Ten Tips for Taking the SATs

These tips are published with permission from The Princeton Review's annually updated-guide, Princeton Review: Cracking the SAT and PSAT.

1. Learn all you can about the test before you take it, and take sample practice tests.

2. A few days before the test, pack your bag: five pencils with erasers, your student ID, test administration ticket, and munchies for breaks. Also, bring a calculator and wear your watch.

3. Rest up the night before, and eat a good breakfast on the test day.

4. In general, the questions are ordered by level of difficulty, from easy to medium to hard. Answer easy questions first, the hard ones last.

5. Don't rush. Since all questions are worth the same points, it's better to spend more time on the easy and medium ones and get them correct, than to pull your hair out over the hard ones.

6. On medium and hard questions, if you're stumped, look first for the wrong answer choices. Using the process of elimination, you can often find the right answer by eliminating the wrong ones.

7. Guess aggressively. If you can eliminate even one answer choice, you'll have a better chance of getting the answer right.

8. On the math section, watch out for the grids. On these, there are no answer choices. You'll have to come up with your own answers and carefully fill them in on a grid.

9. On the verbal section, do the analogies first and sentence completions second. Save the time-consuming critical thinking section for last.

10. Before you turn in your answer sheet, be sure you've darkened in all your answers and erased any stray marks.

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