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What is on the SAT?


Chris Lele
Lesson by Chris Lele
Magoosh Expert

In this video we're gonna talk about what is on the SAT? And you probably know this at like, a really high level there's reading stuff and there's math stuff, but we're gonna be little bit more specific here. So first let's start with the math stuff. What we have here are three sections, 16 to 20 questions for a total of 54 questions.

They are mostly multiple choice questions. A through E, except 10 questions which are provide the answer questions. It's important to note that on the provide the answer questions there is no penalty for guessing. So that's important. Next, we have the critical reading section.

This is the vocab and the reading passage section. You will have 19 sentence completions. This is where you find out which vocabulary word worse, works best in the blank. You will also have 48 reading comprehension questions. And you'll get short passages, pretty small, 12 lines all the way up to the crazy long passages which can sometimes be over 100 lines long.

And finally you will get dual passages. You may get two short passages but they are passages that are on the same issue and you have to compare the passages. So you'll get one short dual passage set and then you'll get one long dual passage set, which is really the hard one where you have two passages that are like 40, 45 lines long.

Now it's also important to note that the critical reading section has three sections. As does the final section, which is the writing section. There are three sections. The 35-question and the 14-question sections. These sections are what you would think when you think of grammar.

Words that are underlined, pick the one with the wrong, or the one that is grammatically wrong, the wrong word in whatever place. Or the sentence itself is underlined, and you have to figure out what the best version of the underlined part is. Now you're thinking, well wait a second, I get that. But you just said three sections and that's two.

What happened? Well, guess what, the essay. The essay is the very first section and it is part of the writing. It, always again, comes first. As for the math, the, the reading section, it varies it up. You're gonna have back to back math sections sometimes.

Or back to back critical reading sections. One interesting thing though is that 14 question writing section always comes at the very end. So the first section you see will be an essay and the last section you will see will be a 14 question writing section. The 35 question writing section comes somewhere in the middle of all that math and vocabulary reading.

So finally, oh that was pretty straightforward. But oddly something isn't that straightforward and that is the experimental section. So if you go out to the bookstore, use Amazon or whatever and you get the College Board book, you will see actual SATs that were administered in the past.

And if you go through each one of the tests, you'll notice something interesting. One of the sections is always missing. It, for instance,will jump from four to six. Woo! What happened to five? Queue the scary music .

Well, I'll tell you. Number five section though it's not always five, but that, for that test, that section was the experimental section, meaning that there would be one section, it could be writing, it could be reading, it could be math, that doesn't actually count for your score. The key here is that there is no way for you to guess, so do not guess, cause that could really hurt your score.

All you'll know for sure is that, hey, if you have four math sections, then one of them was probably experimental. Again, don't try to guess it. Do your best and focus and that's all you gotta know in terms of what's on the test.

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