Essential SAT Tips and Strategies

For Indian students SAT may or may not be difficult, totally depends on the applicant and his or her preparation. Since SAT exam is designed for high school students based on their previous knowledge it shouldn't be difficult for Indian students on the whole. There may be a difference in subject combinations in senior secondary school level which may directly affect the student's performance in SAT, for example those who opted for non-Maths subjects may be disadvantaged for the Maths section. Thus, the base is the same for SAT exam sections for Indian students based on their high school. So, they would not have a lot have major difficulties in preparing for the exam.

Yes, it is possible to prepare for SAT syllabus at home nd without any tuitions. Since SAT syllabus is huge, there's a lot of SAT prep material available online through which you can study and prepare on your own. However, this is not everyone's cup of tea, so, it is better to understand the SAT format and then decide whether you need coaching to clear SAT or not. Tips to prepare for SAT syllabus at home are as follows:

• Be thorough with the SAT syllabus
• Work on your grammar
• Start reading non-fiction apart from the school text
• Work on your vocabulary
• Work on mental math
• Practice and practice 
• Understand your weak points and work on them
• Attempt mocks

Check when you are going to take the SAT test. The SAT syllabus is vast hence it cannot be covered in a couple of hours. If you have a good amount of time say six months then you need to give fewer hours daily, on the other hand, if you have less amount of time for SAT test then you need to study more hours. Go through the SAT syllabus and understand how much it will take you to cover each and every topic and prepare a study plan accordingly. Thus, this completely depends on the applicant and how he/she wishes to cover the SAT exam syllabus.

As in the case of the SAT, there are no restrictions set by the College Board, students can take the SAT exam as many times as they want. SAT is administered seven times a year in India. The test is usually conducted in March, May, June, August, October, November and December.

However, it is recommended that applicants appear for SAT twice - in Spring and one before Fall. This is because the highest SAT scores among the two will be considered by universities for admission. Since in a lot of cases, SAT scores improve in the second time, it is recommended to take the SAT exam twice. 

The difficulty level of SAT depends on the student's preparation and background of academia. Though SAT exam is designed based on student's high school knowledge hence, those who have prepared well keeping the syllabus in mind and with ample practice may find the SAT exam easy. The level of SAT difficulty may vary person to person and ofcourse based on the level of understanding and preparation also. While a million students appear for SAT exam, only 25,000 get through it.

There is no set rule which applies when it comes to preparing for SAT exam based on the given cutoff by a specific university. Applicants can check their knowledge by first attempting a mock test and then begin their SAT preparation. Based on each section's performance applicants can set targets for certain topics and attempt them as and when they progress with their SAT exam syllabus. This way strong areas will get stronger and weak areas will also get some attention. Also attempting mocks before appearing for the main exam is also a must. This way applicants will either fall in the SAT cut off as published by the university or they can appear for the exam once more if at all required. 

With the introduction of SAT Digital, the SAT exam has also become an adaptive test. This means that when the applicant attempts the very first module (irrespective of the section - RW or Math) the test functionality determines the difficulty level of the second module. Thus, the questions that will be tested on the second module will be based on how the applicants answered the questions on the first module. This, in turn, factors in an accurate assessment of the applicant's performance. Since the difficulty of questions on SAT change based on the first module, however, the overall SAT exam syllabus for testing the applicants remains the same.