SAT Reading Tips

The SAT Reading section is one of 3 sections on the SAT, and personally, it was the most difficult section to do well in. An important distinction about the SAT Reading from other exams given in school is that in order to do well, it is important to understand how CollegeBoard asks questions and that you must learn how to succeed on the test as opposed to improving your reading comprehension to experience the most immediate results. Here are a few tips that I found extremely helpful that helped me reduce the number of mistakes I made on the exam and ultimately achieve that 800.

Tip 1: Toxic Words

Most often, when I made a mistake I found that it was because I had narrowed my answer choices down to two final answer choices and simply picked the wrong one. In each wrong answer, CollegeBoard places certain words that make the choice incorrect, and identifying these "toxic words" can help you ensure that you pick the wrong answer. If every word in the answer choice is not able to be backed up by something in the text, it is likely wrong.

Tip 2: Changing your Approach to Answering Questions

One thing that helped me immensely is approaching each question with the mentality that each answer choice is inherently wrong and that I must prove each one is correct. Ultimately, I would find that only one answer was actually able to be proven correct with information in the text and this approach was especially helpful when it came to difficult questions.

Tip 3: Using Checkmarks when Double Checking

Double-checking your answers is especially important when approaching the Reading Section and here's my method I used when going through my exam.

If there was a question after I double-checked that I was sure was correct and the answer choice was not up for debate, I would place a checkmark next to the question. I would repeat this process to help reduce the amount of time spent on checking "for-sure" answers and if I ever checked all of the questions in a passage, I would place a big check mark and circle it at the top of the passage to skip over it the next time I was checking.

Tip 4: Reading Passages Out of Order

While taking the SAT, it is not required to go over each section in order. Because the goal is to maximize points, feel free to skip around to different passages that are easier or more interesting to help boost your confidence early on in the exam rather than being worried while taking the exam that you may have made a mistake.

Articles on the math and grammar section will be released soon.