What are the SAT's like?

Hi, I'm in year 12 (L6) and am hoping to apply to a university in the USA. I don't know really what the SATs are.. Do you have to take tests in maths/sciences even if youre applying for an Arts course with Arts and Humanities A levels?

Reply 1

zombiejon

If you are referring to subject tests (SAT II), you wouldn't have to. The general SAT (colloquially known as SAT I) will be required. Having STEM SAT IIs could provide a boost to your package, but I don't think it would be of benefit to humanities.

Reply 2

Sabertooth

Original post by kiera28

I found it pretty difficult to take (I did it last September) just with the length of it, it really wore me out. But I thought the test itself was reasonable. If you get a good textbook and study then you should be able to do well. When I did it, I had been out of education for quite a long time so I needed to study a lot to try and refresh all the material. I found the maths sections hard, mostly because, like I said, it had been years since I'd done any maths.

I just did the regular SAT. You don't need to do individual subject tests for a lot of universities - mine didn't require them, but better ones do. It also depends on what you want to study as to whether you need a subject test.

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 3

chershen

SAT I basically has three components - Writing, Critical Reading and Maths.
In my opinion, Maths is actually the easiest to tackle, but at the first few try, you will find it a bit difficult and odd.
After many practices (and refering to the explanation of the answers), you will learn to answer it by 'shortcuts'.

Writing component tests your essay-writing skills and grammar. (I think the New SAT is essay-optional...)
You will need to spot grammar errors and things like that.
This is also quite easy with ample practices because the grammar rules they test are always the same, so just make sure you master them. (I used a book called SAT 2400 in 7 steps and found it really helpful as it gave specific exercises on each grammar rule! Not sure if they have new edition for the NEW SAT tho.)

Critical Reading is a BIG problem for me. The questions are not asking for direct answers.
You need to try to guess what the author is thinking and justify to find out the correct answers.
One good tip is to read questions (that specify which line to refer to) and go back to the mentioned line, and read multiple times, instead of reading the whole passage at once because there are almost always parts of the passage that are not important to answer the questions.