I got the perfect score on SAT II Math 2 Subject Test. I finished the test and reviewed all my answers about 15 minutes before the time was out, and I am pretty confident that I got every question right.
Because I received many help from this website, I want to help others in this online community as well. I also encourage other people who received good scores on tests to share any helpful advice.
Before my long advice on the Math 2 Subject test, I would like to share my personal view on college and college preparation.
While the college you will be attending certainly is important, having a good sense and understanding of yourself is, in my opinion, much more important than how you will be viewed in an admission officers’ eyes. College is an important stepping stone to success and inner happiness, and not success itself. Finding your passion is much more important than convincing others that you have passion! I hope that you will find a genuine lifelong pursuit, either academic or nonacademic, that will make yourself a more fulfilling person - regardless of your future colleges.
Now my advice on the test:
The first thing that I should say to you is that the best way to get better is practice. Practice, practice, practice.
The Barron’s Math 2 book is really, really good, except that it does contain too much information (at least in my opinion) and seems to encourage memorization of formulas rather than understanding the formulas.
Except for complex problems that you just cannot do in your head (like the question “what is theta if tangent of theta is 0.822?”), I did not use so much graphic calculator. However, this may be because I am a person who do math quite naturally (don’t mean to brag here, promise). So if you feel like you need your calculator, go ahead. Also search in youtube and collegeconfidential website about what math formulas that you have to have in your calculator programs for this test. I would suggest the quadratic formula, the law of sine and cosine, among others.
Make sure that your graphing calculator is acceptable for the test. Collegeboard has the list of all acceptable calculator, and if you are not sure even after seeing the list, just email Collegeboard.
Among other chapters in Barron’s Math 2, focus on the logarithm chapter. You absolutely HAVE TO know the four logarithmic rules. I guarantee you 99% that there will be logarithm question for every test. You can either memorize the rules or try to understand it. I recommend understanding the rules because it is more helpful in the long run (if you memorize them, you just tend to forget them more easily). Just type in “proof of the logarithmic rules” in the internet and there will be several links explaining them. I find the KhanAcademy videos helpful. If you want to just memorize them, go ahead, but just remember to, well, remember them.
Not only that, practice bunch of problems where you have to manipulate equations and use the log rules to find an unknown value/values.
The Barron’s Math 2 talks about limits, but the limit symbol will not likely appear on the test. This is because the limit notation is what you study in Calculus. But the basic concept of limit will likely appear on your test. Barron’s book chapter 9 does a fairly good job in explaining limits. When in doubt, whenever you see phrases like “as x approaches (some value, say 0)” or “as x gets closer and closer to (some value, say 2)” or “as x becomes larger and larger,” know that the question is dealing about limits. What you can do then is simply graph the function on your calculator and trace the graph as close to the x value mentioned. You will notice that the y-value for your trace either (a)approaches certain value or (b) approaches infinity. (I should mention, in order to be mathematically correct, that the limit may not exist on certain cases. But that likely will not be on one of the options on the test, at least I think.)
Know how to manipulate trig identities. You MUST know how to do this. Again, the best way for this is to practice. Go to KhanAcademy and they will have many practices available. There will be multiple questions about trig identities/manipulation in the actual test. Also, memorize the sine and cosine rules (how to express sin(x+y) and tan(x-y), and so on.)
I would focus less on parametric equations, conic sections, polar coordinates, and matrices. When I took the test there was not a single question related to them. However, I think that you have to message other people who got 750+ on this test to see how much of the test is actually devoted to these sections. I may just have been lucky. (It was kind of a bummer, actually, because conic section was one of the hardest things I tried to understand and there wasn’t any questions about it)
If you don’t understand something in the Barron’s book, ask a math teacher in your school for an algebra/trig book, or better yet, ask your teachers for any questions! Usually non-SAT prep books do much better job at explaining math concepts so that people will easily understand (at least in my opinion). The main problem with Barron’s is that it sometimes is too concise. That’s what mathematicians must do sometimes, but sometimes nonmathematicians find hard to understand mathematician’s language. After all, not everyone would readily understand the statement in pg. 105 Barrons book “The function f is a rational function if and only if f(x)=p(x)/q(x), where p(x) and q(x) are both polynomial functions and q(x) is not zero.” I mean, I do, but I don’t know if you do.
One last thing I should mention is that you should actively ask for help to anyone who is good at this test or who knows well about the stuff tested! Ask nerdy (not meant to be offensive, I myself am nerdy) people in your school who may have done good at this test. Also, message people who say they got 750+ on the test. When I was preparing for my SAT Physics test, I think I messaged about 8 different people who say they got 800. Every single one of them thankfully responded, and partly because of their very helpful responses, I got 800 on that test too.
The thing is, how everyone view a test and how they think about the most effective way to study will be different from person to person. But as you get more people’s opinions, you will kind of see the “bigger picture” about how you approach the test. For example, while studying for SAT Chemistry, about two of the people I asked said that I needed to know IUPAC nomenclature (you of course don’t have to know what this is), while about 4-5 people said that I likely won’t be tested about the IUPAC nomenclature. So I focused less on the IUPAC, and on the test there wasn’t a question about it. Get opinions/advises from lots of experts of the test. I got 780 on that by the way.
Any constructive criticism or comments about my tips will be greatly appreciated 