• Past Tests 
• http://ineedapencil.ck12.org/
• http://www.majortests.com/sat/
• Google Drive of Prep 1
• Google Drive of Prep 2
• Barron’s book is great and harder than Princeton, so I recommend getting it
• Grubers is highly recommended as well
• There’s tons of masterposts on here if you google, so not going into detail

• 5 paragraphs- intro, 3 points, conclusion. Yada yada, you’ve heard this before.
• Pick a side. Don’t try to be all smart and argue both. You think you can, and you’re probably right, but your argument will be a lot more nuanced and well-supported (which is a chunk of the mark) if you choose one side
• You don’t need to worry about actually forming an argument supported by evidence. Spend 2 minutes planning and come up with exactly 3 points. In each paragraph, make your point and then bam, you’re good to go. You know why? Because you make up examples. Whatever you want- Make up dates! Make up people! Make up absolute shit that the grader knows isn’t true! I mean, try not to write 500 words on how Shakespeare’s most famous play, ‘Roly-poly Ollie and Julianne Moore’, changed your life, but. Make up books, plays, personal anecdotes, whatever. It does not matter. You can do that. They’re marking you on whether or not you have examples, not whether or not they happen to be true.
• Listen up, because this is the most important: write a lot. Write two pages, or more, and if you can’t, write bullshit but write two pages as long as it’s semi-coherent.
• There is a direct and strong correlation between length of essay and mark assigned. What does this mean? You write shit, you get a higher mark. Collegeboard says it ain’t so, but the facts disprove it. 
• Memorize a couple of big words like “deluge”, “guile”, and “plethora”, and make sure you know how to use them. Then just shove ‘em in when you’re sure you’ve used them right. Preferably in the first page, and the conclusion.
• Here’s a handy guide to basically bullshitting your way through the essay

• Do not try to cram vocabulary two weeks in advance. The words aren’t obscure enough to justify that.
• Read. Read books, read newspapers, read articles, read journals. If you read voraciously the year before you take the SAT, I guarantee you’ll ace the vocab section without studying.
• But. If you don’t have a year and you gotta hit the vocab lists, here’s how to do it:
• Get a list of a certain number of words to memorize, depending on how long you have: like this, for 100 words, or this one, for 500 words. Use the good/medium/bad system. Every day, do the words in the bad pile. If you can do them after 4 days, move them to the medium pile. Those are words you do every 3 or 4 days. The good pile is words you go over every week. If you fail at a word in the good or medium pile, move it down to bad.
• Learn the meanings of some prefixes and suffixes, and several or more common roots of words (again, depending on time). This means if you come across words you don’t know, you can make a good guess.
• Seriously though, just read
• Memorize the grammar rules. There’s about 10 that they always re-use and they’re not complicated

• During the SATs you’re allowed to bring in a calculator with programs. DO NOT WASTE THIS OPPORTUNITY. But don’t waste precious time using a program when you could use your head and be faster
• Here’s the programs you can put in yourself
• Here are ones you can download (about the same)
• A program isn’t there to do hard math; it’s there to save time. You need time. 
• You also don’t need to memorize formulas for anything because you can get a program that’ll do anything with formulas for you
• I highly 150% recommend getting your hands on a graphing calculator if you don’t have one. Get one off your friend or rent one or something, but get one

• In my opinion, the most bullshit part of the whole test. And the essay is a thing that exists, so.
• Don’t read the text first. That’s ridiculous. Skim the text, just the first bit of every paragraph. Then close your eyes and in less than 10 seconds, think of a summary. What’s the author’s main point? A line or two, like ‘Technology is helping restaurants. The food is cheaper which is benefitting consumers.’ It sounds stupid but do it.
• Read the question and go to that part of the text (it goes in order). Knock off any that are obviously wrong. Now you’re looking for the ‘most correct’ one which, what the fuck, should not be a thing! But anyways, most times, from the remaining options one will be in-line with your little summary from before, and one won’t.
• There will never be two right answers. If two answers seem right to you, it’s because you’re thinking ‘oh, but this sentence suggests that-’ stop. Don’t overthink these questions. Often, people will be trying to think of the implications, themes, etc. and you don’t need to. This section is superficial as fuck.
• If y’all have any specific questions you want to send me to get advice on how to tackle them, feel free.

• Get a good night’s sleep! You got this. But if you can’t sleep, don’t worry! You still got this.
• Get there early if you can, so you’re not adding anxiety to yourself
• Don’t spend longer than a minute on a question. If you haven’t got it in that time, come back to it at the end. You’ll be more relaxed after having finished the ones you do know.

• Yay! I’m proud of you
• Don’t look up the answers. And if you do, don’t stress about any that you got wrong
• Go have lunch or dinner with your friends or family and rant about how you just spent 6 hours in a stuffy room and stuff your face with cheesy pizza and chips bc you deserve it

• No matter what CollegeBoard says, the SATs are not an IQ test. It is very possible to boost your scores by 300 points
• Your score does not define you. All it does is tell you how you did on that one day, but that’s not all you are. That’s not even 0.0001% of who you are
• If a college doesn’t accept you because your score isn’t as high as they’d like, even after going over the rest of your application, then you don’t want to be there anyways
• You will get in somewhere, and you’ll have a great time

tips & advice

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