3 Month SAT Study Plan: Succeed despite a busy schedule

I know the SAT is an incredibly stressful test. You have parents, friends, school, sports, debate, work, boyfriends/girlfriends, and a hundred other things going on. And yet you have to find time to study for this SAT.

There are many different options that you can take throughout your SAT prep. If you are here early in your high school career, I highly recommend trying to study on your own. It’s okay to take the SAT two or three times. If you have the energy and don’t want to spend money on a course or a tutor, get some books (listed below) and follow these simple steps. I guarantee you will see improvement.

SAT Study Plan

In today’s video, and in the lesson that follows, I will create a SAT study plan based on the following assumptions:

• You do not really have the time during the week to study for your SAT, because you must sleep, work, do homework, sports, or another extra curricular activity
• You have 3 months to prep (ie. 12 weeks before your next SAT exam)

If those assumptions do not fit you 100%, don’t worry. The two books I refer to are listed below in the resources headline.

The Three Month Weekend Only SAT Study Plan

If you have three months to prep there is no reason you should not do great. If you are a very busy person, with sleep problems, extra curricular activities, or whatever, then your only choice is to work on the weekends.

And that’s okay.

Look, my plan requires a few sacrifices on your part:

• Sorry, but no weekend trips for 3 months (if it’s the Spring, you can take a break during Spring Break.)
• You basically lose your weekend for the next three months. I know, it sucks. Deal with it. What’s more important? A few hours with your friends or the chance to take the SAT once, rock it in the socks, and move on with your life?

Instead of breaking your study schedule into day-by-day or even month-by-month, I will break it into four chunks:

• Saturdays AM & PM
• Sundays AM & PM

SAT Self Prep – Saturday AM

For the next 12 weeks, every Saturday morning you will wake up bright and early, get a nice breakfast, have a coffee or a juice or whatever it is that you drink, and you will take a practice SAT. Timed. No cheating!

You will do this for three reasons:

1. You need to get the pacing and timing down. If you are forcing yourself to take timed sections, you will do better day-by-day
2. You need to get the patience and stamina to handle your real SAT. By taking the full-length test 10-12 times, your real test will be easy.
3. You need to get your mind working on math, reading, and writing at the same time, so you aren’t focusing only on one thing.

During your test, you want to treat your strategy the same way you’d treat it on the real thing. You want only one thing: a really good SAT score.

So, you will guess when appropriate, you will skip when appropriate, and you will do whatever you can do to get the highest grade possible. But, whenever you guess, please mark on your test or answer sheet that you guessed. This is important because we will spend a lot of time Saturday evening and Sunday evening reviewing your test.

And that’s it for Saturday morning. It’s probably noon. Go take a break. Eat some lunch, play a game, do some sit-ups, call your boyfriend on the phone and complain about the SAT. Whatever. Just clear your brain. This afternoon is going to be an adventure!

SAT Self Prep – Saturday PM

This evening is going to be the most painful of every prep session. You will come back and open up your test book. Do NOT grade your SAT, yet. Instead, you will go to each section (excluding the essay and grid-in) and explain why each wrong answer is wrong.

Please note what I mean:

1. Start in Section 2
2. If you marked, “C” for question #1, I want you to explain to yourself (in your mind or on paper) exactly why A, B, D, and E are incorrect.
3. Do that for every question on the test

After you run through that drill, take note of all the questions you changed, all the guesses you made, and all the patterns that emerged. This drill encourages you to understand exactly what the SAT is trying to test. It will help you identify patterns and should lead to an amazing score.

Once you complete that, grade your SAT.

SAT Self Prep – Sunday AM

Your Sunday morning SAT session will involve learning new tricks and strategies, as well as new knowledge. You will work out of the Barron’s guide (link at the bottom of the page). Each Sunday morning take a few hours to read a new section (just start at the beginning and work through the entire guide).

Pay special attention to learning the strategies and common errors. This is an incredibly important part of your SAT prep because it ensures you acquire the knowledge you don’t currently have and practice new strategies.

SAT Self Prep – Sunday PM

In the afternoon, you will want to once again go through your test from Saturday. Because you have your score and have already worked through each problem twice, the only thing you want to do now is go through each section trying to find instances that match the lesson you learned this morning.

For example, if you learned about adding fractions, go through each math section looking for questions that make you add fractions. Once you recognize that this is an adding fractions question, see if you can work through it faster than you did yesterday using the techniques we learned. This ensures you are moving in the right direction and encourages you to work really, really hard.

Resources

I did mention two resources in this post, the official guide and Barron’s. It’s important for you to get these two books. They are the two I recommend. You can go to your local bookstore or purchase them from Amazon. Just click on those links above and get to them.

Did this guide help you? Do you have less than three months? Leave a comment, share on facebook, and ask a question. I’d love to help.