Raleigh SAT & Digital SAT Test Prep: Practice Tests, Tutoring & Help

SAT TEST PREP IN RALEIGH

SAT TEST PREP FOR RALEIGH & SOUTHERN PINES STUDENTS

The SAT is a test offered by the College Board and is taken each year by over 1.9 million high school students. The cost is about $60 to register each time the test is taken.

Why is the SAT important?

Because at most colleges, a strong score on the SAT can help a student get admitted or help with obtaining a scholarship, or both. It is true that most colleges are test - optional: the student can decide whether or not to submit a test score. But, only a small percentage of colleges do not consider test scores at all.

So, unless the college is one of the few that have said they will not consider test scores, the student can look up the college's profile, and if their test scores are at or above the school's average, there's every reason to believe that submitting test scores will benefit them. Many schools have reported that even though they are test-optional, more than half of admitted students have submitted test scores. This is why Perry's tutoring and SAT test prep is so valuable for Raleigh and Southern Pines area youth and students across the U.S.

Having a strong SAT score can still be very important for admission or for getting a scholarship.

Recently, a significant number of colleges have reinstated the requirement for submission of the SAT or ACT. The list includes Brown, Dartmouth, Florida Int'l., Florida State, Georgetown , Georgia Tech, MIT, New College Florida, Purdue, Texas A&M, Thomas Aquinas, U. Florida, U. South Florida, U. Tennessee, Yale.

SAT test prep in Raleigh and Southern Pines, and which test to submit:

Perry's advice is almost always to try to determine early in the process whether the student will do better on the SAT or ACT, and then study for that test rather than spending time working on both tests. If a student has had the opportunity to take the PSAT and the preACT, this often suggests a good direction to take. With Perry's guidance, the student can make a good decision between the two tests by comparing their strengths against the strengths required by the tests.

What are some differences between the SAT and ACT?

The SAT has two sections, one covering reading comprehension, writing, and language, and the second covering math. The ACT, on the other hand, has one math section out of four; so, clearly there's more emphasis on math with the SAT.

The SAT asks a number of conceptual statistics questions that require understanding the meaning of a random sample, an experiment, a survey, etc.

The Digital SAT allows about 63% more time per question than the ACT; many students will benefit from this additional time.

If the student masters the subject matter in multiple practice tests, they can expect to do well taking the test; while all the questions will be new, the concepts and subject matter included in each test are very predictable. Perry's SAT tutoring program for Raleigh and Southern Pines area students equips them to become thoroughly familiar with the test content and proficient at techniques for finding correct answers.

Students in the Raleigh area or nationwide can click here to schedule a complimentary consultation with Perry to discuss these issues and to get any questions answered regarding the tutoring process.
ScheduleAppointmentsWithPerry.as.me/ComplimentaryConsultationZoom

More about the Digital SAT

The SAT is now entirely computer-based. Here are the highlights. Perry has the latest in-depth description of the new test and is now offering help with digital SAT test prep in the Raleigh and Southern Pines areas.

THE BIG NEWS

It's all digital — entirely on the computer. Testing will continue to be in a proctored setting. College Board will arrange for a computer for those who need one.

ADAPTIVE STRUCTURE

The verbal section is divided into two modules. The first module will be of average difficulty; the second will include either more difficult or less difficult questions, depending on how the student did on the first module. Similarly, the math sections will take the same adaptive approach. By using this adaptive format, the test is able to be about one hour shorter and still assess the student's performance level. Unlike the previous SAT, hard questions are worth more than easy questions.

CALCULATORS

Use of a calculator is permitted on both math modules. The Desmos graphing calculator is integrated into the test and always available during math sections.

FORMAT

One verbal section and one math section. Each verbal section will be a combination of reading comprehension, writing, and language.

WHAT STUDENTS MAY LIKE

Reading passages are much shorter, and there is one question per passage. There's more time per question.

RECORDING ANSWERS

Students can to go back over any questions in the current section during the allotted time, but cannot go back to previous sections. Answers are recorded on the screen. Scratch paper is allowed.

WHAT WE'VE LEARNED RECENTLY:

College Board has released six full length Digital SAT practice tests. Raleigh and Southern Pines area students will benefit from reviewing those tests as they reveal how the new SAT is different.

A Wider Range of Difficulty

If the second module of both the Reading and Writing (RW) and Math sections can be either easier or more difficult and the timing and number of questions is the same, the student who gets the more difficult Module 2 should expect to have to work faster to allow time for some more difficult questions.

Sophisticated Semicolons:

The need to challenge students more in the higher difficulty Module 2's has resulted in some types of questions that were not seen on the paper SAT, where every question counted the same. For example, over Perry's 20+ years providing SAT help in Raleigh, he has told hundreds of students that all they had to know about a semicolon was that it was used to separate two independent clauses and thus avoid a comma splice. Even though there were other ways good writers use semicolons, these were not covered on the paper SAT. However, here is a sentence appearing in one of the new sample tests, with the correct answer included:

"Joshua Hinson, director of the language revitalization program of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma, helped produce the world's first Indigenous-language instructional app, Chickasaw Basic, in 2009; an online television network, Chickasaw TV, in 2010; and a Rosetta Stone language course in Chickasaw, in 2015."

So, on the new test, we must understand that the semicolon may be used to separate items in a list when the items themselves contain commas.

More use of The Calculator

Similarly, in math the student should expect a few problems of a higher level of difficulty than those on the paper SAT. Some of these seem designed to be solved with a calculator, while all the math questions on the paper SAT could be reasonably solved without a calculator. So, it's important that the student become knowledgeable of many of the capabilities of the included Desmos calculator.

For example, here's an equation a capable student would use to solve for the dimensions of a box (it's the next to last question in a module 2):

While it's possible to solve this equation on paper, most students might find it time-consuming and difficult. Perry teaches all students how to solve it using Desmos. Just typing in the equation shows its graph—clicking on the x-intercept gives the solution: 8 cm.

Students or parents in Raleigh, Southern Pines, or nationwide can click here to schedule a complimentary consultation with Perry to discuss these issues and to get questions answered regarding the SAT and the tutoring process.

https://ScheduleAppointmentsWithPerry.as.me/ComplimentaryConsultationZoom