How to Tackle the Hardest SAT Reading Passages

Pre-reading involves skimming the text as a whole to get a general sense of its contents and purpose. Then you can move to underlining key words, phrases, and ideas and predicting the main theme before diving into the details. This can help you to orient yourself and organize the information in a logical way as you read.

This can be a helpful way to engage with the text such as by annotating the passage with notes and summaries, breaking down complex sentences and paragraphs into their component parts. You should also actively seek to understand rhetorical devices and recognize the author’s tone and intention.

Time management is key to success in all areas of the SAT and you will need to become familiar through practice tests how best to allocate your time wisely across different passages and also to learn how to pace yourself so you work through the questions efficiently and accurately and finish within the allotted time.

Some SAT reading questions can be difficult for students to recognize that they only have one correct answer by asking questions like:

"The author would most likely agree with which of the following statements?"

"The first paragraph primarily serves to..."

Where phrasing encourages you to waver between two or three answer choices that all seem likely. If you guess here, you have a substantial probability of being wrong (there is no such thing as a nearly right answer on the SAT) so you need to develop a strategy for confidently selecting the one right answer.

You will almost certainly have to practice for many hours to achieve a high score in the SAT Reading section. It is important to remember when you study that every mistake you make on a test happens for a reason, and if you understand that reason you are part way to never making that mistake again!

Keep a log of the questions you missed and write down:

1: a summary of the question,

2: why you missed it, and

3: what you'll do to avoid that mistake in the future.

In your notes, have separate sections by subject and sub-topic (reading: vocabulary/writing: punctuation, etc.) and go deeper into why you missed that question specifically.

In Reading or Writing there are a few common reasons that come up regularly to trip students up. These include not being able to eliminate enough incorrect answer choices; eliminating the correct answer; not learning the grammar rule needed to answer the question. Sometimes, you do know the grammar rule but the question was written in such a way that it made you miss it.

Identify specifically what you missed and why, and how you would avoid this in future.

Other errors can be misreading the question or not knowing what a word means. You can put these right by having a strategy for careful reading and also keeping a note of any words you need to add to your vocabulary. This strategy can seem a lot of work but is ultimately rewarding as you will see your weaknesses becoming your strengths and your confidence (and score) will improve considerably!

This strategy is highly effective and affects the way you look at questions.

As mentioned above, the SAT always has one unambiguous answer. Only one answer is 100% correct, so three out of the four answer choices have something that is wrong in them. This means that those three are wrong and you will be able to find a reason to eliminate them.

It is important to remember that even a single word can make an answer choice wrong. Every single word in each answer choice is put there by the SAT for a reason. If a single word in the answer choice isn't supported by the passage text, you need to eliminate it, even if the rest of the answer sounds good.

An answer could be wrong even if it seems to be supported by the passage if it is too specific or too broad, or if it brings in an unrelated concept. The best way to become familiar with this type of focused reading is to practise either on your own or with a tutor.

To succeed on the SAT you definitely need to know all the grammar rules tested on the test and how they work. Certain grammar rules, like punctuation usage, appear far more often than other rules, but it is essential to learn all of them.

Generally, colleges consider your composite score more so than your individual section scores. If you can get a perfect 800 in SAT Reading and Writing, you can get a 750 in SAT Math and still be confident about your test scores. This gives you a lot more flexibility. Also, a high score in SAT Reading and Writing is particularly important if you're planning to apply as a humanities or social science major (like English, political science, communications) to a top university.

University admission is all about comparisons between applicants. The school wants to admit the best, and you're competing with other people in the same pool as you. By applying as a humanities/social science major, you're competing against other humanities/social science applicants playing to their strengths. Here are a few examples from schools. For Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and U Chicago, the 75th percentile SAT Reading score is a 780 or above. That means at least 25% of all students at these schools have a 780 in SAT Reading.

• Punctuation
• Sentence structure
• Verb tense
• Modifiers
• Possessives
• Agreement
• Pronouns
• Conventional expression