Princeton Review - SAT Elite 2400: Elite Prep for Advanced Students

Project Manager
Claudia Landgrover

Authors
Clarissa Constantine
Brian Becker
Steve Voigt
Lisa Mayo
Bobby Hood

Reviewers
Alice Swan
Teresa Schuberg

National Content Director, High School Programs
Jonathan Chiu

The pursuit of a perfect or near-perfect SAT score is an impressive goal. Achieving that goal requires a thorough command of the material and strategies specific to the SAT. To begin your quest, learn everything you can about the test. This chapter presents an overview of the SAT, advice about when to take it, and how to report your scores.

So you think you can score a 2250 or better? Were all for it. The Princeton Review supports all students who want to do their best. Weve written this book specifically for students who are in a position to score at the very highest levels. We believe that to achieve a perfect or near-perfect score, you have to know as much as possible about the test itself and, more importantly, know yourself.

You may know all of the basic facts about the SAT already, but even if you think you do, we encourage you to read through this chapter to be sure you know every single thing you can about the test youre going to conquer.

All of the content review and strategies we teach in the following lessons are based on the specific structure and format of the SAT. Before you can beat the test, you have to know how its built.

The SAT consists of three main sections: Math, Reading, and Writing. Each of these main sections is also broken into three smaller sections. The table below shows the distribution of these sections.

There is also an experimental section, which looks like one of the other sections, but is unscored. Add it all up and you have ten sections and three and a half hours of test taking. Whew!

Here are some more useful facts:

The essay section is always first.

The 10-minute grammar section is always last.

All the other sections can vary in order, so you cant predict the precise order of sections in advance.

Each section of the SAT is scored on a scale of 200800, so a perfect score is 2400.

In , well thoroughly review the content and strategies you need for each of the three main sections. Here is a brief overview of each section.

The Math section features 54 questions. Most are multiple choice, but the 18-question section contains ten grid in questions for which you bubble in a numerical answer. Each section has an order of difficulty, as follows.

In the 20-question section, the first 67 questions are easy, the next 67 are medium, and the rest are difficult.

In the 18-question section, questions 18 are multiple choice, so questions 13 are easy, 46 are medium, and 78 are difficult. Questions 918 are grid ins, so 911 are easy, 1215 are medium, and 1618 are difficult.

In the 16-question section, the first 56 are easy, the next 5-6 are medium, and the rest are difficult.

Content on the Math section is drawn from arithmetic, pre-algebra, elementary algebra, intermediate algebra, plane geometry, and coordinate geometry. No trigonometry, calculus, or other advanced topics are tested.

The Reading section contains 67 questions. Each Reading section begins with sentence completions, which are always presented in order of difficulty. The 25-minute sections will always have four questions on short reading (usually a paragraph or two), followed by longer passages with more questions. Passage-based questions are never presented in order of difficulty; the order of questions is chronological.

The Writing section consists of a 25-minute essay and 49 multiple-choice questions. The essay is graded on a scale of 16 by two different graders for a total score of 212. This score is worth about 30% of your total Writing (200800) score.

The 25-minute Writing section has 35 questions, broken into three parts: Improving Sentences, Error ID, and Improving Paragraphs. Each of the first two parts has order of difficulty, just like the Math sections. The Improving Paragraphs is similar to a reading passage, so the order of questions is chronological, not according to difficulty.