As I’m writing this, the April 10 ACT is only 2 days away.

While this site is called SAT Success Secrets, I tutor a lot of kids for the ACT as well (it’s just less popular here in Los Angeles where I’m currently located). In order to help students around the country who are preparing to take the ACT, I’ve modified my popular “6 Tips for Last Minute SAT Preparation” post in order to give you the same coaching advantage that my SAT students get.

So whether you’ve left everything until the last minute, or you’ve worked hard and want a few last minute pointers, here are the essential last minute ACT prep tips to help you make the most of your remaining time before the exam.

Last Minute Tip #1: You already know most of what you need to know to do better on the ACT than you might think.

Remember, the ACT is not rocket science. You already know how to read, you don’t need to know anything special to do well on the Science section, and by now you’ve probably learned most of the math, grammar, and punctuation that you need to do well on those sections of the exam.

Last Minute Tip #2: Confidence is king.

Henry Ford, the guy who started the car company, once said, “Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.” You have to believe that you’re going to be successful.

Why? If you believe that you’ll do well, when you have trouble with certain questions, which you inevitably will, you won’t get frustrated and lose your focus. That brings us to the next tip.

Last Minute Tip #3: Relax and stay in control of your emotions.

If a particular question is giving you a hard time, skip it and let it go. It doesn’t mean anything, especially anything bad about you.

I’ve seen a lot of students make mistakes and then feel bad about themselves. I’ve done it myself many times in my life. It’s not worth it though. It doesn’t lead anywhere good.

If you dwell on the questions that give you trouble, or even take too much time on them, you’ll just get lost in negative thoughts and emotions and lose the focus that you need to do well.

When you take the test, treat it like a video game. You don’t get upset when you’re learning a new video game, do you? You certainly don’t stay upset for more than a few seconds.

Last Minute Tip #4: Focus.

Focus is the most important factor in getting the best ACT score possible. In fact, the reason that the previous tips are so important is that being confident, relaxed, and in control of your emotions are what allow you to stay focused.

Answers that seem right but are actually wrong are built into every section of the test. That’s why focus is so important.

When you’re taking the ACT, if you’re not paying full attention at every moment, you’ll get questions wrong when you know how to get them right. Whether you’re starting with a 21 in each section and working toward a 24, or you’re starting with a 32 and working for a perfect score of 36, focus gives you the most bang for your buck. It’s the absolute, number one key at all score levels.

Last Minute Tip #5: Make yourself laugh.

If you notice that you’re feeling tense or frustrated, think of something that makes you laugh. It’s the number one thing you can do to change your emotional state from negative to positive.

Last Minute Tip #6: Practice all you can until Friday afternoon.

Take some practice tests using official ACT material from ACTstudent.org, and work on your weak points.

Download the free additional practice questions, purchase their online prep course, or get their official study guide called “The Real ACT Prep Guide”.

Practice the other tips as you go through the material.

Good luck on Saturday. Let me know how it works out.

The real goal of reading a non-fiction book is to learn something.

You want to spend less time reading and learn more, which means remembering and understanding more of the information. While learning to read faster certainly helps, a big part of it is reading less. It’s usually not a good idea to read the book cover to cover. Remember, you own the book. The book does not own you.

Before you open a book, you have to know what you’re looking for and why you’re reading it.

That way the things you need to know will pop out at you; 80 – 90% of what’s in a book is not important. You want to ignore that and focus on the 5 – 20% that is valuable. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. If you don’t know what the needle looks like, it’s a lot harder to find. The best ways to find this out are to ask your teacher and look at your syllabus.

In general, this is what you need to know when you read:

• The main idea. Everything else hangs on this.
• The author’s point of view, if it’s applicable (sometimes it’s not important, like in a science book).
• The key concepts. These are clusters of ideas.
• The principles or general laws that explain the details, or that allow you to predict.
• The vocabulary of the field. Depending on the book it could be names, dates, places, events, key ideas or scientific concepts, specialized words and terms.

Look for the big picture first.

A lot of times when you read, you’re seeing the pieces and figuring out the big picture, but the process often goes a lot faster if you see the big picture first. It’s like looking at the box of the puzzle while you put it together. You want to have a general framework to understand the material, because that makes understanding it much easier. The best way to do this is to pay attention in class. The teacher assigned the book because it helps you to better understand what she’s teaching. What you’re covering in class is the general framework that the book fits into.

Some parts of the book are more important than others.

When you pick up the book, read the introduction, the preface, the table of contents and the summary first (assuming the book has them). These parts of the book give you the framework for the book. Then see if the author has summarized, bullet-pointed, made a chart, or in some other way pointed out the most important concepts. Read those things next. If the book is broken down into chapters, the chapters will often have an introduction and/or a summary as well. They should be the first things you read in each chapter. Everything else is examples, applications and details, which are less important.

Skip what you already know.

Some of what you need to know you will already know before opening the book. How does this happen? By paying attention in class. I can’t stress this enough. You have to be there anyway, so make the best use of that time. The more you pay attention in class, the less you will have to read at home, and the easier it will be to understand what you read. Then, if you follow these steps I just outlined, you’ll find that a lot of what you read is simply a restatement of the key points. What do you do when you come across something that you already know? Skip it! Skim over it really fast until you get to unfamiliar material.

So to summarize, this is how you read less:

1. Know why you’re reading the book and what you’re looking for.
2. Pay attention in class.
3. Read the most important parts of the book first.
4. Skip what you already know.

The next step is to eliminate distractions when you read. And don’t multi-task.

Every time you get distracted, you lose a lot of time. There are a lot of distractions in the modern world; phone, IM, the internet, music, your friends, your siblings, your parents, the dog, feeling hungry and getting a snack, wanting to take notes and not having a pen and a notebook by your side, etc. Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed, turn off your phone and all that other stuff, have a pen and notebook with you when you start reading, tell your friends and family not to disturb you. This will allow you to focus, which is a really valuable skill for all of life. Read for 50 minutes straight. You’ll be surprised at how much you get done when you’re concentrating intently for that whole time. Then take a 10 minute break, and then read for another 50 minutes. After that you’ll probably need a longer break, because it’s hard for anyone to concentrate fully on one thing for longer than that. I suggest a half hour break at this point.

Some distractions are internal, and you have to do your best to eliminate them as well.

We’re not used to focusing our minds for that long, so they tend to wander. One thought or emotion leads to another, and before we know it we end up in daydream land. It’s a big time waster, and it’s going to happen, at least once in a while, and at least when at first. Sometimes one thing makes us think of something else, and before we know it, we realize that we were turning the pages but not really reading. Don’t be mad at yourself, just be mindful of it. When you notice it happening, go back to where you last remember what you were reading. As you place your awareness on it, it will happen less and less.

Here are two potential trouble spots that are special types of internal distractions.

If you don’t handle them, you’ll end up taking longer to read the material and learning less from it. The first is when you find yourself disagreeing with something you read. It’s hard to learn when you disagree with someone or something, because when that happens our minds tend to close. Just like with daydreaming, the key is to be aware of it when it happens. If you find yourself disagreeing with something in the book, take it as a signal that you have to focus harder. Remember that your job is to learn the material, not to agree with it. The second trouble spot is when you’re reading complex material that’s hard to understand and you get frustrated. Again, be aware of it. Skip anything that you don’t understand. Trust that your mind will figure it out. If at the end of a chapter you still don’t understand something, then go back. If you still don’t understand, make a note of it, and the page number it’s on, and ask your teacher about it in class.

Take notes, but not a lot of notes.

In your own words, jot down the key points that I talked about above. Sometimes it helps to make a drawing or diagram, or even an outline. Make sure you write down the page number that this stuff was on so you can easily go back for clarification later if you need to. You also want to write down questions that you have, and things it makes you think of, especially if it’s related to your own experiences. For example, let’s say you’re reading about Manifest Destiny. If I were taking notes, I might write, “Did they really believe it, or were they just using this concept to justify the action they wanted to take? Are there situations today that are similar? Assume for a minute that some people really believed it; how did that belief come to be? And might there be things that we believe today that in the future people will think were wrong, or even almost impossible to comprehend?” This will help you understand the material better, and make you seem really smart in class during a discussion.

When you’re done, re-read your notes.

Do this quickly; take about 5 minutes for each hour of reading. Then do it again a couple days later.

Practice reading faster.

Read slightly faster than you feel comfortable with. You will adapt to it. Again, don’t skip back if you don’t understand something. Keep going. Trust that your mind will figure it out. If at the end of a chapter you still don’t understand something, then go back.

Teach someone else.

If you have someone you study with, teach the other person what you learned as soon as you can, this will cement it in your mind.

That’s about it. Try it and let me know how it works for you.

As I’m writing this, the October 10 SAT is only 4 days away.

Whether you’ve left everything until the last minute, or you’ve worked hard and want a few last minute pointers, here are the essential last minute SAT prep tips to help you make the most of your remaining time before the exam.

Last Minute Tip #1: You already know most of what you need to know to do better on the SAT than you might think.

Remember, the SAT is not rocket science. You already know how to read, and by now you’ve probably learned most of the math you need.

Last Minute Tip #2: Confidence is king.

Henry Ford, the guy who started the car company, once said, “Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.” You have to believe that you’re going to be successful.

Why? If you believe that you’ll do well, when you have trouble with certain questions, which you inevitably will, you won’t get frustrated and lose your focus. That brings us to the next tip.

Last Minute Tip #3: Relax and stay in control of your emotions.

If a particular question is giving you a hard time, skip it and let it go. It doesn’t mean anything, especially anything bad about you.

I’ve seen a lot of students make mistakes and then feel bad about themselves. I’ve done it myself many times in my life. It’s not worth it though. It doesn’t lead anywhere good.

If you dwell on the questions that give you trouble, or even take too much time on them, you’ll just get lost in negative thoughts and emotions and lose the focus that you need to do well.

When you take the test, treat it like a video game. You don’t get upset when you’re learning a new video game, do you? You certainly don’t stay upset for more than a few seconds.

Last Minute Tip #4: Focus.

Focus is the most important factor in getting the best SAT score possible. In fact, the reason that the previous tips are so important is that being confident, relaxed, and in control of your emotions are what allow you to stay focused.

Answers that seem right but are actually wrong are built into every section of the test. That’s why focus is so important.

When you’re taking the SAT, if you’re not paying full attention at every moment, you’ll get questions wrong when you know how to get them right.

Whether you’re starting with a 500 in each section and working toward a 550, or you’re starting with a 750 and working for a perfect score, focus gives you the most bang for your buck. It’s the absolute, number one key at all score levels.

Last Minute Tip #5: Make yourself laugh.

If you notice that you’re feeling tense or frustrated, think of something that makes you laugh. It’s the number one thing you can do to change your emotional state from negative to positive.

Last Minute Tip #6: Practice all you can until Friday afternoon.

Take some practice tests using official College Board SAT material, and work on your weak points..

Download the Free Official SAT Practice Test from the College Board website, or get their Official SAT Study Guide.

Use the tutorials here on my blog:

• Critical Reading
• Sentence Completions
• Math
• Essay

Practice the other tips as you go through the material.

Good luck on Saturday. Let me know how it works out.

The biggest thing you can do to improve your SAT Critical Reading score is to focus on the main idea of the passage.

If you can really get this concept and apply it when you’re taking the SAT, your score on the Critical Reading section will increase dramatically. In fact, if you combine this one tip with my Sentence Completion method, your Critical Reading score will go up by 50 to 100 points.

Here’s why.

If you’re having trouble with the critical reading passages, you’re probably getting stuck on the details and missing the main idea of the passage.

Sometimes when you read a passage, you may get confused by certain words, sentences, or even whole paragraphs. You might be tempted to re-read those parts until you understand exactly what they mean. Don’t do it, it’s a waste of valuable time.

Why?

Most of what’s confusing you is details, but not all of the details will be referred to in the questions.

If they don’t ask you about them, you don’t have to know them. That’s why it’s important that you don’t get caught up in the details as you read.

Which details do you have to know? The SAT will tell you. Any question that asks about specific details from the passage will refer you back to specific lines. When that happens, you do need to go back and re-read lines, and usually a little bit before and after as well.

While you don’t need to know all the details, you must know the main idea, which for our purposes includes the author’s opinion on the topic if his opinion is clear.

Most of the questions, even if they’re about specific details, relate back to the main idea in some way. That’s why once you know the main idea, almost all of the questions get a lot easier.

I’ll show you how that works in a moment. First we have to look at our second tip.

In the Critical Reading section of the SAT, unlike in the Math section, you’re not looking for an exactly right answer. You have to look for the best possible answer among the choices they give you.

Sometimes you’ll be doing a question and think to yourself, none of these answers seem right to me. I know. Sometimes none of them seem right to me, either.

Sometimes none of the answers will be the same as how you would answer if you could write anything you want. That’s OK. One of the answers will still be better than all the rest.

All of the wrong answers have something about them that make them wrong. Students who do really well on this section know this. They use the process of elimination to eliminate the answers that are clearly wrong, then pick the best remaining answer.

The good news is that in almost every question, 3 of the answers will obviously be wrong, and you’ll be able to cross them out right away.

In fact, when using the process of elimination, after you’re done crossing off the answers that are obviously wrong, if you’re not sure which of the remaining answers is the best choice, pick pick the one that most closely reflects the main idea of the passage.

Let’s see how this works for the second long critical reading passage in Section 7 of the Official SAT Practice Test for 2009 – 2010. It’s the passage that begins, “Ridiculing television, and warning about its inherent evils, is nothing new.”

Download it now and follow along with me.

The main idea of that passage, and the authors opinion, can be simply stated as:

“The idea that TV is evil and dangerous is not new. In fact, going all the way back to Plato, the primary means of artistic expression have always been attacked like TV is today. I think that people who do that are wrong.”

If you thought the main idea was anything along those lines, you probably did pretty well. Here’s how knowing the main idea applies to the questions.

Question 16: If you know that the passage is about criticizing TV, you know that B, D, and E are wrong. If you know that the author himself is not criticizing TV, you know that A is wrong, and the answer is C.

Question 17: The lines they refer to say, “television has been blamed for corrupting our youth,” and is a, “big, perhaps dangerous, waste of time.” Notice that this detail is just an expression of the main idea of the passage. This question is easy. The least bad television show is D, which is the correct answer.

Question 18: This type of question is asking you about what a word means in the context of the passage. The main idea won’t help you on a question like this. Just plug the answer choices into the sentence in place of the word “drawn” and you’ll see that the correct answer is D.

Question 19: Plato thought those stories, and their heroes, were bad, in the same way some people today think that TV is bad, so you know that A and B are wrong. Since Plato felt very strongly about that, the answer is E.

Question 20: If you realize that the “academic” mentioned in this question disagrees with Plato (and agrees with the author), you know that A, B, and D are wrong. If you noticed that he called Plato an “elitist”, you know the correct answer is E.

Question 21: This question is about the same lines you read for the previous question. The author is building up his argument that Plato was wrong, so the answer is A.

Question 22: Remembering the main idea, the correct answer is D.

Question 23: The author disagrees with Plato, so A, C, and D are wrong. Plato was a Greek philosopher, so E is wrong. The correct answer is B.

Question 24: Again, remembering the main idea, the correct answer has to be E.

Get how this works?

Knowing the main idea and using the process of elimination is like having super powers.

I picked this passage to show you this concept because it’s particularly clear. In some other passages, it’s not quite this easy to apply the main idea to each of the questions. For all passages, though, knowing the main idea is the key.

Let me add a few additional steps that will help you do your best on the reading passages, and put it all together in order.

1. Read the part in italics before the passage.
2. Always read the passage before answering the questions.
3. Read for the main idea and the author’s opinion, not the details.
4. If a question refers to specific line numbers, always go back and re-read those lines. It usually helps to read a little bit before and after those lines, as well.
5. For most questions, when you’ve eliminated the answers that are obviously wrong, if you’re having trouble deciding which of the remaining answers is right, pick the one that is closest to the main idea of the passage.
6. As long as you’re not rushing, always go with your gut on this section of the test.

That’s it. Practice this a few times until you get the hang of it. Then watch your Critical Reading score shoot way up.

Try it and let me know how it works.

In my previous post, Mastering the SAT Essay – Part 1 , we talked about the importance of planning what you’re going to write before you begin your essay.

Did you try it for yourself? If so, take out your notes and look back at them as we go through each step in the process.

We’ll use the essay question from the first practice test in the “Official SAT Study Guide, Second Edition.”

They give you this prompt:

“Sometimes it is necessary to challenge what people in authority claim to be true. Although some respect for authority is, no doubt, necessary in order for any group or organization to function, questioning the people in charge- even if they are experts or leaders in their fields- makes us better thinkers. It forces all concerned to defend old ideas and decisions and to consider new ones. Sometimes it can even correct old errors in thought and put an end to wrong actions.”

Then they give you this question:

“Is it important to question the ideas and decisions of people in authority?”

Step 1 – Decide whether you agree or disagree

I am going to agree. I personally believe that’s it’s important to question the ideas and decisions of people in authority. Because I believe it, I’ll have an easier time making my case.

Step 2 – Brainstorm examples that can help you prove your point

I think of brainstorming as using a flashlight to look for your keys in a dark room.

If you’re waving your flashlight all over the place, it’s going to take you longer to find your keys than it would if you had a plan for where to look. You wouldn’t waste your time shining your flashlight on the wall or the ceiling. You want to be systematic and narrow your focus.

It says on the SAT to support your position with examples from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

That’s a little too broad for me. I think of the basic categories this way:

• books (which could include movies, theater and music)
• history (including cultural history)
• current or recent events
• things that happened to people I know
• my own experiences

When I go through the categories one by one, this is what I come up with.

Books: I come up with “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, “The Great Gatsby”, and “Catcher in the Rye.”

There are many other examples you could use here. I chose these because each of them is commonly read in high school English classes. You should start by thinking of the books you’ve read in the past couple of years.

If you have the “Official SAT Study Guide,” you might want to flip through all of the essay questions and notice how the books I picked here could be used as examples for many of the essay questions you might see.

History: I come up with Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus, and Hitler.

There are many other historical figures you could use. I chose these because you probably know something about them. Just as with the books, you should start by thinking of common, obvious figures whom you know something about.

Also, as with the books, if you flip through the other essay questions you’ll notice that each of these examples can be used to answer many of the essay questions you might see.

Current events: Depending on your point of view, you might use either of our two most recent Presidents. There are other examples you could use in this category, too.

People I know & my own experiences: I won’t go into the last two categories, mostly because I’ve got some great examples already. However, if you’re having trouble coming up with examples, you should feel free to use these categories. A personal story can be especially relevant and compelling.

You should also feel free to make up a story as a last resort, but remember that the devil is in the details. The most common problem I see students run into when they make up a story is that they don’t have enough relevant details to support their argument. If you’re making up a story, it has to be solid.

Step 3 – Pick the best 2 examples to use in your essay

Every example I’ve listed can be used to write a great essay. I’m going to pick Huck Finn and MLK, for 2 reasons.

First, I know them pretty well, which is a criteria you should also use when picking your examples.

Second, I can relate them both to a single issue, race. One addresses the issue of race from a fictional standpoint, the other from a historical standpoint.

I don’t mean to suggest that race is a particularly good issue to address, just that if you can find two examples that relate to the same thing in different ways, it can give your essay an added boost.

Step 4 – If you can’t come up with 2 good examples, take the opposite position and repeat steps 2 and 3

I have good examples, so I’ll skip this step.

If I were going to take the other side, though, I could use some of the same books, at least one of the historical examples, and plenty of current events.

Step 5 – Write out your thesis statement in the form, “I believe X because of “Y”

Do it simply as shorthand or fully work it out, either way. I’ll do it in shorthand:

It’s important to question authority because doing so creates progress and moves society forward.

Step 6 – Write a very short outline of your paper

I mean very short. This is just to keep you on track, so you don’t meander while writing. Think of it as the directions for your essay.

1. Intro – It’s important to question authority because doing so creates progress and moves society forward
2. Huck Finn
3. MLK (put your stronger example second)
4. Conclusion (just so you remember to write one)

The whole brainstorming process should take 5 minutes. When you’re done, you know that you’re going to write 4 paragraphs, and each paragraph will be about one thing and one thing only.

That leaves you 20 minutes to write your essay. Once you know what you’re writing about, the actual writing always goes much more smoothly.

There are only 2 other things to keep in mind

1) The third paragraph should begin with a sentence that transitions your essay from the first example to the second.

I might write something like this:

The racial tensions explored by Mark Twain in 1884 came to a head 80 years later when Martin Luther King led his march on Washington.

That’s just one possible way to go. There are many different sentences that could join those examples, just as many different essays could be written from the short outline I’ve just shared with you.

2) Your last paragraph is your conclusion.

It should be just a sentence or two that ties everything up and restates your argument in slightly different words. Essentially, you want to say, “As you can see, I’ve proved my point.” Don’t add anything new.

That’s it. Now you’re ready to write an essay.

If you have the “Official SAT Study Guide,” you can compare your essay to the samples provided on the College Board website.

Try it and let me know how it works.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the essay recently. It seems like many people are concerned about this portion of the test.

The most important thing to know is not to sweat it. The essay only accounts for 30% of your score on the Writing section of the SAT, which is only 1 of 3 sections on the test. When you think of it this way, the essay only accounts for about 10% of your total SAT score.

In a way, that’s unfortunate. I wish they emphasized it more because it’s really worth learning how to do well. If you can write an excellent SAT essay, you can write an excellent paper of any length when you get to college. Unfortunately, nobody asked my opinion when they made this version of the test.

Fortunately, though, the basics of writing a good essay are not that hard to master. That’s another reason not to sweat it. Once you learn a few techniques and practice writing a few essays, you’ll see that it’s not really too hard to get a decent score.

Here’s how it works.

The essay is always the first section of the SAT. They give you a prompt of some kind, usually a quote from a semi-famous person. They ask you a question. You write an essay.

They’re not looking for a masterpiece. You only get 25 minutes to write. They just want to see if you can organize your thoughts and write a decent first draft.

When you write your SAT essay, you have to spend some time planning what you want to say before you start writing. That’s the key to doing a good job.

You’ll write better when you know what you’re writing about before you start. Everybody does. That’s why you have to spend a few minutes brainstorming what to write about and making a quick outline before you begin to write.

Let’s walk through an example of how to figure out what to write about.

Keep in mind that they always ask you a question that’s somewhat philosophical, moral, or ethical in nature. The examples we’ll come up with tend to work for many different essay prompts.

We’ll use the essay question in the first test of the “Official SAT Study Guide, Second Edition.” It’s on page 389.

It’s important that you always read the prompt, not just the question.

The prompt is:

“Sometimes it is necessary to challenge what people in authority claim to be true. Although some respect for authority is, no doubt, necessary in order for any group or organization to function, questioning the people in charge- even if they are experts or leaders in their fields- makes us better thinkers. It forces all concerned to defend old ideas and decisions and to consider new ones. Sometimes it can even correct old errors in thought and put an end to wrong actions.”

Here’s the question:

“Is it important to question the ideas and decisions of people in authority?”

These are the steps we’ll follow

1. Decide whether you agree or disagree.
2. Brainstorm examples that can help you prove your point.
3. Pick the best 2 examples to use in your essay.
4. If you can’t come up with 2 good examples, take the opposite position and repeat steps 2 and 3.
5. Write out your thesis statement in the form, “I believe X because of “Y”.
6. Write a very short outline of your paper.

Try it yourself. Give yourself an unlimited amount of time to brainstorm.

Come back in a couple of days and compare it to what I come up with.

In my previous post, I said that the way to eliminate “careless mistakes” when you’re doing math is to stop thinking of them as careless.

The issue isn’t carelessness, it’s focus. What’s really happens is that you lose your focus for a moment.

That’s good news, because focus is a lot easier to correct than “carelessness”.

So what is focus, anyway?

For our purposes, we could say that focus is placing your full attention exactly where it needs to be at any given moment.

Want an example?

If you’re driving, ideally your attention should be on the cars around you. If you look down at your radio for a moment, placing your attention there instead, and at that same moment the car in front of you stops short, you might hit him.

If you weren’t looking down, it wouldn’t happen.

That’s losing your focus. It’s having your attention on the wrong thing.

When you’re driving, it can cause an accident. When you’re doing math, it can cause you to get a problem wrong when you know how to get it right.

Here’s how it works.

In order to answer any math problem correctly, you have to do 3 things.

1. You have to read the problem correctly.
2. You have to figure out how to solve it.
3. You have to do the calculation correctly.

Reading the problem correctly means that you have to know what they’re asking you to solve for, and what information they’re giving you.

Doing the calculation correctly means the basic algebra, or the adding, subtracting, multiplying, etc. Occasionally you might have to draw something or count something. It’s the step where you get the answer.

Everyone knows that the hard part is Step 2, figuring out how to solve the problem.

Not only that, but all through school your Math teachers have reinforced that knowing how to solve the problem is the most important part, by giving you partial credit when you show your work.

That’s why it’s natural that your mind wants to rush through reading the problem to get to the part where you figure it out. Especially under the pressure of taking the SAT and doing it timed.

Once you’ve figured out how to solve it, it’s also natural that your mind wants to rush the calculation part in order to get to the next question.

But when you’re rushing, you’re not paying full attention to each step as you’re doing it.

You’ve lost your focus.

And when you lose your focus, you’re much more likely to make a mistake.

Let’s look at some sample math problems and see how this works.

Here’s one that’s easy to mis-read.

When the number x is multiplied by 5, the result is the same as when 5 is added to x. What is the value of 4x ?

(A)  4/5
(B)  1
(C)  5/4
(D) 4
(E)  5

Let’s start by writing out the algebra. It’s not that hard.

5x = 5 + x

Now we’ll solve it.

4x = 5
x = 5/4

Did you notice what’s tricky?

If you read the problem correctly, you noticed that they asked for the value of 4x. If you did, good job. Your focus was right on.

Most people, though are used to solving for x, so it’s easy to miss.

It’s easy to just go along like we usually do, until we get x on one side of the equation. If you do that, you get the answer 5/4. Then you might just automatically circle (C).

If you do, you’d get it wrong.

Notice how that very common mistake is one of the answer choices. The people who make the SAT do it on purpose. They know a lot of people won’t be paying close attention.

They know that a lot of people will go right past 4x = 5, ignoring that they just got the correct answer (E) because they didn’t carefully read the problem before beginning their work.

Now let’s look at a problem where it’s easy to mis-calculate.

If 4a + 5b = b, which of the following must equal 8a + 8b ?

(A)  0
(B)  16
(C)  2b
(D) 16b
(E)  8b – 10

For some of you reading this, the algebra here might be a little harder, mostly because it’s a little less obvious what to do.

Let’s start with this.

4a + 5b = b

What do you want to do next?

There are a number of ways to proceed, but if you’re rushing, it’s very easy to do this:

4a = 4b
8a = 8b

Replacing it in the original equation you get:

8b + 8b = 16b

Notice once again that it’s one of the answer choices. They know a lot of people will do something like that, pick (D), and get it wrong.

Most of you can probably see that it actually goes like this:

4a = -4b
8a = -8b

Then, replacing it in the original equation you get:

-8b + 8b = 0

Answer choice (A) is correct.

OK. Now you understand how easy it is to lose focus on a problem you know how to do and get it wrong anyway.

What’s the solution?

Let’s go back to the 3 things you have to do in any math problem.

As you go through a Math section, after you read each problem, ask yourself, “Did I read it right? Do I know what they’re asking me to solve for, and what they’re giving me?”

That doesn’t mean re-read it. It just means to take a couple of seconds and satisfy yourself that you did.

Then go on to figure out how to solve it.

After you finish your calculation, ask yourself, “Did I calculate that right? (or count, or draw, whatever makes sense for that problem)”

Again, that doesn’t mean to re-calculate it. It just means to take a couple of seconds and satisfy yourself that you did.

What this does is force you to slow down on each step and put your full attention on it. It makes you focus. By doing that, you eliminate the vast majority of “careless mistakes” and get the higher score you deserve.

Your next step is to download this year’s Free Official SAT Practice Test from the College Board and practice what you’ve learned.

You can also watch my recent student Jeremy talk about how learning to focus helped him raise his SAT score a lot.

Do you want to know how to increase your SAT Math score without learning any more math than you already know?

Do you think it’s possible?

Before I start, I want to be clear that I think if you’re taking the SAT and you don’t already know how to answer all the math questions correctly, you should learn as many SAT math concepts as you can in the time you have to prepare.

There’s a limit to how high your score can go if you don’t know the handful of basic math concepts that that SAT is testing for. That’s why when I tutor a student one on one, I always make sure she’s learning the math.

If you don’t know how to do a math problem, you can’t get it right. On the other hand, if you do know how to do the problem, you can certainly still get it wrong.

Which leads us to this:

The way to improve your SAT Math score without learning any more math is to answer correctly every single question that you know how to do.

Eliminate the “careless mistakes.”

It’s a simple and obvious answer, but I’ll bet that the overwhelming majority of students who take the SAT are getting several, if not many, questions wrong on the Math section when they know perfectly well how to do the problem.

Now you might say, “Well, if it happens to everyone, it’s not a big deal.”

You’d be right, too, for a lot of things. But not for the SAT, not when your chances of admission to the college of your choice are riding on your score.

Because the SAT Math section is so steeply curved, when you get a few extra questions wrong, it’s killing your score.

If you’re great at math, and you know to do all the questions right, and you do get them all right except for 3 that you just made a little mistake on, your score could drop from an 800 all the way to a 730.

If you’re an average math student, 3 extra questions wrong that you really knew how to do could drop your score from a 600 to a 560.

The worst thing about it is that I bet a lot of people would be happy if they made only 3 careless errors out of the 54 questions on the Math section. A lot of people make more than that.

Talk about frustrating.

So what can you do about it?

The first thing is to stop thinking of them as careless mistakes. The issue isn’t carelessness, it’s focus.

What’s really went on is that you lost your focus for a moment. That’s good news, because focus is a lot easier to correct than “carelessness”.

I’ll tell you how to do it soon.

In the meantime, watch my recent student Jeremy talk about how learning to focus helped him dramatically raise his score.

OK. Now that we’ve seen how the Critical Reading Sentence Completions work when there’s only 1 blank, let’s look at sentences with 2 blanks.

The most important thing to know is that the sentences with 2 blanks aren’t that different than those with only 1.

One of the blanks is usually easier. Start with that one, and do the same steps we used for the sentences with 1 blank.

If you haven’t read that post recently, here are the steps.

• Read the sentence. Don’t look at the answers yet.
• Choose a word or phrase on your own that more or less fits in the blank. There’s often a word or a phrase in the sentence that does the trick.
• If you can’t think of a word or phrase, decide whether it’s positive or negative, good or bad.
• Now look at the answers. Use the process of elimination. Cross off any answer choices that don’t work. If you don’t know the word, leave it in.
• At this point you may know the answer. If you don’t, and you crossed out at least 2 choices, ask yourself if you have an educated guess.

You can usually rule out several answer choices this way, by ruling out one word or the other.

Then you repeat the process with the second blank.

Occasionally in a 2 blank sentence, they can’t be figured out on their own.

When that happens, it’s almost always the case that one of the blanks will have a positive word, and the other will have a negative word.

Decide which is which, and use the process of elimination.

If that’s a little confusing, don’t worry. It will make a lot more sense when we look at the examples.

Here’s an easy sentence with 2 blanks. On a difficulty scale of 1 – 5, where 1 is easiest and 5 is hardest, this is a level 1.

Scientific discoveries are often thought of as the result
of ——- effort, but many discoveries have, in fact,
arisen from ——- or a mistake.

Which blank is easier for you? For me they’re about equal, so I’ll start with the first one.

Can you think of a word or phrase that might go in the first blank?

It’s a positive word, and we know from the sentence that it means something like “strong” or “consistent”.

Let’s look at the answer choices.

(A) conscientious . . a method
(B) incidental . . a mishap
(C) collaborative . . a design
(D) persistent . . an extension
(E) systematic . . an accident

All the words in the first column are positive, except for B, incidental. We cross out that answer choice. Now we have this.

(A) conscientious . . a method
(B) incidental . . a mishap
(C) collaborative . . a design
(D) persistent . . an extension
(E) systematic . . an accident

Now looking at the second blank, we can tell that it means something like “mistake”.

It’s an easy question, so you probably know it already.

You can see that while “mishap” means something like “mistake”, we’ve already crossed it out, so B can’t be our answer.

The only remaining word in the second column that means something close to “mistake” is “accident”.

The answer is E, systematic… an accident.

Here’s an moderately difficult sentence with 2 blanks. On a scale of 1 – 5, this is a level 3, right in the middle.

Much of this band’s current CD, unfortunately, is ——-,
with ——- song often immediately following a sublime one.

Why is this question moderately difficult? Because of the word “sublime”.

Let’s assume you don’t know it, or aren’t sure what it means.

You’d have to start with the first blank. We can tell from the word “unfortunately” that the word in the first blank has to be negative.

Now we’ll look at the answer choices.

(A) mystical . . a superior
(B) uneven . . a mediocre
(C) predictable . . an eloquent
(D) enthralling . . a vapid
(E) flippant . . an intelligible

We’ll cross out the choices where the words in the first column aren’t negative. Since we’re talking about music, I hope you’d think predictable is negative.

So now we have this.

(A) mystical . . a superior
(B) uneven . . a mediocre
(C) predictable . . an eloquent
(D) enthralling . . a vapid
(E) flippant . . an intelligible

Now, if you know that “sublime” means “really, really good”, or even if you have a gut feeling that it’s a positive word, it’s easy at this point.

The word in the second blank has to mean something that’s not good, and the only word that works is “mediocre”.

If you don’t have at least a good guess at “sublime”, you might choose to skip this question.

The answer is B, uneven… a mediocre.

Finally, let’s look at a hard 2 blank sentence that’s a level 5.

Despite their patent ——-, some beliefs have become
so ——- that no amount of rational argument
will suffice to eradicate them.

Now, I’ll admit that this sentence looks hard at first glance.

Remember the sentence in the previous post where we ignored the word “arboreal” and made the sentence a lot easier?

We’re going to do the same thing here, and make this sentence a lot easier than it seems.

If we just read the first part, “Despite their patent _____,” anything could go in that blank.

That tells us that we have to focus on the second blank. In fact, for now, we’ll ignore the first part of the sentence completely. Lightly cross it out with your pencil.

We’re left with this.

Despite their patent ——-, some beliefs have become
so ——- that no amount of rational argument
will suffice to eradicate them.

We can even think of the sentence this way.

Some beliefs have become so ——- that no amount of rational argument will suffice to eradicate them.

Still hard? We can ignore “suffice”. Cross that out and we have this.

Some beliefs have become so ——- that no amount of rational argument will suffice to eradicate them.

Now let’s look at the answer choices.

(A) validity . . inconsequential
(B) implausibility . . entrenched
(C) credibility . . prevalent
(D) absurdity . . outmoded
(E) novelty . . infrequent

You still have to know, or have a good guess, what “eradicate” means.

But if you know that it means something like “put an end to” or “wipe out”, you can eliminate words from the second column.

If you can’t wipe out a belief, it has to be strongly believed in by a lot of people.

Using the process of elimination, we’re left with this.

(A) validity . . inconsequential
(B) implausibility . . entrenched
(C) credibility . . prevalent
(D) absurdity . . outmoded
(E) novelty . . infrequent

Going back to the original sentence, we can leave “patent” crossed out if we don’t know it, and we now have this.

Despite their patent ——-, some beliefs have become
so ——- that no amount of rational argument
will suffice to eradicate them.

(A) validity . . inconsequential
(B) implausibility . . entrenched
(C) credibility . . prevalent
(D) absurdity . . outmoded
(E) novelty . . infrequent

If you’ve gotten this far, you probably know that the answer is B, implausibility… entrenched.

OK. That’s how to do Sentence Completion questions.

You might have to practice it a few times, but this stuff really works.

I’m sure you can see that while vocabulary does matter, you can really maximize the vocabulary you know by practicing a few simple methods.

Your next step is to download this year’s Free Official SAT Practice Test from the College Board and put what you’ve learned to work.

I’ll be back soon with an explanation of all the Sentence Completion questions on that test so you can see how well you’re doing.

Today I’m going to share with you the most powerful methods I know for getting a higher score on the Sentence Completion questions in the Critical Reading section of the SAT.

There are 19 Sentence Completion questions on the SAT, and they count for almost 30% of your Critical Reading score. If you’re aiming to break 700 on Critical Reading, you have to ace these questions. But no matter what your score goal, making the most of the Sentence Completions is key to reaching it.

OK. Now this may seem like stating the obvious, but doing well on the sentence completions has two main components:

1. Having a strong vocabulary
2. Making the most of the vocabulary you have

You don’t need me to tell you how to improve your vocabulary, but I’m going to do it anyway. Read more, and use flashcards.

If you get a set of vocabulary flashcards and learn 20 new words each week, in a couple of months you’ll be way ahead of the game.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest…

I’m about to show you how to do the best you can with the vocabulary you have. First I’ll give you some of the basic steps, then we’ll walk through some sample questions together.

Sentence Completion sentences can have either 1 or 2 blanks. Here’s what to do when the sentence has 1 blank.

• Read the sentence. Don’t look at the answers yet.
• Choose a word or phrase on your own that more or less fits in the blank. There’s often a word or a phrase in the sentence that does the trick.
• If you can’t think of a word or phrase, decide whether it’s positive or negative, good or bad.
• Now look at the answers. Use the process of elimination. Cross off any answer choices that don’t work. If you don’t know the word, leave it in.
• At this point you may know the answer. If you don’t, and you crossed out at least 2 choices, ask yourself if you have an educated guess.

If that’s a little confusing, don’t worry. It will make a lot more sense when we look at the examples.

Here’s an easy sentence with one blank. On a difficulty scale of 1 – 5, where 1 is easiest and 5 is hardest, this is a level 1.

Ordinary garlic has ——- properties; during the First World War
medics saved countless lives by wrapping wounds with garlic-soaked bandages.

Can you think of a word or phrase that might go in the blank?

It’s a positive word, and we know from the sentence that it means something like “life saving”.

Now let’s look at the answer choices.

(A) curative
(B) flavoring
(C) inferior
(D) questionable
(E) infamous

It’s an easy question, so you might know the answer right away.

If you don’t, you probably know that choices C, D, and E are negative, so cross them out.

(A) curative
(B) flavoring
(C) inferior
(D) questionable
(E) infamous

Even if you don’t know the “curative”, you probably know that “flavoring” doesn’t mean anything like “life saving”.

The answer is A, curative.

Here’s an moderately difficult sentence with one blank. On a scale of 1 – 5, this is a level 3, right in the middle.

Because certain tropical birds rarely come out of the trees
in their arboreal habitat, the continued well-being of the rain forest
is ——- to their survival.

Can you think of a word or phrase that might go in the blank?

Hint: Don’t be fooled by the word “arboreal”. You might not know it, but it’s not important in the sentence.

You could cross it out, and look at the sentence like this:

Because certain tropical birds rarely come out of the trees
in their arboreal habitat, the continued well-being of the rain forest
is ——- to their survival.

It’s easier, right? Now can you think of something that might go in the blank?

Even though the definition is not in the sentence, like it was in the previous example, we can tell that it’s positive, and it means something like “necessary” or “important”.

Now let’s look at the answer choices.

(A) inadequate
(B) tangential
(C) indispensable
(D) baneful
(E) expeditious

You might know it right away. If not, let’s cross off the negative words. Now we’re left with this.

(A) inadequate
(B) tangential
(C) indispensable
(D) baneful
(E) expeditious

That can still be tricky, because if you don’t know the word “indispensable”, it looks like it might be negative.

Now can you tell which of the remaining choices means closest to “necessary” or “important”?

The answer is C, indispensable.

Now let’s look at a one blank sentence that’s a level 5. It’s a hard one.

“Lowering taxes” is ——- of this political party,
a belief shared by most party members.

On first glance, it doesn’t look hard. It seems pretty obvious that the word in the blank has to mean something like “a belief”.

Let’s look at the answer choices.

(A)  an acronym
(B) a retraction
(C) a tenet
(D) a plight
(E) a prospectus

Now we know why it’s hard! Those are difficult vocabulary words.

All you can do is do down the list and ask yourself, do I think this means something like “belief”?

If not, cross it out. If you can definitely cross out at least 2 answers and you think you have an educated guess, then by all means choose it. If not, leave it blank.

The answer is C, tenet. It means principle, or belief, particularly an important one.

Are you getting the hang of it? Good.

Come back tomorrow and we’ll see how it works when the sentence has 2 blanks.