<p>Got the 800 in both SAT I and Sat 2 level 2 first time.</p>
<p>I think of it as a 2 step process.</p>
<p>Nail the easy questions in half the time, which should be around 75% of the test. If you are taking practice ones and you feel even slightly uneasy on any of the earlier questions, you need more practice. There will be a stage when you literally can handle ANY easy question thrown at you. This part gets you into the mid 600s.</p>
<p>Then comes the hard part. The remaining half the time, spend it on the most difficult questions, not the medium ones just yet. Trust me, you dont want to face a hard question under time pressure. It is a terrible feeling. Around minute 20 or so, you should be done with the hard questions. Then in the last 5 minutes, do the medium questions. You already went through the difficult ones, so these should be a piece of cake since you are already in the critical thinking mode. This gets you past 750.</p>
<p>I was never one for going through problems checking for mistakes. If you dont catch them the first time, it’s not going to happen the second time around. The last minute however, I did spent checking bubbles, grid-in answers and matching my circled answers to the bubbles. Those are the “silly” mistakes that happened to me during practice rounds and are easy to spot with within a minute. This final stretch prevents you from losing the 800.</p>