SAT Reading Tips: All You Need to Know
Updated on 30 December, 2022
Mrinal Mandal
Study Abroad Expert
Study Abroad Expert
Students keen to head to the US and enroll themselves in one of the top-ranked universities are required to take the SAT exam. It’s an exam conducted by College Board to judge the student’s college readiness and competence in math, writing, and critical reading.
While a student may find any of the three sections more challenging than the others, in this article, we will focus on SAT reading tips.
The test runs seven times yearly and is generally administered at 8 AM on the first Saturday of each month except August.
The SAT test offers an optional essay question and runs for 3 hours and 50 minutes. If the exam does not have an essay question, it only takes 3 hours to complete. Only take the optional essay test if the universities you are applying for require it. Otherwise, it's best not to take up the essay exam.
Students usually take the SAT in their 11th grade or junior year of high school. But, one can also sit for the exam again in their senior year. Check the College Board website for the test dates and testing centers nearby.
One of the best ways to ensure you ace the test is by taking as many practice exams as possible!
One of the sections of SAT includes the reading section. This section tests the student's proficiency in the English language, and the scores are handed between 200-800. A student must have a command over the language and should know the standard English usage to convey complex ideas.
The test has reading passages that a candidate must read, understand and interpret to present personal and meaningful insights about the same.
SAT reading section has 52 MCQs based on five different passages, and around 65 minutes are provided to complete it.
Four of the five passages are standalone, while one has a pair of passages a student needs to read together. The pair of passages also comprises infographics such as charts and tables. The questions following these passages focus on understanding the text clearly and include three distinct kinds: synthetic, rhetoric, or factual.
The synthetic questions require the student to draw conclusions from the information provided or the additional graphics and build a coherent relationship between the ideas presented in the passage.
The rhetorical questions demand the candidate to debate the meaning and tone of the passage. Finally, the factual questions will determine the direct and indirect references taken from the central concept of the written passage.
Before we move to the Reading section tips, let’s move to understand the syllabus.
Wondering how many passages in SAT reading section are there? Let’s take a deeper look at the format and syllabus of SAT reading section.
It consists of 52 multiple-choice questions based on one pair of passages and four independent passages. These passages will be about 500-750 words each. So, every passage will have an overall of 10-12 questions following it.
One of these passages, possibly a pair of passages, will also present information via graphics like charts, graphs, and tables.
As for the syllabus, here are the following documents from which the passage will be extracted:
Getting a good score in all sections of SAT is essential if you want to make it to Ivy League colleges like Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Yale, Cornell university, etc. SAT scoring falls on a scale of 200-800.
A student looking to get above-average scores would need an overall 1060 score. For that, one would need to score above 533 in the Reading and Writing sections.
But, to get a good score that would look good on the competitive applications for college entrances, a student must score overall of 1470-1560. In other terms, the candidate must attain 710-770 in the Reading and Writing section.
What does the Course include:
The SAT reading questions can be divided into three distinct categories:
Some passage questions will require the students to show their understanding of how the author used factual evidence to support their claims. These questions will ask the candidate to:
Several questions in the passage will require the candidate to pinpoint the meaning of a particular word used in a specific context. This 'in-context' part is essential. The questions will demand the usage of contextual clues from the passage to explain the meaning behind one particular phrase or word.
Other questions will ask the student to elucidate the author's tone, style and meaning behind the passage based on the words used.
The reading section has passages extracted from subjects like science, social science, history, etc. The questions posed will require the student to analyze the passage, examine the hypotheses, interpret the data and consider all the implications.
The content of these questions is solely based on the textual passage shared and does not need one to have prior knowledge of any subject.
Wondering how to improve your SAT reading score? Well, with a bunch of good SAT reading strategies and practice tests from a good SAT reading book on the side, any student can do excellently well!
So, here are some SAT Reading tips to help attain a fantastic score in the reading section:
Yes, SAT reading comprehension requires excellent concentration, effort, and understanding since the passages are complicated and full of unfamiliar words. So maintaining focus is hard, hence scoring well is difficult, too.
There are five passages in the reading section, which belong to four broad categories: science, literary narrative, social science and history.
Not really. You can skim the passage, get the important details, read the questions and then look for the specific answers in the passage. You don’t need to mire the entire content or become an expert at it.
A student aiming for Harvard University needs to score 720-780 in the SAT reading section.
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