What Do You Need to Do to Get a Perfect 1600 SAT

Score?

In broad strokes, it takes a lot of hard work, a lot of smart work, and some
amount of luck.

But you've heard this before so just this alone isn't helpful. Let's dig deeper.

You have to want it. Really, really want it.

You need the motivation to push yourself. You need to put SAT prep as one of
your top priorities in life, overcoming watching YouTube or hanging out at the
mall.

In the darkest of days, when you take a practice test and drop 100 points
inexplicably, and your parents are freaking out, and you're worried you're never
getting into your top college, you need the inner fire to not get depressed.
Instead, you need to pull yourself up and objectively rip apart your mistakes so
you don't repeat them.

People don't often mention motivation, but in my view this is one of the most
important pieces that differentiate successful people from not, in all
aspects of life. It's much more important than just being smart.

Make a list of all the reasons you want to get a perfect score. Write them down.
Stare at them when you lose faith.

Want to get into Harvard or an Ivy League school? Want to make up for a bad
GPA? Want to prove to your parents that you can beat their expectations? Want
to compete with your friends? Want to show up your 3rd-grade teacher who said
you would never amount to anything?

That's all good. Anything that drives you from within is a valid reason to
work hard.

You'll need this to combat procrastination and laziness. You'll need this to
push yourself to execute every strategy I tell you below. If you're not
motivated, it's just too easy to brush aside failure and be sloppy about your
weaknesses.

In my personal case, beyond the academic benefits, I thought the SAT was a
dumb test that was impeding my life. I was angry at test writers who devised
tricks to fool students. I approached it like a video game—the SAT and the
College Board were bosses that I needed to dominate. Plus, my brother had a
near-perfect score, and I wanted to one-up him.

Write down all the reasons you want a perfect score and use it to fuel
yourself every study session.

Step 1: Do High-Quality Practice and Avoid Low-

Quality Materials

The SAT is a weird test. It's unlike tests that you've taken throughout school. It
presents simple concepts in bizarre ways. This is essentially how the College
Board makes the test hard— it takes concepts most students have seen before,
twists them to be unfamiliar, and counts on students to screw up.

To excel at this test, you need the highest quality practice materials. Because
the SAT has questions that are twisted in a particular way, you need to train in
exactly the way they're twisted so you learn the patterns.

As we've said before, by far the best practice material comes directly from the
College Board in the form of official SAT practice tests. When I was studying, I
devoured every SAT practice test I could find. I took over 15 full-length practice
tests and was ruthless about finding my mistakes, as I'll talk about soon.

Just like the mantra about your diet and body, what you put in is what you get
out. Trash in, trash out. If you train yourself on questions that don't reflect
what's on the SAT, you're going to learn the wrong patterns.

Using bad materials is like training for baseball by playing tee-ball. Yes, if
you spend 1000 hours practicing tee-ball, you'll be a tee-ball pro. But when
someone pitches a real baseball at you, you're going to freak out—"why is the
ball traveling so fast? Why's it so close to my face? Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod."

And then you strike out.

To be frank, most of the books available on the market are trash. They boast
about having a lot of questions, but they're written by people who aren't truly
experts on the test. This means the questions don't test concepts in the same
way; the answers are sometimes ambiguous; the questions don't trick you in the
same way the SAT does.

In my company PrepScholar, we hire only SAT full-scorers and 99 percentile

scorers to craft our thousands of test questions. You need to have mastered the
test to really understand the intricacies of how the SAT works. We've turned
away dozens of applicants who scored below a 1520 since they really don't
understand the test well enough.

If you like studying with books, here's my list of the top SAT prep books
available. There are some pretty high-quality books written by true experts,
though they can get pricey—buying the top five books will cost you at least a
hundred dollars.

Collect good prep materials and study using only these.

Step 2: Focus on Quality First, Quantity Second

Now you have a lot of materials.

Some students focus hard on getting through every single page of every book
they have. They might not know why they're studying what they're studying, but
at least they sure put in a lot of time and effort!
This is the wrong idea. You don't want to pound your head against the wall and
use a brute force approach.

Improving your SAT score is about quality first, and quantity second.

It's so tempting to just focus on getting work done, because that's the easy part.
Understanding your weaknesses, as we discuss below, is what takes real energy
and insight.

Think about it this way—let's say you're learning to throw a football with a
perfect spiral. You can pick up a football and, by trial and error, if you throw it
1,000 times, you'll make some progress.

Now imagine you have New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady standing
by your side. You throw the ball once, and he corrects your technique. Move
your foot back this way, have your hand follow a certain motion, and follow
through. You try again, and it's way better.

In throwing 50 balls this way, I'm certain you'd end up doing better than 1,000 by
yourself.

I'm not suggesting that Tom Brady is a tutor, and you must have a tutor. You can
be your own Tom Brady, and we discuss below how to do that. But you need to
make sure you get the most out of your studying and make it as efficient
as possible.

You need your own SAT Tom Brady.

Step 3: Be Ruthless About Understanding Your
Mistakes

On the ground level, when you're actually studying, this is by far the most
important way you'll succeed over other students.

EVERY mistake you make on a test happens for a reason. If you don't
understand EXACTLY why you missed that question, you will make that
mistake over and over again.

If you're performing at the 700 level, you're missing around 10% to 15% of all
questions. This means you have some consistent errors that are holding back
your score.

This is what you need to do:

● On every practice test or question set that you take, mark EVERY question
that you're even 20% unsure about.
● When you grade your test or quiz, review every single question that you
marked, and every incorrect question. This way even if you guessed a
question correctly, you'll make sure to review it.
● In a notebook, write down the gist of the question, why you missed it, and
what you'll do to avoid that mistake in the future. Have separate sections
by subject and sub-topic (reading—passages vs sentence completion,
writing—sentence errors vs improving paragraphs).

It's NOT enough to just think about it and move on. It's NOT enough to just read
the answer explanation.

You have to think HARD about why you specifically failed on this question.

By taking this structured approach to your mistakes, you'll now have a running
log of every question you missed, and your reflection on why.

Everyone who wants to get to an 800 on a section has different weaknesses

from you. It's important that you discover for yourself what those are.
 No excuses when it comes to your mistakes.

Go Deeper—WHY Did You Miss It?

Now, what are some common reasons that you missed a question? Don't just
say, "I didn't know this material." Always take it one step further—what
specifically did you miss, and what do you have to improve in the future?

Here are some examples of common reasons you miss a question, and how you
take the analysis one step further:

Content: I didn't learn the skill or knowledge needed to answer this question.

One step further: What specific skill do I need to learn, and how will I learn this
skill?

Incorrect Approach: I knew the content, but I didn't know how to approach this
question.

One step further: How do I solve the question, and is there a general rule that I
need to know for the future?

Wrong Guess: I was stuck between two answer choices, and I guessed wrong.
One step further: Why could I not eliminate one of the last answer choices?
Knowing the correct answer now, how I can eliminate it? Does this suggest a
strategy I can use for the future?

Careless Error: I misread what the question was asking for or solved for the
wrong thing

One step further: Why did I misread the question? What should I do in the
future to avoid this?

Does this seem hard? It is—you have to think hard about why you're falling short
and understand yourself in a way that no one else can. But few students actually
put in the effort to do this analysis, and this is how you'll pull ahead.

By the end of my studying, I had notebooks filled with practice questions that I'd
missed, and when eating breakfast I could thumb through them to review them,
like flashcards.

Adopt a no-mistake-left-behind policy toward your mistakes. Letting one

slip through can mean you make the same mistake on your real SAT.

Five Whys

Here's another useful trick when reviewing mistakes: ask yourself "Why?" five
times?

This is a revolutionary technique developed by Toyota to figure out the root

cause of manufacturing problems.
The point is that when you ask yourself "Why?" five times, you'll dig deeper and
deeper to understand what the underlying cause is, and how to fix it.

Here's an example. Let's say you miss a Reading passage question. Everyone
does this.

Starting point: I missed a Reading question about the big picture summary of
the passage.

1. Why? I picked the wrong answer choice, out of the two I had left.
2. Why? The wrong answer choice had a phrase that was in the passage, but
otherwise the meaning was wrong. I got tricked.
3. Why? I didn't fully understand the passage when I was reading it.
4. Why? I read the passage too quickly.
5. Why? I was scared about running out of time.

Wow—you see how a single question can give you a TON of information about
where you went wrong? Now you have a lot of opportunities to improve—on
how you read passages, how you eliminate answer choices, and how to process
big picture questions.

Again, very few students actually have the discipline to go through this
reflection. And this is why YOU'RE going to get a better score.

Step 4: Find Patterns in Your Weaknesses, and Drill

Them to Perfection
Now that you're collecting mistakes in a notebook, you'll be able to start finding
patterns to your weaknesses. This might be a content area—like problems with
math circle problems, or a specific grammar rule. Or it might be a personal habit
of yours, like misreading the passage or eliminating the wrong answer.

Focusing on your weaknesses is CRITICAL because you have a limited amount of

time to study, and you need to spend that precious time on the areas that
will get you the biggest score improvement.

I've worked with students who just love drilling their strong points because it's
comfortable. Of course, this is a waste of time—you have to confront your
demons and pick at where you're weak, which is uncomfortable and difficult.

When I was studying for the SAT and MCAT, I kept track of my mistakes in an
Excel spreadsheet. I found, for example, that I consistently missed Reading
passage questions about inferences because I was reading too far into what the
author was saying. I then focused on drilling those specific types of questions
until I had developed my own strategy for solving the questions.

As another example, back when the SAT emphasized vocab more, I needed to
study thousands of vocab words, any of which could show up on the test. I
developed my own method on the best way to study SAT vocab words—what I
call the Waterfall Method. This method forces you to review words you don't
know over 10x more than words you already know—efficient studying. You
don't need to use this for the New 2016 SAT, but you may still find it helpful for
any class you need to use flashcards for—foreign language, history, or English.

Find the weak link in your chain.

When you find your weakness, you need to find resources to drill that content
area. If you're weak in Trigonometry questions, you need to find a lot of SAT Trig
questions to really drill those skills. If you're weak in subject/verb agreement,
you need to find grammar questions to drill.

Doing all of this well is tough for many students, because you have to at once:

● Do practice questions
● Diagnose your weaknesses
● Find more practice questions
● Understand whether you're improving or not
● Adjust your plan continuously

This is the backbone of every effective study method, but it takes a lot of
mental energy to do well. This is actually why we started PrepScholar—we
wanted to build an online prep program that would do all the heavy lifting for
you, so that you can concentrate on learning. In our PrepScholar program, we
detect your weaknesses and automatically organize your quizzes by skill so that
you can focus on learning and not on the higher-level activities of analyzing your
own progress.

By the way, a quick side point—be suspicious of any content-level strategies that
promise you results. By content-level, I mean strategies that tell you how you
must solve a type of question. At your level, you need to focus on what works
best for you. For example, people approach reading passages differently. Some
read the passage first, then answer questions. Some skim questions first, then
go back to the passage. I know what works best for me, but that's not necessarily
what works best for you.

What you will have to do is aggregate strategies for your weaknesses, then test
them out yourself to see if they work for you. Specific strategies for each
weakness is out of scope of this article, but we'll post examples later.
Step 5: Eliminate Careless Errors

These types of mistakes are by far the most frustrating. You know the content,
you know how to solve it, but because of a misreading of the question, you don't
get the question right. This can already disqualify you from an 800 on Math.

In my own SAT, I made careless errors because I was trying to finish early and
save time for the end, so I would rush through questions too quickly. I hated
myself every time I made a careless error. But when I focused on the two things
below, I was able to claim back my lost points.

#1: Double-check that you're answering the right question. The SAT is
designed to ask you tricky questions. You might find the area of the square, but
the question actually asks for the perimeter.
To eliminate this, always underline what the question asks you to solve for.
Don't stop your work until you solve for the correct thing.

Another strategy is to write what the question is looking for in your scratch area.
For example, if it asks for seconds instead of minutes, write "= ____ seconds" and
circle it before you start your work.

This might sound like extra work, but how you defeat careless errors is by having
a reliable, failproof system.

#2: Be wary about choosing the "No Change" option. For Writing, a common
careless error is choosing "(A) NO CHANGE" in grammar questions. That's
because when you read the question, it seems grammatically correct to you
because the grammar rule just isn't ringing a bell.
Whenever this happens, make sure you double check the other answer choices
to make sure that NO CHANGE is absolutely the best answer choice.

You should check especially for grammar rules that are easy to overlook, like
Subject-Verb Agreement and Misplaced Modifier. By analyzing your mistakes,
you'll be able to find patterns in grammar rule weaknesses that you have.
You can then build your own system for grammar rules that you often miss—for
example, for Subject-Verb Agreement, identify the subject and the verb, and
then make sure they match.

Step 6: Develop Amazing Study Habits

If you're highly motivated and aiming for a top score, you're likely to spend at
least 200 hours studying for the SAT.

Your job is to get the most out of every hour you can.

Learning how to study more effectively has huge returns on your time.

Think about it—if you can learn some techniques to improve your study
efficiency by 20%, this will effectively give you back 40 hours of your life.
Here are my best recommendations on great study habits, all of which I
follow myself.

Habit 1: Create a Schedule and Force Yourself to Stick to It

It's important to have a plan. You need to understand when you're going to do
what, and then you need to follow that plan.

Here are questions to ask yourself:

● How much time do I have until my next test?

● How much time will I spend studying every week?
● How many practice tests should I take before then? When will I take them?
● During each week, what specific times and days will I be studying?
● What will I actually be studying each day? Why?
● How should my schedule change based on the info I receive from practice
tests?

Do NOT approach SAT prep without a plan like this. You'll wander aimlessly
from book to book, test to test, without actually focusing on what is going to get
you results.

We designed PrepScholar to take care of all this hard work for you. Every week,
we create customized lesson plans so you know exactly what to study and when.
We schedule practice tests for you at the best moments leading up to your test
date. We ask you for your weekly study schedule, then text you reminders to
study. We send you progress reports so you know how well you're doing and
whether you need to study more.
If you feel like you don't know how to create your own study schedule or aren't
confident you can stick to one, you might like PrepScholar's SAT program.

Habit 2: Eliminate All Distractions

You have so many distractions at your fingertips—Snaps, texts, YouTube, games,

and more.

All of these are super fun and super easy to consume for hours on end.

All of these will improve your SAT score by ZERO.

If you're studying and you glance at your phone every 3 minutes, you are
NOT STUDYING. The brain is actually terrible at multitasking, and every time you
lose attention, you take minutes to go back to full concentration.

I know how tempting it is to stay up to date with everything your friends are
doing. There's major Fear of Missing Out. You don't want to miss a hilarious joke
or be late to a scandalous story.

The thing is, in the long term, these little interactions don't actually make a big
difference. Think about the last time responding to a text within 3 minutes was
VITAL to your friendship.

You are not missing out on anything important if you text back an hour
later. Maybe you'll call me an old man and just claim I don't get it, but a friend
who gets mad at you for not replying within a few minutes doesn't sound like a
good friend to me.
I once sat in a coffee shop next to a girl who was trying to study chemistry. Every
few minutes she would look at her phone, laugh, and return a text. She got
through two pages in an hour—I kid you not.

Instead, here's what you need to do:

● Go to a quiet place where you won't be interrupted. Wear earplugs if it

helps.
● Turn your phone off or leave it another room.
● Don't listen to music where you actively have to listen to words.
● Don't study with friends. It's more fun but everyone does a crappy job of
studying.
● If you're using a program like PrepScholar on a web browser, use tools
like StayFocusd to keep yourself off of distractions.

Treat this seriously. One hour spent studying at full concentration is better
than three hours at 50% concentration.

Habit 3: Have a Positive Mindset. Your Job Is to Grow.

When you're trying to get a perfect 1600 SAT score, you'll get frustrated when
you make mistakes. I was the same way, and I got mad at myself for making
careless mistakes or for forgetting something I used to know.

The important thing is to channel that frustration into learning and

growth.

Treat every mistake as a learning opportunity. Every mistake tells you exactly
where your weakness is, and what you need to do to fix it.
You are allowed to get upset, but not so much it paralyzes you. Instead, treat
your primary goal as getting better—not as getting a specific score.

Step 7: Get Fast Enough to Always Double Check Your

Answers

Now that you're aiming for a top score, you need to finish each section ahead of
time to give yourself time to double check your answers. A good rule of thumb is
to finish the section with at least 5 minutes to spare. As you get better at the
SAT, this will be easier to accomplish since you'll solve each question in less time.

When I took the SAT, I reliably finished each section with 5-10 minutes to spare. I
would mark any questions that I felt I had to return to and double-check. I had
enough time to review all my answers twice.

The real time-killers are questions you get stuck on. It's very easy to get sucked
into a question for five minutes, frustrated that the SAT is taking a point away
from you. Avoid this temptation. Follow this rule: if you've spent 30 seconds on
a question and can't see how you're going to get to the answer, circle the
question, and skip it. You'll have time at the end to come back to it. For now,
you need to work on the other questions.

How do you double check effectively? It varies between sections. For math, you
should try to re-solve the question quickly in a different way. For some
questions, you'll be able to plug the answer back in. For others, you'll just need
to check your steps you took the first time around.

For writing, confirm that the sentence has the error you think it does. Again, for
No Error answer choices, make sure you aren't missing something in the
question.

For reading, confirm that there is no other better answer choice than the one
you picked. For passage questions, make sure you rule out four incorrect
answers. For sentence completion questions, plug the words back into the
blanks to make sure they fit perfectly.

As you get better at the test, you'll have more time left. Aim for at least 5
minutes left after each section, and use that time to double-check your
answers.

Stay calm during the test, even if you get confused on a question.

Step 8: Don't Get Inside Your Own Head During the

Test

If you're vying for a perfect 1600 score, you'll face pressure during the test. You
know how little room for error there is.
This means that if you're having trouble with a question, it's easy to psyche
yourself out. "Oh no! I'm having trouble with this math question. If I don't get
this right, my 800 in math is gone!" This will make you nervous, which makes you
even less likely to answer the question, which makes you more nervous, and so
forth. This vicious spiral can suck you down for the rest of the test.

Controlling your mental status is important during the test. Just like a pro
athlete or performer, you need to be confident about your skills. You already put
in a ton of work, and you've learned most of what the College Board has to
throw at you. The last thing you want to do now is ruin more of the test.

So it's a single question you're unsure about—this doesn't affect your

performance on any other question. Try your best and clear your head, then
move on.