Cracking the sat with 5 practice the princeton review

Cracking the sat with 5 practice the princeton review Cracking the sat with 5 practice the princeton review Cracking the sat with 5 practice the princeton review Cracking the sat with 5 practice the princeton review Cracking the sat with 5 practice the princeton review Cracking the sat with 5 practice the princeton review Cracking the sat with 5 practice the princeton review Cracking the sat with 5 practice the princeton review

Editorial Rob Franek, VP Test Prep Books, Publisher Mary Beth Garrick, Director of Production Selena Coppock, Senior Editor Calvin Cato, Editor Kristen O’Toole, Editor Meave Shelton, Editor Random House Publishing Team Tom Russell, Publisher Nicole Benhabib, Publishing Director Ellen L Reed, Production Manager Alison Stoltzfus, Managing Editor The Princeton Review, Inc.

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E-mail: editorialsupport@review.com

Copyright © 2013 by The Princeton Review, Inc.

Cover art © Jonathan Pozniak

All rights reserved Published in the United States by Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

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A Penguin Random House Company

SAT is a registered trademark of the College Board, which does not sponsor or endorse this product The Princeton Review is not affiliated with Princeton University.

Terms of Service: The Princeton Review Online Companion Tools (“Online Companion Tools”) for the Cracking book series and 11

Practice Tests for the SAT & PSAT are available for the two most recent editions of each book title Online Companion Tools may be activated only once per eligible book purchased Activation of Online Companion Tools more than once per book is in direct violation of these Terms of Service and may result in discontinuation of access to Online Companion Tools services.

The SAT questions throughout the book were selected from the following publications of the College Entrance Examination Board: 5 SATs, 1981; 6 SATs, 1982; 5 SATs, 1984; 10 SATs, 1983; 5 SATs, 1992 These questions, as well as test directions throughout the book, are reprinted by permission of Educational Testing Service, the copyright owner of the sample questions Permission to reprint the material does not constitute review or endorsement by Educational Testing Service or the College Board of this publication as a whole or of any other sample questions or testing information it may contain.

All other questions in the book were created by the authors.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-94588-4

Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-307-94561-7

Editor: Calvin Cato

Production Editor: Lauren Helmer

Production Artist: Maurice Kessler

2014 Edition

v3.1

An SAT course is much more than clever techniques and powerful computer score reports.The reason our results are great is that our teachers care so much about their students.Many teachers have gone out of their way to improve the course, often going so far as towrite their own materials, some of which we have incorporated into our course manuals aswell as into this book The list of these teachers could fill this page

The Princeton Review would never have been founded without the advice and support ofBob Scheller Bob’s program, Pre-test Review, provides the best sort of competition; hisfine results make us work all the harder

Thanks to Ed Carroll, Eric Ginsberg, and Pete Stajk for their work on previous iterations ofthis title

Thanks to Jonathan Chiu, David Stoll, and Curtis Rutherford for their hard work in reviewingand updating this year’s edition

Finally, we would like to thank the people who truly have taught us everything we knowabout the SAT: our students

Special thanks to Adam Robinson, who conceived of and perfected the Joe Bloggsapproach to standardized tests and many of the other successful techniques used by ThePrinceton Review

1 The SAT, The Princeton Review, and You

2 Cracking the SAT: Basic Principles

3 Cracking the SAT: Advanced Principles

Part II: How to Crack the Critical Reading Section

4 Joe Bloggs and the Critical Reading Section

Part III: How to Crack the Math Section

9 Joe Bloggs and the Math Section

15 Grid-Ins: Cracking the System

16 Putting It All Together

Part IV: How to Crack the Writing Section

Part V: Taking the SAT

Part VI: Answer Key to Drills

Part VII: The Princeton Review SAT Practice Tests and Explanations

26 Answers and Explanations for Practice Test 4

Paying for College 101

About the Authors

Welcome to the 2014 edition of Cracking the SAT The SAT is not a test of aptitude, how good of a person you are, or how successful you will be in life The SAT simply tests how well you take the SAT And performing well on the SAT is a skill, one that can be learned like any other The Princeton Review was founded more than 20 years ago on this very simple idea, and—as our students’ test scores show—our approach is the one that works.

Sure, you want to do well on the SAT, but you don’t need to let the test intimidate you As you prepare, remember these two important things about the SAT:

It doesn’t measure the stuff that matters It measures neither intelligence nor the depth and breadth of what you’re learning in high school It doesn’t

predict college grades as well as your high school grades do, and many

schools are still hesitant to use the score from your 25-minute essay in their application decisions at all Colleges know there is more to you as a student— and as a person—than what you do at a single 4-hour test administration on a random Saturday morning.

It underpredicts the college performance of women, minorities, and

disadvantaged students Historically, women have done better than men in college but worse on the SAT For a test that is used to help predict

performance in college, that’s a pretty poor record.

Your preparation for the SAT starts here We at The Princeton Review spend millions of dollars every year improving our methods and materials Our teachers take each and every SAT to make sure nothing slips by us, and our books contain the most accurate, up-to-date information available We’re always ready for the SAT, and we’ll get you ready too.

However, there is no magic pill: Just buying this book isn’t going to improve your scores Solid score improvement takes commitment and e ort from you If you read this book carefully and work through the problems and practice tests included in the book, not only will you be thoroughly versed in the format of the SAT and the concepts it tests, you will also have a sound overall strategy and a powerful arsenal of test-taking skills that you can apply to whatever you encounter on test day.

In addition to the thorough review in Cracking the SAT, we’ve tied the book to drills and tests on our website— PrincetonReview.com —to make it even more

e cient at helping you to improve your scores Before doing anything else, be sure to register at PrincetonReview.com/cracking When you do, you’ll gain access to the most up-to-date information on the SAT, detailed score reports for

the tests in this book, exercises that will reinforce our techniques, and the opportunity to have your essays scored by our LiveGrader TM service You’ll also

nd great information on college admissions, online applications, and nancial aid.

The more you take advantage of the resources we’ve included in this book and the online companion tools that go with it, the better you’ll do on the test Read the book carefully and learn our strategies Take full-length practice tests under actual timed conditions Analyze your performance and focus your e orts where you need improvement Perhaps even study with a friend to stay motivated.

This test is challenging, but you’re on the right track We’ll be with you all the way.

Good luck!

The Staff of The Princeton Review

…So Much More Online!

More Lessons…

• Step-by-step guide to solving difficult math and verbal problems

• Video tutorials that put our strategies into action

More Practice…

• Math drills on Ballparking, Geometry, and Plugging In

• Verbal drills on Sentence Completion and Diction

• Full-length practice test

More Scores…

• Automatic scoring for online tests

• Instant scoring for your book tests

• Optional essay scoring with our LiveGrader SM service

• Performance analysis to tell you which topics you need to review

More Good Stuff…

• Plan your review sessions with study plans based on your schedule—4 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks

…then College!

• Detailed profiles for hundreds of colleges help you find the school that is right for you

• Information about financial aid and scholarships

• Dozens of Top 10 ranking lists including Quality of Professors, Worst Campus Food, Most Beautiful Campus, Party Schools, Diverse Student Population, and tons more

Register your book now!

• Go to PrincetonReview.com/cracking

• You’ll see a Welcome page where you should register your book using the book’s ISBN number: 9780307945884 Simply type this into the window and go on to the next page!

• Next you will see a Sign Up/Sign In page where you will type in your e-mail

address (username) and choose a password.

• Now you’re good to go!

Part I

Orientation

1 The SAT, The Princeton Review, and You

2 Cracking the SAT: Basic Principles

3 Cracking the SAT: Advanced Principles

LET’S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!

You are about to unlock a vast repertoire of powerful strategies that have one and only one purpose: to help you get a better score on the SAT This book contains the collected wisdom of The Princeton Review, which has spent more than 20 years helping students achieve higher scores on standardized tests We’ve devoted millions of dollars and years of our lives to cracking the SAT It’s what we do (twisted as it may be), and we want you to benefit from our expertise.

WHAT IS THE PRINCETON REVIEW?

The Princeton Review is the leader in test prep Our goal is to help students everywhere crack the SAT Ideally, we’d like the SAT to be eliminated altogether;

we think the test is that bad But until that happens, we’ll content ourselves with aiding as many students as possible.

Starting from humble beginnings in 1981, The Princeton Review is now the nation’s largest SAT preparation company We o er courses in more than 500 locations in 12 di erent countries, as well as online; we also publish best-selling books, like the one you’re holding, and software to get students ready for this test.

Our techniques work We developed them after spending countless hours scrutinizing real SATs, analyzing them with computers, and proving our theories

in the classroom Our methods have been widely imitated, but no one achieves our score improvement.

Study

If you were getting ready

to take a biology test, you’d study biology If you were preparing for a basketball game, you’d practice basketball So, if you’re preparing for the SAT, study the SAT ETS can’t test everything (in fact, they test very little),

so concentrate on learning

what they do test.

The Princeton Review Way

This book will show you how to crack the SAT by teaching you to

think like the test writers,

take full advantage of the limited time allowed,

find the answers to questions you don’t understand by guessing intelligently, and

avoid the traps that the SAT has laid for you (and use those traps to your

advantage).

The test is made by Education Testing Service (ETS) and they know that our techniques work For years, ETS claimed that the SAT couldn’t be coached But we’ve proven that view wrong, and ETS has struggled to find ways of changing the SAT so that The Princeton Review won’t be able to crack it—in e ect, acknowledging what our students have known all along: that our techniques really do work The SAT has remained highly vulnerable to our techniques And the current version of the SAT is even more susceptible to our methods Read this book, work through the drills, take the practice tests, and you’ll see what we mean.

Chapter 1

The SAT, The Princeton Review, and You

Welcome! Our job is to help you get the best possible score on the SAT This chapter tells you what to expect from the SAT and some speci cs about the test It will also explain how to make the most of all your Princeton Review materials, including a bunch of cool stuff online.

GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE SAT

You may have bought this book because you know nothing about the SAT, or perhaps you took the test once and want to raise your score Either way, it’s important to know about the test and the people who write it Let’s take a second

to discuss some SAT facts; some of them may surprise you.

What Does the SAT Test?

Just because the SAT features math, reading, and writing questions doesn’t mean that it re ects what you learned in school You can ace calculus or write like Faulkner and still struggle with the SAT The test writers claim that the test measures “reasoning ability,” but all the SAT really measures is how well you take the SAT It does not reveal how smart or how good a person you are.

Who Writes the SAT?

Even though colleges and universities make wide use of the SAT, they’re not the ones who write the test That’s the job of Educational Testing Service (ETS), a nonpro t company that writes tests for college and graduate school admissions ETS also writes tests for groups as diverse as butchers and professional golfers (who knew?).

Wait, Who Writes

This Test?

You may be surprised to learn that the people who write SAT test questions are NOT necessarily teachers or college professors The people who write the SAT are professional test writers, not superhuman geniuses, so you can beat them at their own game.

ETS is often criticized for the SAT Many educators have argued that the test does not measure the skills you really need for college In fact, several years ago the University of California, one of the nation’s largest university systems, decided that the SAT didn’t provide enough information for admissions ETS scrambled to change the test and introduced the current version of the SAT It’s almost an hour longer than the old SAT and—unlike the old version—tests grammar and includes

an essay.

What’s on the SAT?

The SAT runs 3 hours and 45 minutes and is divided into 10 sections These include

one 25-minute Essay section, requiring you to present your viewpoint on a topic

two 25-minute Math sections, one containing multiple choice questions and the other containing multiple choice questions and response questions (we call these “grid-ins”)

two 25-minute Critical Reading sections, made up of sentence completions and reading comprehension questions

one 25-minute Writing section, containing error identification questions,

improving sentences questions, and improving paragraphs questions

one 20-minute Math section, including only multiple-choice questions

one 20-minute Critical Reading section, again featuring sentence completions and reading comprehension questions

one 10-minute Writing section, containing only improving sentences

questions

one 25-minute Experimental section, which may be Writing, Math, or Critical Reading There’s no way to tell which section is the Experimental, so treat every section as if it will be scored

The Essay section on the SAT is always rst Sections 2 through 7 are the six minute sections, in any order Sections 8 and 9 are the two 20-minute sections, in any order (Math and then Critical Reading, or Critical Reading and then Math) Finally, the 10-minute Writing section is always section 10, the last section on the test.

25-More great titles from The Princeton Review

The Best 378 Colleges Best Value Colleges

Scoring on the SAT

Each subject area on the SAT—Math, Writing, and Critical Reading—is scored on a scale of 200 to 800 Some colleges look at each individual score, but others look

at the highest combined score, of all three scores added together The combined score ranges from 600 to 2400 The average SAT score is about 500 per section, or

1500 total.

You’ll receive your score report about two to four weeks after you take the test It will include your scaled score as well as your percentile rank, which tells you

how you performed relative to other people who took the same test If your score

is in the 60th percentile, it means that you scored better than 60 percent of test takers.

One way of thinking of your SAT score is to imagine yourself in a line with 100 other students, all waiting to be seen by an admissions o cer However, the

o cer can’t see every student—some students won’t make it through the door If your SAT score is in the 50th percentile, you’d have 50 other kids in front of you Maybe you’ll be seen, maybe not Wouldn’t it be nice to jump the line? If you can boost your SAT score, even by a couple of points, you move up the line and increase your odds of getting through the door We can help you do that…

The College Board restarted a program called Score Choice Normally, colleges get

to see every single time you take the SAT With Score Choice, however, you can tell the College Board which test date or dates (as many or as few as you want) to send to colleges At rst glance, this seems great “Hey, colleges don’t have to see that one bad score from the rst time I took the SAT without preparing? Great!” But there are some major problems with it, which you may want to consider before using Score Choice.

First and foremost is that some colleges require that you send them all scores from all times you took the SAT They want to know about every single time you take the SAT, and they don’t want the College Board telling them which of your SAT scores they’re allowed to see For these colleges, you must submit all scores, and Score Choice is not an option.

Second, many colleges actually just look at your highest scores either for one sitting of a test or, in many cases, per subject across several sittings If the college just looks at your highest sitting, Score Choice doesn’t make any di erence, and it’s not worth bothering with it The college admissions o cer will just look at your highest-scored test date and ignore the other scores But for the colleges that cherry pick your scores by subject, Score Choice can actually hurt you For instance, let’s say you take the SAT in March and get a 510 in Math, a 400 in Reading, and a 450 in Writing You retake the SAT in May and get a 410 in Math (ouch), a 500 in Reading (much better), and a 470 in Writing (OK) Many schools look at your best scores per subject and would consider your SAT score to be 510 Math, 500 Reading, and 470 Writing But if you submitted only one score, the colleges wouldn’t have the high points to choose from.

Whether or not you decide to use Score Choice, plan on taking the SAT two or three times Many colleges frown on taking the SAT four or more times.

A searchable list of colleges and their requested SAT score submission requirements, as well as more information on Score Choice, can be found at the College Board website at www.collegeboard.org

WHEN IS THE SAT GIVEN?

The SAT schedule for the school year is posted on the College Board website at

can sign up online by going to www.collegeboard.org and clicking on the SAT hyperlink directly underneath the purple “Students” link, or sign up through the mail with an SAT registration booklet, which should be available at your school guidance counselor’s office.

Stay on Schedule

Although you may take the SAT early in your junior year, most students take

it for the first time in the spring of their junior year and possibly retake it in the fall of their senior year.

In addition, you may also need to take SAT subject tests (many competitive colleges require them), so don’t leave everything to the last minute You can’t take SAT and SAT subject tests on the same day Sit down and plan a schedule.

Try to sign up for the SAT as soon as you know when you’ll be taking the test If you wait until the last minute to sign up, there may not be any open spots in the testing centers closest to your house.

If you require any special accommodations while taking the test (including, but not limited to, extra time or assistance), www.collegeboard.org has more information about applying for those accommodations Make sure to apply early;

we recommend applying six months before you plan on taking the test.

Chapter 2

Cracking the SAT: Basic Principles

The rst step to cracking the SAT is to know how best to approach the test The SAT is not like the tests you’ve taken in school, so you need to learn to look at it

in a di erent way This chapter will show test-taking strategies that immediately improve your score Make sure you fully understand these concepts before moving

on to Chapter 3 Good luck!

What ETS Is Good At

The folks at ETS have been writing standardized tests for more than 80 years, and they write tests for all sorts of programs They have administered the test so many times that they know exactly how you will approach it They know how you’ll attack certain questions, what sort of mistakes you’ll probably make, and even what answer you’ll be most likely to pick Kinda freaky, isn’t it?

However, ETS’s strength is also a weakness Because the test is standardized, the SAT has to ask the same type of questions over and over again Sure, the numbers

or the words might change, but the basics don’t With enough practice, you can learn to think like ETS But try to use your powers for good, okay?

The SAT Isn’t School

Our job isn’t to teach you math or English—leave that to your supersmart school teachers Instead, we’re going to teach you the SAT You’ll soon see that the SAT involves a very different skill set.

Be warned that some of the approaches we’re going to show you will seem weird

or unnatural Some of these strategies may be very di erent than how you learned to approach similar questions in school, but trust us! Try tackling the problems using our techniques, and keep practicing until they become easier You’ll see a real improvement in your score.

How the Test Is Scored

The SAT is scored in an unusual way For every question you answer correctly you receive 1 raw point For every question you answer incorrectly you lose

of a point For every question you leave blank you get 0 points.

Your raw score is the combination of these raw points for each section category: Math, Critical Reading, and Writing Each of your three raw scores

is then scaled to a 200–800 score for each subject.

Let’s take a look at the questions.

Cracking Multiple-Choice Questions

What’s the capital of Azerbaijan?

on the SAT Math section—and see if you can figure out the answer anyway.

1 The capital of Azerbaijan is

These students don’t stop to think that they might be able to nd the correct answer simply by eliminating all of the answer choices they know are wrong.

You Already Know Almost All of the Answers

All but a handful of the questions on the SAT are multiple-choice questions, and every multiple-choice question has ve answer choices One of those choices, and only one, will be the correct answer to the question You don’t have to come up with the answer from scratch You must simply identify it.

How will you do that?

Look for the Wrong Answers Instead of the Right Ones

Why? Because wrong answers are usually easier to nd After all, there are more

of them! Remember the question about Azerbaijan? Even though you didn’t know the answer o the top of your head, you easily gured it out by eliminating the four obviously incorrect choices You looked for wrong answers first.

It’s Not About Circling the Right Answer

Physically marking in your test booklet what you think of certain answers can help you narrow down choices, take the best possible guess, and save time! Try using the following notations:

Put a check mark next to an answer you like.

Put a squiggle next to an answer you kinda like.

Put a question mark next to an answer you don’t understand.

A Cross out the letter of any answer choice you KNOW is wrong.

You can always come up with your own system The key is consistency.

In other words, you used the Process of Elimination, which we’ll call POE for short This is an extremely important concept, one we’ll come back to again and again It’s one of the keys to improving your SAT score When you nish reading this book, you will be able to use POE to answer many questions that you don’t understand.

The great artist Michelangelo once said that when he looked at a block of marble,

he could see a statue inside All he had to do to make a sculpture was to chip away everything that wasn’t part of it You should approach di cult SAT multiple-choice questions in the same way, by chipping away everything that’s not correct By rst eliminating the most obviously incorrect choices on di cult questions, you will be able to focus your attention on the few choices that remain.

PROCESS OF ELIMINATION (POE)

There won’t be many questions on the SAT in which incorrect choices will be as easy to eliminate as they were on the Azerbaijan question But if you read this book carefully, you’ll learn how to eliminate at least one choice on almost any SAT multiple-choice question, if not two, three, or even four choices.

What good is it to eliminate just one or two choices on a ve-choice SAT question?

Plenty In fact, for most students, it’s an important key to earning higher scores Here’s another example:

2 The capital of Qatar is

Need More Help?

For video instruction, go to www.princetonreview.com/cracking.

Should you skip the question and go on? Or should you guess?

Close Your Eyes and Point

You’ve probably heard a lot of di erent advice about guessing on multiple-choice questions on the SAT Some teachers and guidance counselors tell their students never to guess and to mark an answer only if they’re absolutely certain that it’s correct Others tell their students not to guess unless they are able to eliminate two or three of the choices.

Both of these pieces of advice are incorrect.

Even ETS is misleading about guessing Although it tells you that you can guess, it doesn’t tell you that you should In fact, if you can eliminate even one incorrect choice on an SAT multiple-choice question, guessing from among the remaining choices will usually improve your score And if you can eliminate two or three choices, you’ll be even more likely to improve your score by guessing.

The Big Bad Guessing Penalty

Your raw score on the SAT is the number of questions you got right, minus a fraction of the number you got wrong (except on the grid-ins, which are scored a little di erently) Every time you answer an SAT question correctly, you get 1 raw point Every time you leave an SAT question blank, you get 0 raw points Every

time you answer an SAT question incorrectly, ETS subtracts of a raw point if the question has five answer choices, or nothing if it is a grid-in.

Many people refer to the subtracted fraction as the “guessing penalty.” The penalty is supposed to discourage students from guessing on multiple-choice questions (and getting the right answer out of luck) However, let’s take a closer look at how the penalty works.

Raw scores can be a little confusing, so let’s think in terms of money instead For every question you answer correctly on the SAT, ETS will give you a dollar For every multiple-choice question you leave blank, ETS will give you nothing For every multiple-choice question you get wrong, you will have to give 25 cents back

to ETS That’s exactly the way raw scores work.

What happens to your score if you select the correct answer on one question and incorrect choices on four questions? Remember what we said about money: ETS gives you a dollar for the one answer you got right; you give ETS a quarter for each of the four questions you missed Four quarters equal a dollar, so you end up exactly where you started, with nothing—which is the same thing that would have happened if you had left all ve questions blank Now, what happens if you guess on four questions, but—for each of those questions—you can eliminate one incorrect answer choice? Random odds say you will get one question right—get a dollar—and miss the other three questions—give back 75 cents You’ve just gained a quarter! So, guessing can work in your favor.

TO GUESS OR NOT TO GUESS: THAT IS THE QUESTION

If you are con dent that you know the answer to a question or that you know how to solve it, just go ahead and select an answer If you are uncertain about either the answer to a question or how to solve it, see if you can eliminate any wrong answers We’re going to give you lots of tools to eliminate wrong answers,

so you’ll probably be able to eliminate answers even on the hardest questions But, should you guess on every question? Well, that depends In the next chapter, we’re going to show you how to set a pacing goal for each section The pacing goal will tell you how many questions you need to answer for each section Your goal is to answer that number of questions If you can get to your pacing goal without guessing, that’s great But most students will need to guess on at least a few questions to reach their pacing goals When you get to a question you’re not sure of, ask yourself, “Can I reach my pacing goal without this question?”

Finally, guess only if you can eliminate at least one answer choice If you can’t eliminate one, leave that question blank.

Credit for Partial Information

Earning points for a guess probably seems a little bit like cheating or stealing: You get something you want, but you didn’t do anything to earn it.

Want more practice?

Check out

11 Practice Tests for the

SAT and PSAT

This is not a useful way to think about the SAT It’s also not true Look at the following example:

it seems clear from the context that “white dwarf” and “main-sequence” are kinds

of stars—as they are—but also because you know for a fact that the Sun is not a planet, a meteor, or an asteroid Still, you aren’t sure which of the two possible choices is correct.

Heads, You Win a Dollar; Tails, You Lose a Quarter

By using POE you’ve narrowed down your choice to two possibilities If you guess randomly you’ll have a fty- fty chance of being correct, like ipping a coin— heads you win a dollar, tails you lose a quarter Those are extremely good odds on the SAT So go ahead and guess!

(The answer, by the way, is A And don’t worry, there won’t be any questions about astronomy on the SAT.)

ALWAYS PUT PENCIL TO PAPER

At school you probably aren’t allowed to write in your textbooks, unless your school requires you to buy them You probably even feel a little peculiar about writing in the books you own Books are supposed to be read, you’ve been told, and you’re not supposed to scrawl all over them.

Write Now

Feel free to write all over this book too You need to get in the habit of making the SAT booklet your own.

Do NOT do things in your head Start now by writing the names of the colleges you really want to attend

in the margin below.

Because you’ve been told this so many times, you may be reluctant to write in your test booklet when you take the SAT Your proctor will tell you that you are supposed to write in it—the booklet is the only scratch paper you’ll be allowed to use; it says so right in the instructions from ETS—but you may still feel bad about marking it up.

Don’t Be Ridiculous!

Your test booklet is just going to be thrown away when you’re finished with it No one is going to read what you wrote in it and decide that you’re stupid because you couldn’t remember what 2 + 2 is without writing it down Your SAT score won’t be any higher if you don’t make any marks in your booklet In fact, if you don’t, your score will probably be lower than it should be.

Own Your Test Booklet

You paid for your test booklet; act as though you own it Scratch work is extremely important on the SAT Don’t be embarrassed about it After all, writing

in your test booklet will help you keep your mind on what you’re doing.

When you work on a geometry problem that provides a diagram, don’t

hesitate to write all over it What if there’s no diagram? Draw one yourself— don’t simply try to imagine it Keep track of your work directly on the

diagram to avoid making careless mistakes.

On sentence completion questions, you will often need to come up with your own word or two to help you answer a question Write it down! Trying to

retain information in your head leads to confusion and errors Your test

booklet is your scratch paper—use it.

When you use POE to eliminate a wrong answer choice, physically cross off the answer choice in your test booklet Don’t leave it there to confuse you You may often need to carefully consider two remaining answer choices You want to be clear about which answer choices are left in the running.

When you answer a question but don’t feel entirely certain of your answer, circle the question or put a big question mark in the margin beside it That way, if you have time later on, you can get back to it without having to search through the entire section.

Need More Help?

For video instruction, go to www.princetonreview.com/cracking.

You probably think of scratch paper as something that is useful only for math questions But you’ll need scratch paper on the SAT Critical Reading and Writing sections too The Critical Reading sections will require almost as much writing as the Math sections: you will cross o wrong answers, underline information in the passage, and make many other marks on the passages and questions For Writing sections, you will cross o wrong answers Crossing o wrong answers on the page, rather than trying to remember which answers were wrong, will make you less likely to make mistakes.

Transfer Your Answers at the End of Each Group

Scratch work isn’t the only thing we want you to do in your test booklet We also want you to mark your answers there For each group of sentence completions, you should transfer your answers to the answer sheet when you come to the end

of the group of questions For all other questions (except grid-ins), you should transfer your answers one page at a time.

Mark Your Answer

When you take the SAT, you should mark all your answers in your test booklet, with a big letter

in the margin beside each problem, and then transfer them later onto your answer sheet.

Doing this will save you a great deal of time (and extra time = extra points), because you won’t have to look back and forth between your test booklet and your answer sheet every few seconds You will also be less likely to make

mistakes in marking your answers on the answer sheet However, be sure to give yourself enough time to transfer your answers Don’t wait until the last ve minutes.

When you only have ve minutes left in a section, go back to bubbling in your answers one at a time This will make sure that, when time has called, you have entered every single answer you found into your answer sheet.

The only exception to this are the grid-ins, the 10 non–multiple-choice math questions You will need to grid each answer as you nd it We’ll tell you all about grid-ins later in the book.

Chapter 3

Cracking the SAT: Advanced Principles

Once you’ve mastered Process of Elimination (POE) and guessing techniques, you are ready to start applying them to the SAT In this chapter, you will learn how ETS writes and arranges SAT questions and how knowing this can help you answer more questions correctly.

PUTTING THE BASIC PRINCIPLES TO WORK

In the previous chapter, we reviewed some basic principles of the SAT We showed you that it is possible to nd correct answers by using POE, the Process of Elimination, to get rid of incorrect choices.

But how will you know which answers to eliminate? And how will you know when to guess? In this chapter, we’ll teach you how to

take advantage of the order in which questions are asked

make better use of your time by scoring the easy points first

use the Joe Bloggs principle to eliminate obviously incorrect choices on

difficult questions

find the traps that ETS has laid for you

turn those traps into points

To show you how this is possible, we rst have to tell you something about the way the SAT is arranged.

ORDER OF DIFFICULTY

If you have already taken a practice SAT, you may have noticed that the questions seem to get harder as each section progresses This is not an accident; ETS purposely arranges the questions this way Why? There are a couple of reasons.

Some Do, Some Don’t

Not all question types have an order of difficulty Here’s how it

breaks down:

Question types arranged

in order of difficulty: Sentence Completions, Math questions, Error IDs, and Improving Sentences Question types with no order of difficulty: Long and Short Reading, Improving Paragraphs,

and the Essay.

First, starting students with easy questions can lead to a false sense of security Chances are, after nailing the rst three or four questions you start to think that you’ve got the test beat That’s exactly when ETS starts throwing some traps into

the questions for the unwary or the overconfident.

Second, the hard questions are at the end of the section, when you have less time left Knowing this, you may rush through the beginning of the section, making careless mistakes, just to get to the difficult and frustrating questions at the end.

Easy, Medium, Difficult

Think of each section as being divided into thirds A third of the questions should

be easy Most test takers get these questions right Another third of the questions are of medium di culty Nearly half of the people taking the test get these questions right The nal third of the questions are di cult Very few test takers answer these questions correctly.

The Math sections always follow this order of di culty; thus, in a 20-question Math section, the rst six or seven questions are easy, the next six or seven are medium, and the nal six or seven are di cult Sentence completions follow a similar pattern Because there are fewer sentence completion questions, the

di culty level increases much more quickly: in a section with eight sentence completion questions, the rst two or three are easy, the next two or three are medium, and the nal two or three are hard However, reading comprehension questions are all jumbled up—they follow no particular order of difficulty.

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You Have to Pace Yourself

There are some very di cult questions on the SAT that most test takers shouldn’t even bother to work on On the di cult third of every group of questions, there are some questions that almost no one taking the test will get right Rather than spending too much time on these questions, you should focus your attention on questions that you have a better chance of figuring out.

Rule #1

Any test taker scoring below 700 on either the Math or the Critical Reading section will hurt his or her score by attempting to answer every question.

Because most test takers try to nish every section (“I had two seconds left over!”), almost every test taker hurts his or her score After all, when you rush, you make mistakes The solution, for almost anyone scoring less than 700 on a section, is to slow down.

Most test takers could improve their scores signi cantly by attempting fewer questions and devoting more time to questions they have a better chance of answering correctly Slow down, score more.

How Will This Help My Score?

Knowing the di culty level of a question can help you in several ways Most importantly, it helps you make the best use of your time Although in terms of

di culty the questions are de nitely not created equally, each and every single question earns you exactly one point ETS wants you to waste your time on the difficult questions, while missing easy points Don’t play their game.

Easy to Be Hard

The SAT isn’t a huge intellectual challenge; it’s just tricky When we talk about di cult questions on the SAT, we mean ones that people most often get wrong Flip to one of the practice SATs at the back of this book and look

at the more di cult math questions Do any of them test anything you didn’t learn in high school? Probably not But do they all resemble the kind of straightforward questions you’re used to seeing on a regular test? Probably not ETS specializes in confusing and misleading test takers.

Make sure you SLOW DOWN and focus your energy on the easy and medium questions before trying the di cult ones Your job is to get the greatest number

of points in the least amount of time Don’t rush through the questions that you’re more likely to answer correctly Get those points Then with the time you have left, try the difficult questions (those will be loaded with ETS traps!).

Furthermore, understanding the di culty level of a question can help you to gure out ETS’s trap answers To do this, we rst have to delve into the mind of a typical SAT test taker.

The Importance of Feeling Good

The SAT is a timed test, and ETS doesn’t give you a lot of time to work through every question Plus, there’s a tremendous amount of anxiety associated with taking the test In a situation such as this, many students rely on a sense of what

“feels” right when answering questions The problem is, in many of these cases, ETS is hoping you’ll fall for a trap.

Rule #2

Answer easy questions first; save hard questions for last They’re all worth the same—one raw point.

Should You Ever Pick an Answer That Feels Right?

Well, that depends on the di culty level of the question (See, this whole discussion was leading somewhere.) When doing an easy question, you can trust your gut But once you hit the medium and di cult questions, the answer that

“feels right” may no longer be the best answer.

Rule #3

Easy questions have easy answers; hard questions have hard answers.

Why Would ETS Design the Test Like That?

Simply put, they want you to get an average score If ETS put too many easy questions on the test, then lots of students would get great SAT scores Sounds pretty good, right?

Well, if you worked in a college admissions o ce, you might not think so If almost every student had scores in the 700s for math, reading, and writing, you wouldn’t be able to use those scores to make decisions The colleges would lose faith in the SAT and ETS just wouldn’t allow that.

By the way, if ETS put too many hard questions on the test and everybody got really low SAT scores, the colleges would have the same problem ETS always wants to make sure that there are just enough easy questions to get most students into the average range and just enough hard questions to keep most students from exceeding the average Pretty twisted, isn’t it? So, how do you avoid being average?

Meet Joe Bloggs

The average test taker always goes with his or her gut when taking the SAT We’ve seen this average test taker so often that we’ve decided to give him a name: Joe Bloggs Joe is the quintessential (good vocabulary word) American high school student He has average grades and average SAT scores There’s a little bit

of him in everyone, and there’s a little bit of everyone in him He isn’t brilliant.

He isn’t dumb He’s just average.

And he’s ETS’s dream student He always does what ETS expects and gets an average score as a result.

How Does Joe Bloggs Approach the SAT?

Joe Bloggs always trusts his gut Regardless of the di culty level of the question,

he picks the answer that feels right And of course, he ends up getting most of the easy questions right, about half of the medium questions right, and almost none

of the di cult questions right That makes ETS very happy because they can give Joe an average score.

Here’s an example of a hard question Let’s see how Joe tackles it:

20 Graham walked to school at an average speed of 3 miles an hour and jogged back

along the same route at 5 miles an hour If his total traveling time was 1 hour, what wasthe total number of miles in the round trip?

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Which Answer Did Joe Pick?

Question 20 is one of the hardest questions in the math section Most students get

it wrong and, of course, that includes Joe Can you guess which answer Joe picked? Joe picked answer choice D because it just felt right Joe read the problem so fast that all that registered was that Graham went to school at 3 miles per hour, returned at 5 miles per hour and that Joe is supposed to nd the number of miles in the round trip Joe gured all he really had to do was to

average the two speeds and ETS was waiting with answer choice D Poor Joe Does

he really think that ETS is going to let him go to a really good college for doing something that easy?

ETS’s Favorite Wrong Answers

Take another look at question 20 Answer choice D was included to lure Joe Bloggs into a trap But it isn’t the only trap answer choice Other tempting choices are A and E Why? Because they are numbers included in the question itself, and Joe Bloggs is most comfortable with familiar numbers When ETS selects wrong answers to hard questions, it looks for three things.

1 The answer you’d get doing the simplest possible math In this case,

that’s D.

2 The answer you’d get after doing some, but not all, of the necessary math.

3 Numbers that are already in the question itself (choices A and E).

ETS doesn’t use all of these every time, but there’s at least one in every set of difficult answer choices.

So, what was wrong with Joe’s approach? Well, since Graham took the same route

to school and then back home, the distance had to be the same Joe’s method, however, assumed that Graham spent half his time going to school and half of it returning home That can’t happen if the distance is the same, right? Graham would have spent less time jogging home Joe went too fast, made a bad assumption and fell for the ETS trap answer.

Quick note: In case you’re curious, the correct answer is (C) Don’t worry if you weren’t able to gure this out now; we’ll show you how to tackle these kinds of questions in the Math section of the book.

THE JOE BLOGGS PRINCIPLE

When you take the SAT a few weeks or months from now, you’ll have to take it on your own, of course But suppose for a moment that ETS allowed you to take it with Joe Bloggs as your partner Would Joe be of any help to you on the SAT?

You Probably Don’t Think So

After all, Joe is wrong as often as he is right He knows the answers to the easy questions, but so do you You’d like to do better than average on the SAT, and Joe earns only an average score (he’s the average test taker, remember) All things

considered, you’d probably prefer to have someone else for your partner.

Joe’s Hunches

Should you always just eliminate any answer that seems to be correct? No! Remember what we said

about Joe Bloggs:

1 His hunches are often correct on easy questions.

2 His hunches are sometimes correct and sometimes incorrect on medium questions.

3 His hunches are often wrong on difficult questions.

On easy multiple-choice questions, it’s okay to pick the choice that Joe Bloggs would pick On hard questions, you can often eliminate the choices that Joe Bloggs would pick.

But Joe might turn out to be a pretty helpful partner, after all Since his hunches are always wrong on di cult multiple-choice questions, couldn’t you improve your chances on those questions simply by nding out what Joe wanted to pick, and then picking something else?

If you could use the Joe Bloggs principle to eliminate one, two, or even three obviously incorrect choices on a hard problem, you could improve your score by guessing among the remaining choices.

We’re going to teach you how to make Joe Bloggs your partner on the SAT When you come to di cult questions on the test, you’re going to stop and ask yourself,

“How would Joe Bloggs answer this question?” And when you see what he would

do, you are going to do something else Why? Because you know that on hard questions, Joe Bloggs is always wrong.

Putting Joe Bloggs to Work for You

In the chapters that follow, we’re going to teach you many speci c solving techniques based on the Joe Bloggs principle The Joe Bloggs principle will help you

problem-use POE to eliminate incorrect answer choices

make up your mind when you have to guess

avoid careless mistakes

The more you learn about Joe Bloggs, the more he’ll help you on the test If you make him your partner on the SAT, he’ll help you nd ETS’s answers on problems you never dreamed you’d be able to solve.

Because This Is So Important, We’re Going to Say It Again

Here’s a summary of how Joe Bloggs thinks:

Here is a summary of how you should think:

SET THE RIGHT GOAL BEFOREHAND

It’s very important to set realistic goals If you’re aiming for a 500 on the Critical Reading section, your approach to the SAT is going to be di erent from that of someone who is aiming for an 800 The following charts will give you some idea

of what you realistically need to do to score at various levels on the SAT Use the chart to gauge your progress as you work through practice tests like those in this book or in The Princeton Review’s 11 Practice Tests for the SAT & PSAT.

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Take the Practice Test to see your current score and the score you should shoot for at PrincetonReview.com/cracking

Now before you decide you must get a 700 in Critical Reading no matter what, do

a reality check: To date, what have you scored on the Critical Reading SAT? The Writing section? The Math? Whatever those numbers are, add 50–90 points to each to determine your goal score Then get cracking! Work through this book, practice the techniques, and, after a time, take a timed practice test If you achieve your goal score on the practice test, great! Could you have worked a little more quickly yet maintained your level of accuracy? If so, increase your goal by another 50 points.

In other words, you must set an attainable goal to see any improvement If you

scored a 400 on the last Math SAT you took, and you immediately shoot for a 700, you will be working too quickly to be accurate and won’t see any increase in your score However, if you use the “460–500” pacing guide instead, you may jump from a 400 to a 480! After that, you can work to score over a 500, and so on.

Rule #4

Accuracy is more important than speed.

Come back to these pages after each practice test you take to reassess your pacing strategy Accuracy is more important than speed Finishing is not the goal; getting more questions right is! Besides, all the hard problems are at the end If you are missing easy questions due to your haste to get to the di cult questions, you are throwing points away.

By the way, you may notice that the following three charts present slightly

di erent pacing strategies for the Math, Reading and Grammar sections (Throughout this book, we’ll refer to all the Writing sections except the essay as

“Grammar” sections.) The Reading pacing chart shows that you should answer a greater percentage of the questions in the section to get a certain score than does the Math pacing chart Why? Well, on the Math section, it’s even more important

to slow down Use the extra time to read problems carefully and to make sure that your calculations are correct Don’t race through every problem just to get to the end That’s what Joe does, and you know what sort of score Joe gets.

Speaking of Goal Setting, Check out

Essential SAT Flashcards The Best 378 Colleges

Also, the numbers of questions on the charts represent how many questions you should answer We’ve already factored in that you’ll get some wrong answers That’s why each line on each chart shows that you should answer a greater number of questions than the points that you need to get that score So don’t blow past your pacing goal because you’re worried that you might have made a few mistakes.

And don’t be afraid to guess on a few questions in each section to reach your pacing goals.

Math Pacing Chart

Critical Reading Pacing Chart

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EMBRACE YOUR POOD

Eww! Embrace your what? POOD is an acronym for Personal Order of Di culty The pacing charts show you how many questions you should answer but they don’t show you which questions you should answer So, for example, the pacing chart says that you should answer 14 questions in the 20 question section Now, you know that the questions get harder as you go But, what if question 10 is a geometry question and you’ve forgotten everything you ever knew about geometry? Would it make sense to answer that question? Of course not!

You’d skip the geometry question and hope that you’d know how to answer one

of the later questions That’s POOD in action.

In general, you’ll want to concentrate your e orts on answering easy and medium questions So, if you are supposed to answer 14 questions in that 20-question math section, you need to nd the best 14 questions for you to answer Most of them will probably come from the easy and medium questions but it’s okay to skip a few questions along the way That’s better than making a blind guess.