Eight skill guides, one per area

The practice pages give you questions and answers. These give you the routine that produces the answer: what each area asks for, a method that works across the whole area, worked examples, and the specific mistakes that have a wrong choice waiting for them.

SAT Algebra

Algebra is the largest single slice of the SAT Math section, and it is the one where speed compounds. Almost every question reduces to the same move made in a different costume: get the unknown alone, or make two expressions equal and see what follows.

Linear equations in one variableLinear functions and their graphsSystems of two equations+3 more
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SAT Advanced Math

Advanced Math is where the SAT stops asking you to solve and starts asking you to recognise. The arithmetic is rarely harder than in Algebra; what changes is that the fastest route depends on spotting the shape of the expression before you touch it.

Quadratic equations and their solutionsVertex form and the shape of a parabolaFactoring, including differences of squares+3 more
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SAT Problem-Solving & Data Analysis

The arithmetic in this area is the easiest on the test. The difficulty is entirely in deciding what to compute. A question will give you five numbers and ask for a relationship between two of them, and the wrong pair is always available as a choice.

Unit rates and constant-rate problemsPercent increase, decrease, and reversalProbability from counts+3 more
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SAT Geometry & Trigonometry

This is the smallest of the four Math areas and the most visual. A question that looks impossible in words is often obvious once drawn, and a sketch takes ten seconds. The formulas you need for area, volume and circles are supplied on the test; what is not supplied is the decision about which one applies.

Angle relationships, including parallel lines and transversalsTriangle angle sums and similar trianglesArea and perimeter of common figures+3 more
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SAT Reading & Writing

448 practice questions

SAT Information & Ideas

Every question in this area has the same underlying demand: the answer must be supported by the passage, not merely consistent with it. A choice can be true about the world, sensible, and even likely, and still be wrong because the text does not establish it.

Central ideas and supporting detailInference from a short textCommand of evidence, in text and in data+3 more
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SAT Craft & Structure

Craft and Structure asks what a word means here, what a sentence is doing here, and how two texts stand toward each other. In all three, the answer is fixed by the surrounding sentence rather than by the most familiar definition or the most agreeable reading.

Words in contextThe purpose of a sentence or paragraphHow a passage is organised+1 more
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SAT Expression of Ideas

This area is unusual on the SAT because it tells you what it wants. A synthesis question names the writer's goal in its final sentence, and the choice that meets that goal wins even when another is more elegant. Reading the goal is most of the work.

Transitions between sentencesWhere a sentence belongs in a paragraphConcluding and introducing a paragraph+1 more
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SAT English Conventions

Conventions is the most learnable area on the test, because the rules are finite and the same handful is tested again and again. Nearly every question resolves once you have identified the subject and the main verb, which is why that identification is the first move rather than a last resort.

Sentence boundaries and comma splicesCommas, colons, semicolons and dashesSubject-verb agreement+3 more
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SAT® Skill Guides: All 8 Areas | IQ Test Center