#satblr

it’s finally happened, you’ve hit rock bottom. your worst fear has come true

the decision is out: “we regret to inform you” and everything else is a blur. your world: shattered. ever know what it feels like to have your world shattered?

breathing? gone. sense of awareness? gone. one full, fledged, panic state. evething you have ever thought of, every single ounce of hope pent up in the last 6 months are useless. it ends here. what you thought were your dreams, ended here. your cheeks turn red, your feet turn cold, you can’t hear anything around you. the people there for you are trying to say things, are trying to hug you, all you see is gray pain. just... pain.

you question if you’re good enough for anything you want in this life. leaving your fate in the hands of the more powerful while you sit there for months drowning in what seems to be your optimism. i’m sorry, it’s the only thing that gets me to sleep at night, the only thing that keeps me grounded. cover your face and duck down because the uncertainty of getting accepted is too great.

there aren’t enough stories about anxiety and persevering, there aren’t enough “my family has been in poverties”, there aren’t enough “i couldn’t afford an SAT tutors” “here’s why i got this grade please reconsiders” there aren’t enough sad stories to tack onto your back for everyone to see to at least get deferred? God forbid accepted? at the end of the day you wonder if anyone knows or wonders you’re good enough? how is the institution you’ve been pouring your heart into for the past 4 years telling you you’re not good enough for them and you’re still supposed to think you’re good enough for yourself?

i’m not sure if you’ve ever felt this kind of pain before but i just know one day it’s all going to subside. pain doesn’t go away: it numbs overtime but the question is how long do i have to wait until it does?

one day we’re gonna be okay. one day we’ll go to college in the fall and realize “maybe i belong here instead” you’re not going to have the biggest name brand of the century, you’re not going to have internships pouring at your door, your school will not be on the news, people will not be asking you for future connections from all kinds of countries, maybe your school doesn’t have as many resources, maybe the president’s kid didn’t go to your school, maybe your teacher doesn’t have a ph.d, maybe your school isn’t ranked top 5!! MAYBE it doesn’t matter? life is only miserable when you ignore every other factor besides the unrealistic expectations you’ve set for yourself.

maybe you have to work harder for what you want in life: and i’m talking big picture. maybe life turned out that way because life knew you could handle it.

you’re gonna be okay. i can’t promise you’ll be great, i can’t promise it’ll be easy. but you’ve made it this far and that means you can keep going, one step at a time ✨

I have dealt with this test for so long and I know that at first this test seems like hell but when you really get familiarized with it, is actually freaking easy. The SAT maybe hard but the the ultimate tip is to be harder than it. 

Reading Section

For the Reading Section, my first and most essential tip is that you are going to have to read the WHOLE passage. Yes I know it may be tempting to skim, but all this section wants from you is to test your close reading skills, so duh you are going to have to read closely.

Annotate. as. much.as. possible. This also goes with reading closely. You have to pay attention to every detail, (not memorizing though, the text is there for you to look at it back). Pay attention to the relationships between characters, to the characters attitudes,to the narrators attitude to each character, to the word choices, etc. This will help you to establish moods, tones and general themes of the passage. 

Also in annotating develop your own code, like you may not want to write everything you are thinking of because it will waste time, but you understand yourself so you dont have to write every single word out. (?) do i make sense right now lol?

Remember, all the questions have evidential support somewhere in the passage, if it does not have support IT IS NOT THE CORRECT ANSWER. 

Before you look at the answer choices make predictions.

Play positive and negative. If the tone is positive eliminate negative answers.

Play too broad, too narrow.

Ask yourself why would the author write that. And better, ask yourself what was the examiner thinking when creating the questions, you may be able to know why an answer is wrong. 

With unfamiliar words check lines below and above to understand it. Look for the words surrounding it.

Look out for extreme answers. (always, never, universally)

Make sure all parts of your answer are true.

Although vocab isnt tested in the new sat, knowing some sat common words will not hurt. you can check them in quizlet or magoosh.

Read a lot. Read 18th century books, new york times, nat geo articles, etc. Just read a lot. and remember read closely.

Something I figured out is that the questions are there to make you understand the passage a bit more. What this means is that usually in a passage, all the questions in it will make sense to each other and will make sense to the passage as a whole.

Writing section

For the grammar section, you will have to learn all the rules of grammar there is no other way to it ( it kinda works like math)

You will also have vocab questions, so again check some vocab.

Read closely again, you will have to pay attention to every comma and every verb to figure out the text meaning and its style. 

Think of what the question is testing you. ( e.g: subject-verb agreement, modifiers, punctuation)

Pay attention to the style of the text. See if it was written in first or third person, if it is formal or informal, etc.

Read the sentence you just modified in your head and check out if it sounds okay,

Sounds kinda logical, but read the whole option. Sometimes it happened to me that I didnt read all the option and just cause the first part sounded right I chose it. LOST POINTS. FOR NOTHING. 

Math Section

For math you have to be smarter than the SAT itself. Dont get stuck in a question. Try to figure it out in any way you can. Maybe it is backsolving ( using the options to figure out the answer), maybe it is plugging in random numbers (this works perfectly fine in algebra questions). Just dont get stuck.

Be fast. practice mental calculation. it will save you a lot of time.

Obviously you have to know the rules and the topics the sat will be testing you about. After that, focus on your weaknesses and spent a lot of time solving worksheets of the topic. Just search for them in google, they dont have to be SAT related. 

With math, when a problem sounds overwhelming sometimes you have to take a step back and try to solve it as you would in real life. be practical.

Figure out some calculator hacks for the calculator allowed section.

For the formulas and concepts, make flashcards, it is a great way to memorize.

General Tips

Overall, when you test yourself try to do it timing yourself 5 minutes less than what the actual exam gives to you. This will allow you to be faster.

SUPER IMPORTANT: get a notebook and annotate EVERY question you get wrong. Ask yourself why you got that question wrong and what you can do to not commit the same mistake again. This is super important because the SAT works in patterns, and usually the questions will be similar, so if you got a question wrong and you do not understand why that happened, there is this huge probability this is going to happen on the real exam

Remember is not about spending LOTS of hours studying for this test, is about practicing and getting better at the questions you usually do wrong. Dont stress yourself over this test, because that may give you test anxiety and that is the last thing we want.

Practice some meditation. It will help you reduce the test anxiety and also allow you to focus more