5 Tips for Improving your SAT or ACT Score

Tip 1: Pay special attention to introductory and transitional words such as but, although, however, yet, even though because they are extremely important forming the logical structure of a sentence. And remember that small words such as not can make a big difference. This is particularly important for sentence completion questions.

Tip 2: Eliminate the Obviously Wrong Answer. Using the process of elimination can help eliminate answer choices in a multiple choice setting. Once incorrect answer choices are eliminated, you can choose between the remaining options.

Tip 3: On the SAT, figures are accurate (to scale) unless otherwise noted. If two lines look like they are the same length, then they are the same length! on the ACT Figures are not necessarily accurate (to scale). Just because two angles look the same in a figure doesn’t mean that they are the same!

Tip 4: Plug in the answer choices. Sometimes you can find the correct word by working backwards. Try plugging in the answer choices to see which one works. When plugging in the answer choices, start with choice ( C ). If the choices are numbers, they are usually listed in order from the lowest to highest value, or the vice versa. If ( C ) turns out to be too high, you don’t need to try out the larger numbers.

Tip 5: Easy Does it. Answer the easy and moderate questions first. That way you’ll make sure that you get to see all the questions on the test that you have a good shot of getting right, while saving the leftover time for the difficult questions. Since all questions within a Subject Test are worth the same number of points, there’s no point in wasting time trying to answer difficult questions. In the same amount of time, you could answer several easy questions and rack up points.

Please visit Matt Wu's official Blog for different topics on tutoring and SAT/ACT Prep.  Matt also serves as Area Director of Club Z In-Home Tutoring of Walnut Creek, Lamorinda and Castro Valley.