How to Prepare for the SAT
Preparing for the SAT® is a key step in paving the way for college admissions, scholarships, and career exploration and academic courses.
Preparing is more than just taking an SAT practice test – it’s knowing how to equip yourself with insights about your PSAT/NMSQT® scores or full-length practice test scores, learning to set your personal SAT Target Score, and enhancing your confidence with free SAT practice resources.
Review Your Practice Scores or PSAT/NMSQT Scores
If you took the PSAT/NMSQT, you should review your results to understand your strengths as well as areas you need to improve on.
Get to Know the SAT
If you didn’t take the PSAT/NMSQT, you should take a full-length practice test to set a baseline for your progress and target areas for improvement.
Taking full-length practice tests in Bluebook™ is one of the best ways to get ready and can lead to real score gains. Students who complete 1, 2, or 3 or more full-length practice tests score on average about 25, 45, and 60 points higher, respectively, than students who don't take any.
The benefits were even greater for students who had lower PSAT scores and saw the biggest jumps in their SAT performance. No matter your background or starting point, practicing with Bluebook can help you feel more confident and perform better on test day.
Study with your Practice Scores
Once you've completed your practice test, go to My Practice to view your scores. There are two ways your practice scores can help you study:
- Practice Specific Questions: From your My Practice dashboard or your Score Details page, you'll see a button for Practice Specific Questions. Based on your performance on that practice test, My Practice creates this custom set of questions to help you review any skills that might need a boost. You can even see the associated domains for each question so you can do further review in the Student Question Bank.
- Review: Click Score Details to see every question on the test, the answer you submitted, and the correct answer for that question. Click Review next to your answer to read through the question and answer explanation. Keep track of the questions you missed and pay attention to any patterns you notice about the question content and the skills involved. Then head over to our Student Question Bank to try more practice questions covering those skill. Want help identifying which skills match up with a particular question? Check out How to Use the Student Question Bank for more information.
Set an SAT Target Score
With insights about your knowledge and skills, you can set your own SAT Target Score. This is your personal goal and gives you more ownership of the outcome, rather than striving for what you may perceive as a “good’ score.
Learn how to stay on track by setting your own SAT Target Score.
Here are a few simple steps to setting your target score:
- Create your college list. Researching the colleges that interest you on BigFuture® can help you identify the score range you should aim for. Average score ranges have been changing lately, and colleges are still adjusting to new test-optional policies, but the SAT score range listed is a good place to start. This will help you create your college list.
- Understand your most recent test score. If you took the PSAT/NMSQT or a practice SAT, you’ve already established your baseline. Now you can dig into your score report to understand how your score compares to others and what areas you should focus on to practice and improve. Look at the number and types of questions you got wrong. See how many more of those questions you would need to answer correctly to raise your score.
- Determine a realistic target score for you. Based on where you are now and where you want to end up, you can decide your own goal.
Official SAT Prep with Khan Academy
We partnered with Khan Academy® to create Official SAT Prep. This world-class test practice is free to all students, so there’s no need to spend a lot of money on test prep courses. It’s personalized just for you to show you the areas in which you excel and what areas need more work.
Test-Taking Tips
Having the right strategies can instill you with confidence as you approach test day. Here are 10 test-taking tips to help you navigate the assessment and maximize your score. They’ll give you guidance on how to pace yourself, focus on your practice, and use built-in tools. These tips will set you up for success.