<p>Continued:
For essays:
LONGER IS BETTER!LONGER IS BETTER!LONGER IS BETTER!LONGER IS BETTER!
Collegeboard says that it doesn’t matter how long your essay is, and that it depends on the quality of your work, but here’s the cold, hard truth: IT MATTERS. A professor at MIT did a study to see if there was a correlation between essay length and the writing score of those essays and guess what: it was one of the STRONGEST one-to-one correlations he’s ever seen.</p>
<p>One and a half pages in length is good. The full two is better. Write big. I mean it. Write big. Personal examples are not good except for a FEW people. The only reason why is because the prompts on these essays are so vast and seemingly very “big world issues” sorta thing; the typical high school student who is taking this test doesn’t have much to say from his personal experience except for that “one time he got an F on his english test and that is how failure drove him to succeed later than life.” Not to say that your life is mundane – it’s just mundane to read about. UNLESS you have something VERY significant to talk about that WORKS for the prompt (I am gay, I talked about coming out each of the three times and I applied it to the prompts. I got an 11, 12, 12; respective to time) Your best bet is to use historical examples. </p>
<p>Four paragraphs is good. Intro, Example 1, Example 2, Conclusion. Please make a conclusion. Just restate what you said in the intro and what you were talking about in your two bodies and end it with some cool cest la vie statement. Remember that you are part of a tiny percentage of kids who can even PREPARE for this essay. You simply need to stand out and write english “real good.”</p>
<p>MATH:
This one is a matter of – yes – checking. This is very elementary math. You should be finished with this section extremely quickly, and when you are, you should check your answers TWICE. I don’t care if you thought a baboon with a three fingers could do number two on his own – check it. The overconfidence that springs from that mentality keeps you from spending 3 seconds (if not less) checking if x=4 or not. </p>
<p>When checking, re-solve it. Do not simply look over your work and think that it “looks pretty good.” Re-solve it in a different way, if there is a different way. You should know by now that math has multiple methods to reach the same solution. If you can come up with two different ways to do it and reach the same conlusion, chances are, the answer you got is correct. If not, then that means something went wrong.</p>
<p>OTHER GENERAL TIPS:
- Leave nothing blank. I’m serious. Nothing. Guess. Do it.
- WATCH YOUR TIME. Bring a watch with you. Do not leave it on your wrist. ASK YOUR PROCTOR IF YOU CAN LEAVE IT ON THE DESK BEFORE YOU DO. Some may actually consider it “cheating.”
- If you find that you are getting 4 consective answers, there may be something wrong. It is HIGHLY unlikely that such a thing will happen, it usually caps at 3. But do not trick yourself into thinking that automatically, once the answer goes DDDD that ONE of them is incorrect. Check it. If you can’t find anything wrong, leave it. Do NOT change it last minute ONLY because you think there is a pattern. You either know it, or you don’t. You can only hope that a few weeks after when you get your scores that for the entire test, the only bubble you bubbled was C and the collegeboard was playing a cruel joke with your futures.</p>
<p>THE THRESHOLD:
- Three days before the test, drink until you can pee in the toilet, not flush, and no one will notice anything afterwards. But do not drink too much water (if any at all) right before the test. If you do, you’ll be more concentrated on the capacity of your bladder and how much that compares to the gallon of water you drank that morning rather than remembering what the word “cerpuscular” means on the Critical Reading section (btw, it means “having to do with twilight” ; I know, why?).
- BRING FOOD TO THE TEST. String cheese is good. Carrots are good. Only liquid that should be brought is water. No caffeine, no tea, no sugar, NONE. Water.
- TAKE OUT YOUR BATTERIES FROM YOUR PHONE AND PUT THEM IN SEPERATE POCKETS IF YOU BRING YOUR PHONE! Your SAT is more important than your mother’s curiousity as to what you would like to eat after the SAT (which, consequently, you will be dismissed from early that day.)
- DO NOT DRINK ENERGY DRINKS. DO NOT DRINK CAFFEINE. DO NOT DRINK ANYTHING WITH MILK THAT MAY GIVE YOU AN UPSET STOMACH. DO NOT TRY AND RADICALLY CHANGE YOUR DIET.
- DO eat breakfast.
- Sleep. Sleep early. 9:30. Wake up early and take a shower if you can. Do a few sample problems before you leave just to get into the mood. Do not check your answers though (you do not want to get yourself panicked.)
- Arrive at LEAST half-an-hour early.
- PREPARE EVERYTHING THE NIGHT BEFOREHAND, admission ticket, pencils, eraser, calculator, fresh batteries, ID. This will take away from the unecessary stress you would feel the day afterwards.</p>