About the SAT
The SAT is a standardized test that colleges use to evaluate applicants. Over two million students take the SAT every year and it is accepted by every college in America for evaluating a student’s college preparedness. It is designed to measure a student’s ability to understand and process elements in three subjects: reading, writing, and math. SAT scores are calculated based on a student’s performance relative to other test-takers, and have proven to be an indicator of collegiate success.
Test Format
The SAT consists of four required sections:
| Section | Number of Questions | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Reading | 52 questions | 65 minutes |
| Writing and Language | 44 questions | 35 minutes |
| Math – No Calculator | 20 questions | 25 minutes |
| Math – Calculator | 38 questions | 55 minutes |
The Reading Section
The Reading section measures your ability to understand and analyze written material. The reading section always has five passages, each accompanied by 10-11 corresponding questions.
The passages vary in genre, purpose, subject, and complexity. Some passages will include informational graphs, such as tables, graphs, and charts. You will be expected to understand both the graphics and any connections/relationships between the information in graphics and the information found in the passage.
The Writing and Language Section
The ability to write well is a critical skill, both in college and in the workforce. The Writing and Language section is designed to test two components of the writing process:
- Rhetorical skills: these questions test how well you can revise and edit text to improve the expression of ideas. Specifically, these questions examine your ability to organize passages, paragraphs, and sentences; extract the main ideas and purposes of passages; coordinate supporting details in passages; and conform sentences to the overall tone of a passage.
- Usage and mechanics: these questions test how well you can correct errors in sentence structure, usage, and punctuation.
The Math Sections
The math sections measure a student’s ability to reason quantitatively, solve mathematical problems, and interpret data presented in graphical form. The math required for these sections is typically covered in the first three years of American high school education: Arithmetic, Algebra and Functions, Geometry, and Data Analysis.
- No Calculator section: 25 minutes, 20 questions (15 multiple choice questions; 5 grid-in questions)
- Calculator section: 55 minutes, 38 questions (30 multiple choice questions; 8 grid-in questions)