinda obliterates focus completely…</p>
<p>It’s almost like running a marathon…you start out with short distances, then gradually build up until you can run 26 miles without passing out. Idk if that was the best analogy, but you might as well try that on the SAT.</p>
<p>I’m gonna try studying 5 hours non stop ( I can already do it for 3 hours ), over a period of time, it will ease up and probably make me more prepared for the 4hrs test.
I appreciate the replies !</p>
<p>Yes, but don’t kill yourself over it. Take a 5 min break every hour or so.</p>
<p>What I do when I’m too tired to complete a full test is I divide it into three parts…so do all CR first then all M then all WR (usually by day, but you can also wait 1-2 hrs in between). If you think of it like a game/competition, it won’t be so boring. Good luck!</p>
<p>Well, I got on sunday 1250 ( the minimum required for medecine in one of the bests universities here ), which is still not enough.
I’m one of those types who stress about details and everything. I have OCD ( obsessive disorder component ) which is annoying like hell, and time wasting sometimes, and it gives additional stress and worrying about details. I’m still in motion in the 5hrs plan, still trying, I don’t like quitting, and I just can’t let my self quit. It’s a good moral boost seeing these replies Thanks all !</p>
<p>1250 out of 2400?</p>
<p>no 1250 out of 1600 ( CR and maths ) I got 1980 on 2400 ( 730 writing 1 time only, 590 CR, 660 maths )</p>
<p>I’m lucky in that I tend to hyper-foucus during real exams and tests. But, what helps me when I start to lose focus is breaking the section down further in time.</p>
<p>For example, if I have a 25 minute critical reading section with 35 questions (I don’t remember the actual number of questions anymore, it’s probably less than this), I want a five minute buffer at the end so I have ~35 seconds per question. My goal would be to have the first 10 done in 5.5 minutes (a little above pace, actually). When I get to 10 (and this can vary based on the placement of the passages) if I’m under the time I get the mental reward of feeling like I’m doing well. Having that tends to motivate me as I continue the section (I’ll have another benchmark at 20 questions).</p>
<p>Oftentimes, I’ll get slower in the middle. So if I did the first ten in 4.7 minutes and I get to the twentieth question in 10.5 minutes I’m still within what my benchmark would be (11 minutes), but I can see that I did the second set of ten in 5.8 minutes, which is over pace. Seeing this slowdown tends to refocus and motivate me while finishing the test.</p>
<p>I know your trouble isn’t with finishing the test in time (and mine hasn’t ever been either), but playing these games with myself tends to engage me more more sets of questions, and not get so bogged down thinking about the test as a whole (which is very long and monotonous).</p>
<p>When practicing, I graded myself after each section I finished. This also tended to engage me more with each question. By time you finish a whole test and go back and grade the number right and wrong is just a number. If you grade after each section, it’s the individual questions you’re focusing on. You remember exactly what you were thinking and how you felt when reading that question and eliminating each answer. That translates to better focus for me as I continue because as I take the test I don’t want any question I’m answering to be the question I get wrong. Afterwards I get the (not exactly instant but closer to) gratification of knowing my focus on each question paid off.
This also helps when studying because sometimes I have questions I’m not entirely sure about (or maybe I’m just being paranoid), when I go section by section I have the patience to go back to those questions I marked (even when I got them right) and reenforce that was the right way of thinking about them.</p>
<p>And to each his own, but I think taking lots and lots of full length tests are just going to burn you out. I prepped for the SAT because of the Johns Hopkins Talent Search in 7th and 8th grade, which actually gave me a useful base for future use. I did minor prep for the PSAT in 10th and 11th grade. Before my SAT test as a junior I only did 2 to 3 full length tests, and I didn’t do any the whole way through at once.
I got through my tests by finding ways to play games and by prepping in a way that made me really care about each question individually and not focus on the whole test. I never took more than half a test in one evening, though that was mostly due to constraints on my schedule.</p>
<p>If you’ve taken 9 full length tests and you’re still having difficulty focusing, whey not try something different and limit yourself to 2 to 3 sections at a time?</p>
<p>Come home, do the sections and be done. If later in the evening you (spontaneously, it can’t be pre-planned) decide you want to do another 2 or 3 sections, go for it. Don’t burn yourself out trying to do the whole thing at once, build up to it.</p>
<p>Well, I went to a SAT program and they trained me to write a SAT test everyday in the winter and every weekend with only one 5 min break–with sometimes no break! So I was conditioned to sit on my bum for 4 hours.
What I usually do is bring a bunch of V8 tomato drinks in to boost my energy up. My other suggestion is to also eat a bunch of beets in a week before the test!!! Beets help boost blood circulation in the brain; trust me I do better in tests from eating beets LOL.</p>