500 New SAT Math Problems
Just 19.99 on Amazon

Hi everyone! The latest edition of 500 New SAT Math Problems is now available in paperback from Amazon. This edition just has been modified from the previous edition to account for the changes on the Digital SAT.

The paperback is now on sale on Amazon for only $19.99. Note that once the sale ends (by the end of today), the price of this book will go up to $42.99. 

The promotion has ended. Thanks to everyone who participated. The book is now available at its regular price here: 500 New SAT Math Problems

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at steve@SATPrepGet800.com 

Thank you all for your continued support!

A Trick For Free Two Day Shipping

I would like to finish this post with a little trick you can use to get free 2 day shipping on any of the books you decide to purchase without making any additional purchases. If you have never used Amazon Prime you can sign up for a free month using the following link.

Sign Up For Amazon Prime For Free

If you have already had a free trial of Amazon Prime you can simply open up a new Amazon account to get a new free trial. It just takes a few minutes! You will need to use a different email address than the one you usually use.

This next part is very important! After you finish your transaction, go to your Account, select “Manage my prime membership,” and turn off the recurring billing. This way in a month’s time Amazon will not start charging you for the service.

After shutting off the recurring billing you will still continue to receive the benefit of free 2 day shipping for one month. This means that as long as you use this new Amazon account for your purchases you can do all of your shopping on Amazon for the next month without having to worry about placing minimum orders to get free shipping.

Just be aware that certain products from outside sellers do not always qualify for free shipping, so please always check over your bill carefully before you check out.

Well I hope you decide to take advantage of this very special offer, or at the very least I hope you will benefit from my Amazon “free 2 day shipping trick.” Here is the link one more time:

Sign Up For Amazon Prime For Free

If you think your friends might be interested in this special offer, please share it with them on Facebook:

Thank you all for your continued support!

If you want to take the SAT in October, then today is your last day to register.

Today is also the last day to make changes to your previous registration.

To register direct via the College Board click on this link.

As always, I wish you all the best of luck with your SAT prep leading up to test day. If you do need extra help then please take a look at the articles I have written to help you prepare for SAT math.

In addition to this blog, there are many other free resources I offer, such as the 800 Initiation, my 12 part 6 week free email prep course. Also check out my Facebook and Twitter pages. There is a lot of great SAT math info on these pages too.

In my book The 32 Most Effective SAT Math Strategies, I suggest “picking numbers” as a method for solving many types of SAT math problems. Using this particular strategy on SAT math problems is not always the quickest way to arrive at a solution, but it does have several points in its favor:

(1) By replacing variables with specific numbers a difficult SAT problem often becomes much easier to understand.

(2) If you do your computations carefully, this method will help you avoid careless errors and will guide you to the correct solution quite easily.

(3) This is the perfect “fallback method.” Use it on problems that are a bit above your ability level to squeeze out a few more correct answers on the SAT.

PWN The SAT has written a nice blog post on this particular strategy (although he refers to it as “plugging in”). Check out the example he provides and attempt to solve it in two ways. First try to solve it by “plugging in,” and then try to solve it algebraically (the way you would do it in school). Compare your answers to the solutions he provides.

I am planning to begin posting articles on the various SAT math strategies that are described in my book – so keep an eye out for those! Until then, keep plugging in those numbers to get a higher SAT math score.

General Graphing Calculator Advice for the SAT/ACT

• I always recommended that you use a TI-84 or comparable graphing calculator for the SAT or ACT.
• It is important that you are comfortable with your calculator on test day, so make sure that you are consistently practicing with the calculator you plan to use.
• Make sure that your calculator has fresh batteries the day of the test. Nobody will supply a calculator for you if yours dies.
• You may have to switch between DEGREE and RADIAN modes during the test. If you are using a TI-84 (or equivalent) calculator press the MODE button and scroll down to the third line when necessary to switch between modes.

Graphing Calculator Features You Should Know for the SAT/ACT

Below are the most important things you should practice on your graphing calculator.

(1) Practice entering complicated computations in a single step, and know when to insert parentheses. In general, there are 4 instances when you should use parentheses in your calculator. Around numerators of fractions Around denominators of fractions Around exponents Whenever you actually see parentheses in the expression

• Around numerators of fractions
• Around denominators of fractions
• Around exponents
• Whenever you actually see parentheses in the expression

Examples: We will substitute a 5 in for x in each of the following examples.

(2) Clear the screen before using it in a new problem. The big screen allows you to check over your computations easily.

(3) Press the ANS button (2^nd (-) ) to use your last answer in the next computation.

(4) Press 2^nd ENTER to bring up your last computation for editing. This is especially useful when you are plugging in answer choices, or guessing and checking.

(5) You can press 2^nd ENTER over and over again to cycle backwards through all the computations you have ever done.

(6) Know where the ,√ ,π and ^ buttons are so you can reach them quickly.

(7) Change a decimal to a fraction by pressing MATH ENTER ENTER.

(8) Press the MATH button – in the first menu that appears you can take cube roots and nth roots for any n. Scroll right to NUM and you have lcm( and gcd(.

(9) Know how to use the SIN, COS and TAN buttons as well as SIN^-1, COS^-1 and TAN^-1.

The following items are less important but can be useful.

(10) Press the Y= button to enter a function, and then hit ZOOM 6 to graph it in a standard window.

(11) Practice using the WINDOW button to adjust the viewing window of your graph.

(12) Practice using the TRACE button to move along the graph and look at some of the points plotted.

(13) Pressing 2nd TRACE (which is really CALC) will bring up a menu of useful items. For example selecting ZERO will tell you where the graph hits the x-axis, or equivalently where the function is zero. Selecting MINIMUM or MAXIMUM can find the vertex of a parabola. Selecting INTERSECT will find the point of intersection of 2 graphs.

And now it’s time to start practicing lots of SAT math problems. For this you may want to take a look at the Get 800 collection of SAT math prep books. Click on the picture below for more information about these books.

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See you in a week!

Here is some basic stuff you need to remember for test day.

The full article can be found at SAT Exam Savvy.

The list includes the obvious things such as a calculator and identification, but it also contains things that you might not think of such as spare batteries for you calculator.

 

Whether you agree or disagree with this author’s perspective, you might find the linked article interesting.

The article can be found at The Washington Post.

Students that have received a certain ACT score often ask me what the corresponding SAT score would be and vice versa. Full conversion charts can be found here. Click on the link to see if your SAT or ACT score is stronger.

The first chart compares the combined critical reading and math scores on the SAT with the ACT composite score. Let’s just put this into perspective with SAT math. An SAT math score of about 400 corresponds to about a 16 on the ACT. An SAT math score of 600 corresponds to an ACT score of about 26, and an SAT math score of 700 is equivalent to about a 32 on the ACT.

The second chart is a comparison of SAT and ACT writing scores.

These charts are a nice way to determine if the SAT or ACT is a better choice for you. Go ahead and take both an SAT and an ACT practice test (as always use an official College Board test for the SAT). Use these charts to compare your two scores. This can help you determine which one is the better test for you.

Are You Doing These Things Right Now?

Take a look at this article from College Admission Partners. It contains some important basic information for students that are entering their junior year in high school.

Let me just take a minute to emphasize a few items from point 2.

• Try to decide early on whether you will be taking the SAT or ACT. Make sure to take at least one practice test of each, and be sure to use an official SAT and an official ACT. You can compare your SAT and ACT scores using the conversion chart found here.
• Begin preparation 3 to 4 months before taking the actual exam for the first time. If you will be taking the SAT you may want to read this article that I have written on preparing for SAT math.
• Decide if you will be preparing for the SAT/ACT on your own or using a prep course/private tutor. You may want to read this article to help you make your decision.
• Make sure to register for the SAT or ACT early on so that the testing center nearest to you does not become unavailable.

Doodling in Math Class: Connecting Dots

As a recovering Angry Birds addict and expert amateur doodler I found this video both entertaining and educational. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Some great tips here from Omniac Education.

As the saying goes: Fail to prepare, then prepare to fail…

 

See this link for a decent article from SAT Math Problems.

Overall this article has some nice tips. But I should point out that I disagree with the following two statements:

(1) “One of the most feared types of questions in the math section of the SAT is often the ratio problem.”

In my experience most students preparing for the SAT DO NOT find ratio problems particularly difficult. That said, they are important enough that I include a whole chapter on setting them up properly in my strategy book. I do consider this a very basic strategy however. I believe that there are many other types of problems that students fear much more than ratio problems, and those are taken care of by more advanced strategies in my book.

(2) “SAT ratio problems tend to incorporate extraneous information and provide familiar-looking answer options in order to mislead you into incorrect calculations without fully understanding the nature of the problem.”

I do agree that some ratio problems on the SAT have extraneous information. But this is relatively rare. Many ratio problems on the SAT are quite straightforward. To say that ratio problems tend to incorporate extraneous information is a bit of an overstatement.

Take a look at the article and see for yourself!