From one of our former students who is currently studying at Columbia, below is his list of advice for Sat 2 students:
- In the couple of weeks prior to the test, focus more on taking practice tests and practice problems than trying to cram in subjects.
- Get comfortable with your scientific and graphing calculators, and know for what kind of problems you like to use each calculator for.
- Mamie’s SAT 1 class is especially helpful for SAT 2 preparation because about half of the test has problems of similar type and caliber.
- Practice some SAT 1 (the regular SAT) problems because they are worded the same way as the ones on SAT 2, and they focus on the same areas of math.
- Get comfortable with your graphing calculator, but don’t rely on it.
- When you practice your tests, pretend you have only 50 minutes to do the 50 problems. (This is the most important tip I can give. I did this on the test and I had a full 10 minutes to go back and redo problems I skipped or had trouble with!)
- Ask Mamie about concepts you’re confused with more than three weeks before the test so you can absorb it and apply it in your practice tests.
- Don’t second guess yourself. (95% of the time you run into a hard question, you have some indication about what it’s asking. Use several different methods of approaching the problem to try and figure it out, but remember not to spend too much time on any problem. )
- Try to do about a minute per problem if not less because then you’ll have extra time at the end to go back and review or fill in the skipped ones.
- Try to imitate the test environment when you’re practicing.