<p>I am tutoring a girl in SAT math. I am getting paid so I want to do a good job. On her first try by herself she got a 510 and her goal is a 600, so it is very doable. I was just wondering if anyone has any tips on how to help her. Any tips people think are essential? An advantage I have is that she is very hard-working (she has a 4.0 with a 1700 SAT score), so if I ask her to work on something I have no doubt that she will.</p>
<p>Her situation was very similar to mine. I had a similar Math SAT score when I first took a practice test and worked very hard to raise it up to a 600 actually. So it is possible. I’ve always struggled with math, so I went to a tutor to help raise my math SAT score (and it helped a lot).</p>
<p>Firstly, help her figure out how many math questions she should skip on the exam to still be able to achieve a 600. When I first took the exam, I didn’t realize that skipping so many could affect my score greatly. Even though skipping does not mean you lose points, you don’t get points out of it either. (I think I wouldn’t skip a maximum of 5 questions on each math section.) Also, make sure she remembers to at least guess on the “Fill in the Answer” math questions because you can’t lose points on those even if they’re wrong.</p>
<p>For helping her with math concepts, explain to her helpful tips. The Sat Math section are like puzzle questions and the questions mostly rely on basic concepts. So instead of just rushing to practice questions, brush up on basic concepts of math. Even if she will say “Oh I know this stuff already,” reminding her of basic concepts will imprint those ideas in her brain so when she does go to the exam, she will think of that.</p>
<p>Basic concepts include:<br>
Number properties (prime numbers, integers)
Circles (areas, circumfrence)
Ratios, Propotions
Exponents, Square roots (how to simplify them and add them)
Linear equations
Groups, Sequences
PEMDAS</p>
<p>The list goes on, but explaining each one would not take too long because she should know most of them by now. But re-learning old tricks and practicing basic concepts again really helped me out.</p>
<p>There are commonly questions that many students interpret as difficult that repeat themselves in slightly different form in each test. The classic example is the two rates question or the people painting a house question. Many people get these wrong because they are tricky, and many people skip them because they are hard. But, there are easy solutions to both that take less than 15 seconds when done properly. There are probably easy solutions to many other “hard” problems. If you get her to learn these back and forth, no matter how well she knows the other stuff, her score will be raised.</p>
<p>Remind her or teach her about the triangle inequality theorem. There is always at least one question using it in some way. The question is usually straight forward so it’s another easy correct question.</p>