Richard Mondello

Many of my younger friends have been asking me what I did to prepare for my SATs. Watching their eagerness, anger, and elation really brought back the non-too-distant memories of what it was like to grapple with the test. This post is my response to their anxiety.

Besides a review book, I never paid any person or service for help in preparing for the SAT. I’m frugal as it is, and paying for help when it comes to something like this felt dirty to me. However, looking back at my own experience, I fully recommend a paid service. The SAT is just too important not to fully prepare for. If my scores were higher, which I believe an intense paid service may have done, I may have gotten into my reach school. You never know.

In my case, I had a very passive study path for the test. One of the few things I did in preparing for my first spar with the exam was to familiarize myself with its setup; that’s where the review book from the Princeton Review came in handy. I learned about the types of questions and became familiar with the caliber of reading, writing, and mathematics questions given.

The most important component of anything I did for the SAT, though, was to use the CollegeBoard’s SAT Question of the Day service, every single day. Hands down, it’s the best way to prepare. Just do it.

One of more distinctive things I did in preparing for the test was carry around my Hipster PDA. The Hipster PDA is a stack of index cards held together with a binder clip, as invented by Merlin Mann, one of my heroes.

On one side, I kept my next actions list, which is similar to a to-do list. On the other side, I wrote down words I saw or heard in real life that I didn’t know. When I got home that day, I looked the word up and wrote its definition down on another card. On my bus rides and other commutes, I’d review all of the words I’d accumulated.

After following these steps, here were my scores:

Critical Reading: 680
Mathematics: 680
Writing: 730
Total (of 1600): 1360
Total (2400): 2090

At that point, I wanted to bring the two important sections’ scores up: critical reading and mathematics. For me, I was disappointed in my math score. I knew I could have done better, but I reasoned that the length of the test got to me. Critical reading was an uphill battle; it was the section I was weakest at, the one where I’ve always had the most problems.

Over the summer and into the early portion of my senior year, I did a few things. First, I watched the video podcasts from ePrep; they were useful for strategizing and were entertaining, too. I also started listening to This American Life, an entertaining and enlightening public radio program from Chicago Public Radio. Just like reading, something I definitely should have done more of, listening to public radio expands the mind. I read my usual summer amount, which admittedly isn’t much. However, I started listening to audiobooks, which fit much better into my lifestyle. Of course, I continued to take my SAT Question of the Day and write down words I didn’t know on my Hipster PDA.

What’s the takeaway here? I didn’t prepare for my second SAT. I just lived an intellectually healthy lifestyle by taking in useful information through podcasts, blogs, and audiobooks. The biggest component of that was not watching television; I recommend eliminating the stupidity box from your life. Although there is good, compelling content on TV, most of it is pure filth.

And for my elitism, what did I get? I brought up my scores quite a bit.

Critical Reading: 760
Mathematics: 750
Writing: 740
Total (of 1600): 1510
Total (2400): 2250

If I had to prepare for the test yet again, I’d spend almost all of my free time at FreeRice, the altruistic and mind-enriching vocabulary game.

Happy studying!