How can I increase my chances at an 800 SAT Math?
Check your work. Seriously go back and check it. Unless the tests have significantly changed from my days, knowing highschool math is sufficient to get an 800 (I got an 800 on the math portion on my PSAT, all practice tests, and the actual test 13 years ago), if you can get a 780/800 each time then you know everything, you just have to not be careless. I bet that time isn’t an issue for you. In that case, when you’re finished, start back at the beginning, cover up your previous work/answers, and start all over again. Re-doing the problem is more likely to find a mistake than checking one’s work.
Bah! to those who say it’s a meaningless number. In 11th grade, my goal was to get a 100% on the NYS Chemistry Regents. So I prepped like I never had before, and I felt ready. Testing time: I complete the entire exam with only three slight qualms answers. I recheck them and feel 100% confident on two (even correcting one answer). The third, however was either A or C, depending on how I interpreted what the question was asking. Something to do with salt and a battery I think. A basic principle, but I was over thinking it. For 30 long minutes, I went back and forth. A. C. A. C. C? A! A? C! My professor hovered around from a distance, knowing my dilemma. In the end, I stuck with the old adage: don’t second-guess yourself / go with your initial answer. So I did. C! And when I turned in the exam, my professor was there to woefully tell me, “Nope! A!” Forever and ever it will be the 99% that will haunt me. So my advice, the advice I wish I had 10 years ago: feel free to second guess your fir
Just a word to the wise… I totally get where, you’re coming from. And having read what you wrote, I’m confident you will hit 800 (it might take a try or two; it really is just luck). But at some point in your college career you’re going to come up against something that you simply can’t ace. Something where you are no longer the best. And no amount of trying will help. For some people — the people who grew up being the smartest kid in the class — that can be a real shock. It hits ’em hard. Which is a long way of saying, maybe you shouldn’t sweat it so much… 20 points is very unlikely to make a difference in which colleges you get into (and it won’t make a lick of difference in anything else!) I think you will be surprised how little anyone cares about the SATs once you graduate High School.
At that level, it’s down to luck. Nobody gets ’em all every time. One hint, may or may not help: if a question seems unusually tedious or like it’s taking more time than it ought to, you’re probably doing it wrong. One of the questions I know I missed on my math GRE (I still remember it clearly, it was just such a d’oh! moment afterwards) was to calculate the area of this complex shape that had all these circles and triangles and such cut out of it; I spent ages brute-forcing it piece by piece, but only after the test was long over did I realize that you could just rearrange the pieces into a plain old rectangle.
