This section will explain why practice tests can be such beneficial study tools in your preparation for the SAT. The following section will explain more concretely how you should go about implementing the theory.

The SAT tests specific subjects in specific ways. Since 1994, when the format of the test slightly changed, every SAT verbal section has included 19 analogies, 19 sentence completions, and 40 reading comprehension questions. These questions always test the same general skills. Similarly, the math section every year consists of 25 five-choice multiple-choice questions, 15 quantitative comparison questions, and 10 grid-ins. These three types of math questions all ask questions testing the same fundamental math knowledge, spanning specific (and easily definable) topics in basic arithmetic, algebra, and geometry.

SAT tests stay similar from year to year for obvious reasons. First, to make sweeping changes to the test each year would cost ETS tremendous amounts of money. Second—and probably more important—to change the test every year would destroy one of the factors of the SAT that ETS very much wants to maintain: the consistency of the scores over time. The SAT is designed to objectively measure a test taker not only against his peers but also against those people who have taken the test before. This way, a college looking at an SAT score can place the test-taker into a historical context. If the SAT were to change from time to time, that valuable aspect of SAT scores would disappear. Because the SAT tests the same specific subjects with the same types of questions, the questions on one test resemble the questions on another test. The words used on vocabulary questions (whether analogies or sentence completions) often overlap from test to test, and questions on triangles on one test are often quite similar to questions on triangles on another.

A girl named Molly Bloom takes a practice test and (because it makes this example much simpler) gets only one question wrong. Molly checks her answers and then jumps from her chair and does a little dance that would be embarrassing if anyone else saw her. After her euphoria passes, Molly begins to wonder which question she got wrong and returns to her chair. She discovers that the question dealt with triangles and the Pythagorean theorem. She soon realizes that she answered the question wrong because she thought the formula for the Pythagorean theorem was a = b + c, when really it’s a² = b² + c². Molly doesn’t know where or when she became confused about the Pythagorean Theorem, but as she studies the question and learns how and why she got it wrong, she knows that she’ll never make that mistake again.

Molly’s actions here seem like a minor thing. All she did was study a question she got wrong until she understood why she got it wrong and what she should have done to get it right. But think about the implications. Molly got that question wrong because she didn’t know how to answer it correctly, and the practice test pointed out her mistaken understanding in the most noticeable way possible: she got the question wrong. After doing her admittedly goofy little dance, Molly wasn’t content simply to see what the correct answer was and get on with her day—she wanted to see how and why she got the question wrong and what she should have done to get it right. So, with a look of determination, telling herself, “I will figure out why I got this question wrong, yes I will, yes,” she spent five to ten minutes studying the question, discovered her mistaken understanding of the Pythagorean theorem, and learned the correct Pythagorean theorem. If Molly were to take that same test again, she would not get that question wrong.

“But she never will take that test again, so she’s never going to see that particular question again,” some poor sap who hasn’t read this guide might sputter. “She wasted her precious time. What a dork!”

In some sense, that poor sap is correct: Molly will never take that exact practice test again. But the poor sap is wrong to call Molly a dork because we know that the SAT is remarkably similar from year to year, both in the topics it covers and in the way it asks questions about those topics. Therefore, when Molly taught herself how to answer that one question about the Pythagorean Theorem, she actually learned how to answer the questions dealing with the Pythagorean theorem that will appear on every future practice test she takes and on the real SAT.

In studying the results of her practice test—in figuring out exactly why she got her one question wrong and what she should have known and done to get it right—Molly has targeted a weakness and overcome it. She’ll be ready for future questions about triangles and the Pythagorean theorem on the SAT.

What if you take a practice test and get 30 questions wrong, and your errors span a large number of different topics, from analogies to ratios? Well, you should do exactly what Molly did. Take your test and study it. Identify every question you got wrong, figure out why you got it wrong, and then teach yourself what you should have done to get the question right. If you can’t figure out your error, ask someone who can.

Think about it. What does an incorrect answer mean? That wrong answer identifies a weakness in your test taking, whether that weakness is an lack of familiarity with a particular topic, a tendency to be careless, or a vulnerability for those enticing, “tricky” wrong answers that ETS often includes among the answer choices. If you got 30 questions wrong on a practice test, then each of those thirty questions identifies a weakness in your ability to take the SAT or your knowledge about the topics the SAT tests. But as you study each question you got wrong and figure out why you answered incorrectly, you are actually learning how to answer the similar questions that will undoubtedly appear in similar form on your real SAT. You are discovering your exact SAT weaknesses and addressing them, and you are learning to understand not just the knowledge required to answer a particular question, but the way that ETS asks all its questions. As we said in the introduction to this guide book, both ETS and the test prep companies are correct: the SAT is a test of knowledge, and it is a test of tricks. In using practice tests to study, you tackle both aspects of the test at once.

This method becomes more powerful the more you employ it. As you move through a series of practice tests, studying your mistakes and learning how to get those questions right, you will encounter and learn to answer an increasing variety of questions on the specific topics covered by the test. You will thereby increase your ability to recognize and handle whatever the SAT throws at you.