As a teenager, you’ve probably been told you have a bad attitude at least once. It’s a rite of passage in these years of immense physiological change and social and parental pressure. But do you know how to recognize a negative attitude on the ACT or SAT?
ACT and SAT Math Tips: How to Conquer Complex Fractions
You’ve probably been leaning on your calculator for so long that you’ve forgotten what a complex fraction even is. The ACT and SAT like to reach way back into your math history to gather concepts you learned in elementary school (remainders, anyone?). The more years that have passed since you mastered an operation, the more […]
ACT and SAT Writing Tips: Misplaced Modifiers
Today’s blog focuses on a great time-saving secret in the ACT English and SAT Writing section: misplaced modifiers in introductory clauses. Once you learn how to spot these frequent errors, you can quickly pinpoint the correct answer choice. Let’s get started. Can you spot the error in the following sentence? Weighing in at two and […]
ACT and SAT Math Tips: Sequences
There are three main types of sequence questions on the ACT and SAT: Those that require the use of formulas to solve arithmetic or geometric sequences. Those that ask you to compute a small-numbered term (such as the 8th term or less). Those that assess your ability to discover a repetitive pattern in order to […]
ACT English and SAT Writing Tips: Parallel Prepositions
The use of prepositions in a series must either be used by all members of a series or by only the first member of the series in order to be considered parallel. Both of the following sentences are correct: You can succeed on the SAT by reading, by studying, and by taking a prep class. […]
How to Set a Realistic Target ACT or SAT Score
When we teach courses, we hand out a student profile which asks students about their testing experience and expectations. One of the questions prompts them to list their target score. So many of the responses are the same: 25 on the ACT and 1200 on the SAT. When we ask why they want these scores, […]
Top 7 SAT and ACT Mistakes
There are plenty of lists out there with the “Do’s of SAT and ACT Prep,” but what about the “Don’ts?” Here are the top seven mistakes students make preparing for and taking the SAT and ACT.
ACT and SAT Math Tips: The surprise inside every equilateral triangle
Remember when you were a kid and the box of Lucky Charms had a toy buried inside? Yeah, hold on to that memory, because thanks to advertising laws, most cereal manufacturers stopped offering such promotions in 2008. I sure wish law makers would at least allow cereal manufacturers to put toys in cereals with low […]
Diction-Error-y
Some of the hardest SAT multiple-choice Writing questions involve diction, or an author’s choice of words. These questions usually appear in the Identifying Sentence Errors and have seemingly perfect grammar. The problem, however, is a word or phrase that just doesn’t make sense. Consider an example: 26. The purpose of the Heimlich Maneuver, which was […]
SAT Reading Tips: Related Answers in Sentence Completion Questions
Humans are programmed to make logical connections, which is never more evident than in our classification of words. We group words by topic and meaning from an early age. For example, consider your early associations with the word dog. It is likely that as a small child just learning to talk, you learned other words […]