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How to Improve Your SAT Reading

Score: 8 Strategies

Posted by Allen Cheng | Oct 10, 2017 5:00:00 PM

SAT STRATEGIES, SAT READING

Are you struggling with an SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW) score
between 300 and 500? You're not alone—hundreds of thousands of students are
scoring in this range. But many don't know the best ways to break out of this score
range and get a 600 or higher.

Here, we'll discuss how to improve your SAT Reading score speci cally and why it's so
important to do so. Unlike other u y articles out there, we'll be focusing on
actionable strategies. Put these eight strategies to work and I'm con dent you'll
be able to improve your SAT Reading score.

Brief note: this article is suited for students scoring below 600 on EBRW. If you're
already above this range, my perfect SAT Reading score article is more appropriate
for you.
Also, the current SAT (as opposed to the old SAT) has a single 800 Reading and
Writing score, which combines your individual Reading and Writing test scores. So
technically, when I talk about a 600 Reading test score, I'm referring to a 30/40
Reading test score, which combines with your Writing test score to get you 600. In
this guide, I'll use 600 and 30 interchangeably to mean the same thing. We won't talk
about Writing here, but if you want to improve your Writing score, too, check out my
guide on how to raise your low SAT Writing score.

In this article, I'm going to discuss why scoring high is a good idea, address what
it takes to score a 600, and then go into speci c SAT Reading tips and strategies.

Stick with me—this is like building a house. First, you need to lay a good foundation
before putting up the walls and pretty windows. In the same vein, we need to
understand why you're doing what you're doing before we dive into our top tips and
strategies for SAT Reading.

Note that I will talk mainly about getting to 600, but if your goal is 500 or lower, these
concepts still equally apply.

Before we begin, here is the table of contents for this article in case you want to come
back to this later or jump around:

Raising Your SAT Reading Score: Understand the Stakes

Know That You Can Get a 600 SAT Reading Score
What It Takes to Get a 600 (or 30) in SAT Reading
Strategy 1: Save Time on Reading Passages by Switching Your Reading Strategy
Strategy 2: Learn to Eliminate the 3 Wrong Answers
Strategy 3: Find Your Reading Skill Weaknesses and Drill Them
Strategy 4: Only Use High-Quality SAT Reading Sources
Strategy 5: Don't Focus On Vocab
Strategy 6: Skip the Most Di cult, Time-Consuming Questions
Strategy 7: Understand All Your Reading Mistakes
Strategy 8: Guess on Every Question You Don't Know

Raising Your SAT Reading Score: Understand the

Stakes

At this SAT score range, improving your low SAT EBRW score to a score in at least the
600 range will dramatically boost your chances of getting into better colleges.

Let's use Penn State University as an example. The average SAT score for admitted
applicants to Penn State is 1270. Its 25th percentile score is 1180, and its 75th
percentile score is 1370.

Furthermore, its acceptance rate is 51%. In other words, a little more than half of all
applicants are admitted. But the lower your SAT scores are, the worse your
chances of getting in will be.

In our analysis, if you score around 1000, your chance of admission drops to just
27%.

But if you raise your score to 1200, your chance of admission goes up to 60%—
that's a really good chance of admission!

So improving your score by just 200 points makes a huge di erence in your chances
of getting into your target colleges.

For the SAT Reading section, this is especially true if you want to apply to
humanities majors and programs, such as English or communications. These
programs expect your Reading score to be strong. If you score low, they'll doubt your
ability to do college-level humanities work.

Even if you're a math superstar and are applying to a science major, colleges still
want to know that you can process di cult texts at a college level. A low Reading
score will cast huge doubt on you.

It's really worth your time to improve your SAT Reading score. Hour for hour, it's the
best thing you can do to raise your chance of getting into college.

Curious what chances you have with a 1200 SAT score? Check out our expert college
admissions guide for an 1200 SAT score.

 
 

Know That You Can Get a 600 SAT Reading Score

This isn't just supposed to be a vague, happy-go-lucky message you see on a juice
carton.

I mean, literally, you and every other student can do this.

In my job here at PrepScholar, I've worked with thousands of students scoring in the
lower ranges of 300-500 on EBRW.

Time after time, I've seen students beat themselves up over their low scores; they
think improving them is impossible and say things such as the following:

"I know I'm not smart."

"I just can't read passages quickly, and I don't know how to improve my SAT
Reading score."

"I was never good at English, and my English teachers never told me I did a good
job."

This breaks my heart.

Because I know that more than anything else, your SAT score is a re ection of how
hard you work and how smartly you study.

Not your IQ and not your school grades. Not how Mr. Anderson in 10th grade gave
you a C on your essay.

The truth is that SAT Reading is designed to trick you—and you need to learn how.

Here's why: the SAT is a weird test. When you take it, don't you get the sense that
the questions are nothing like what you've seen in high school?

I bet you've had this problem: with SAT Reading passages, you often miss questions
because of an "unlucky guess." You try to eliminate a few answer choices, but the
ones left all sound equally good to you.

So you throw up your hands and take a random guess.

The SAT is purposely designed this way to confuse you. Literally millions of other
students have the exact same problem you do. And the SAT knows this.
Normally, in your high school English class, your teacher tells you that all
interpretations of a text are valid. You can write an essay about anything you want,
and English teachers aren't allowed to tell you your opinion is wrong. This is because
they can get in trouble for telling you what to think.

But the SAT has an entirely di erent problem. It's a national test, which means it
needs to create a level playing eld for all students around the country. It needs to
fairly compare students with each other. As a result, every question must have a
single, unambiguously, 100% correct answer.

There's only ever one correct answer. Find a way to eliminate the three incorrect answer
choices.

Imagine if this weren't the case. Imagine each Reading answer had two answer
choices that might each be plausibly correct. When SAT scores came out, every single
student who got the question wrong would more than likely complain to the College
Board that the test is awed. The College Board would then have to invalidate that
question, ultimately weakening the power of the SAT.

The College Board wants to avoid this nightmare scenario. Therefore, every single
Reading passage question has only one correct answer.

But the SAT disguises this fact by asking questions with the following cryptic phrases:

The author would most likely agree with which of the following statements?
The rst paragraph primarily serves to:
In line 20, "dark" most nearly means:

Notice a pattern here? The SAT always disguises the fact that there's just one
unambiguous answer. It tries to make you waver between two or three answer
choices that all sound plausible.
And then you guess randomly.

And then you get the question wrong.

You can bet students fall for this. Millions of times every year.

Students who don't prepare for the SAT in the right way don't appreciate this. But if
you prepare for the SAT in the right way, you'll learn the tricks the SAT plays on
you. And you'll raise your score.

The SAT Reading section is full of patterns like these. To improve your score, you just
need to do the following:

Learn the types of questions the SAT tests, such as the ones above
Learn strategies to solve these questions, using skills you already know
Practice with a lot of high-quality questions so you can learn from your
mistakes

The point is that you can learn these skills, even if you don't consider yourself a good
reader or a great English student. I'll go into more detail about exactly how to do this
later.

But rst, let's see how many questions you need to get right in order to get a 600 on
SAT Reading.

What It Takes to Get a 600 (or 30) in SAT Reading

If you have a target score in mind, it helps to understand how many question you'll
need to get right, which is known as your raw score, in order to hit your target scaled
score (out of 600). Since SAT Reading combines with Writing to give you a single
EBRW score out of 600, we're going to be looking at Reading test scores instead. In
this case, we're aiming for a Reading test score of 30, out of 40 total points.

Here's a rough raw-score-to-SAT-Reading-test-score conversion table — the exact

conversions will depend on the test, but this chart will give you a close approximation
of how many questions you can miss and still get a 30. (If you could use a refresher
on how the SAT is scored and how raw scores are calculated, read this guide.)

Raw Scaled Raw Scaled Raw Scaled Raw Scaled

52 40 38 31 24 24 10 17
51 39 37 30 23 24 9 16
50 39 36 30 22 23 8 16
 49 38 35 29 21 23 7 15
48 37 34 29 20 23 6 14
47 36 33 28 19 22 5 13
46 35 32 28 18 22 4 12
45 35 31 28 17 21 3 11
44 34 30 27 16 21 2 10
43 33 29 27 15 20 1 10
42 33 28 26 14 20 0 10
41 32 27 26 13 19    
40 32 26 25 12 18    
39 31 25 25 11 18    
Source: SAT O cial Practice Test #4

Notice that if you're aiming for 600 overall and 30/40 on Reading, you'll need a raw
score of about 36/52. This is a 70% score.

This fact has serious implications for your testing strategy. In essence, you only need
to answer about 2/3 of all Reading questions right. We'll go into more detail below
about what this means for your testing strategy.

Whatever you're scoring now, take note of the di erence you need to get to 30. For
example, if you're scoring 23, you'll need to answer about 15 more questions right on
Reading to get to 30.

Once again, even if your goal is something like 500 (i.e., 25/40), the same analysis
applies.

OK, so we've covered why scoring a higher SAT Reading score is important, why you
are capable of improving your score, and the raw score you'll need to get in order to
hit your target score. I hope a lot of this was useful and changed how you think about
SAT Reading prep.

Now, we'll look at actionable strategies you should use in your own SAT prep to
maximize your Reading score improvement.

8 Strategies to Improve Your Low SAT Reading Score

In this section, we give you our top eight SAT Reading strategies guaranteed to
improve your low Reading score.

 
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SharesStrategy
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1: 14
Save Time on Reading Passages by Switching Your
Reading Strategy

Based on my experience working with thousands of students, by far the most

common problem test takers have with SAT Reading passages is this: they keep
running out of time before they can get through all the questions.

This is a problem because unlike SAT Math, passage questions aren't arranged by
level of di culty. Therefore, by not completing all the questions in time, you might
miss some easy questions at the end that you would have gotten right, if only you'd
had enough time.

What's the cause of this? The most common one I see is that students are reading
the passages far more closely than they actually need to be. Once again, this is a
result of homework and what you learn in English class. In English, you've probably
gotten (stupid) tests that quiz you about what Baron Meisto said in a particular
scene, or what color Tom's T-shirt was. So of course you've learned to pay attention
to every single detail in a text.

The SAT is di erent, though. For a passage that's 80 lines long, there might only be
10 questions. Many of these don't even refer to speci c lines—instead, they'll talk
about the point of the passage as a whole or the tone of the author.

The number of questions that focus on small, line-by-line details is low. Therefore, it's
a waste of time to read a passage line by line, afraid you'll miss a detail that a
question might ask you about.

The best way to read a passage? Skimming it on the rst read-through.

 
 
This is why I recommend that all students use this SAT Reading passage strategy:
 Skim the passage on the rst read-through. Don't try to understand every
single line or write notes predicting what the questions might ask. Just get a
general understanding of the passage. You'll want to try to nish reading the
passage within three minutes, if possible.

Next, go to the questions. If the question refers to a certain line number, go

back to that line number and work on understanding the text around it.

If you can't answer a question within 30 seconds, skip it. (More on this strategy
later.)

This strategy is important because the questions will ask about far fewer lines than
the passage actually contains. For example, lines 5-20 of a reading passage might not
be relevant to any question that follows. Therefore, if you spend time trying to
deeply understand lines 5-20, you’ll just waste time.

Some students take this strategy to the extreme: they read the questions rst before
the passage. If a question refers to any speci c lines, they then mark those in the
passage, which they can later use as a guide to know what to focus on when they
read the passage.

Di erent strategies work for di erent students. You need to try out a lot to see
which strategy  leads to the best results for you. But by and large, I'm con dent that
you're spending way too much time reading the passage.

Strategy 2: Learn to Eliminate the 3 Wrong Answers

I spent some time above talking about how there is always one unambiguously
correct answer. This has a huge implication for the strategy you should use to nd
the right SAT Reading answer.

Here's the other way to see it: out of the four answer choices, three of them have
something that is totally wrong about them. Only one answer is 100% correct,
which means that the other three are 100% wrong.

You know how you try to eliminate answer choices and then end up with a few at the
end that all seem equally likely to be correct?

Well, you're not doing a good enough job of eliminating answer choices.
Remember, every single wrong choice can be crossed out for its own reasons.

 
 You have to learn how to eliminate three answer choices for every single Reading
question. 

"Great, Allen. But this doesn't tell me anything about how to eliminate answer
choices."

Thanks for asking. There are a few classic wrong answer choices the SAT loves to use.
Let's look at an example.

Imagine you just read a passage that focuses on how human evolution shaped the
environment. It gives a few examples. First, it talks about how the transition from
earlier species like Homo habilus to neanderthals led to more tool usage like re,
resulting in wild res and shaping the ecology. It then discusses Homo sapiens 40,000
years ago and their overhunting of species, such as woolly mammoths, to extinction.

After, we run into a question asking, "Which of the following best describes the
main subject of the passage?" Here are our possible answer choices:

A: The transition between Homo habilus and neanderthals

B: The study of evolution
C: How the environment shaped human evolution
D: The plausibility of evolution
E: The in uence of human development on ecology

Note that we're using ve answer choices for illustration purposes only—in reality,
the SAT only has four answer choices per Reading question.

As you're reading these answers, a few of them probably started to sound really
plausible to you.

Surprise! Each of the answers from A to D has something seriously wrong with
it. Each one is a classic example of a wrong answer type given by the SAT. Let's look
at just what these are.
Wrong Answer 1 (A): Too Speci c

A: The transition between Homo habilus and neanderthals

This type of wrong answer focuses on a smaller detail in the passage. It’s meant to
trick you and make you think to yourself, "Well, I saw this mentioned in the passage,
so it’s a plausible answer choice."

Wrong! Ask yourself: can this answer choice really describe the entire passage? Can it
basically function as the title of this passage?

In the end, you’ll nd that it’s just way too speci c to convey the point of the overall
passage.

Wrong Answer 2 (B): Too Broad

B: The study of evolution

This type of wrong answer has the opposite problem as the one above in that it’s
way too broad. While theoretically the passage concerns the study of evolution, it
focuses on just one aspect of it, especially as it relates to the impact of evolution on
the environment.

To give another ludicrous example, say you talked to your friend about your cell
phone and he said your main point was the universe. Yes, you were talking about the
universe in that you both live in the universe, but this was clearly only a tiny fraction
of your conversation.

In short, answer choice B is simply far too general to be a good answer to this
question.
Wrong Answer 3 (C): Reversed Relationship

C: How the environment shaped human evolution

This wrong answer choice can be tricky because it mentions all the right words. But of
course the relationship between these words needs to be correct as well. Here, the
relationship is ipped: the passage focuses on how human evolution shaped the
environment, not the other way around.

Students who read too quickly often make careless mistakes like these!

Wrong Answer 4 (D): Unrelated Concept

D: The plausibility of evolution

Finally, this kind of wrong answer preys on students' tendency to overthink

questions. If you’re passionate about arguing about evolution, for example, this
answer might be a trigger answer for you since any discussion concerning evolution
becomes a chance to argue about its plausibility.

Of course, even though this concept appears nowhere in the passage, some students
just aren't able to resist choosing this answer choice.

Do you see the point? On the surface, each answer choice sounds as though it could
possibly be correct. But possibly isn't good enough. The right answer must be
100%, totally right. Wrong answers might be o by even just one word, so you
need to know how to eliminate these.

Carry this thought into every SAT Reading passage question you do.

 
 Next strategy: nd your weak links and x them.
 
 
Strategy 3: Find Your Reading Skill Weaknesses and Drill Them

Reading passage questions might look similar, but they actually test very di erent
skills. Here at PrepScholar, we believe the major skills tested in SAT passages are
as follows:

Big Picture/Main Point

Little Picture/Detail
Inference
Vocabulary in Context
Function
Author Technique
Evidence Support
Data Interpretation
Analyzing Multiple Texts

Whew, that's a lot of skills! More than is obvious when you're reading passages on
SAT Reading.

Each of these question types uses di erent skills in how you read and analyze a
passage. They each require a di erent method of prep and focused practice.

If you're like most students, you're probably better at some areas in Reading than
you are at others. For instance, you might be good at getting the big picture of a
passage but not so good at getting inferences. Or you might be really strong at
pinpointing the author's tone but struggle with interpreting data correctly.

If you're like most students, you also don't have an unlimited amount of time to
study. You have a lot of homework, possibly sports and other extracurriculars, and
friends to hang out with.
This means that for every hour you study for the SAT, it needs to be the most
e ective hour possible.

In more concrete terms, you need to nd your greatest areas of improvement

and work on those.

Too many students study the "dumb" way. They just buy a book and read it cover to
cover. When they don't improve, they're shocked.

But I'm not.

Studying e ectively for the SAT isn't like painting a house. You're not trying to
cover all your bases with a very thin layer of understanding.

What these students did wrong was that they wasted time on subjects they already
knew, and they didn't spend enough time on honing their weaknesses.

Studying e ectively for the SAT is like plugging up the holes in a leaky boat. You
need to nd the biggest hole and ll it. Then, you need to nd the next biggest hole
and ll that, too. You'll soon nd that your boat isn't sinking anymore.

How does this relate to SAT Reading? You need to nd the sub-skills you're weakest in
and then drill those until you're no longer weak in them. Fixing up the biggest holes.

Within Reading, you must gure out whether there are patterns to your mistakes.
Is it that you're running out of time with reading passages? Or that you don't get
Inference questions? Or that you're really weak at interpreting details?

For every question you miss, identify what type of question it is. When you
notice patterns to the questions you miss, you must then devote extra practice
to those sub-skills.
Say you miss a lot of Inference questions (this is typically the hardest type of question
for students to get on SAT Reading). You need to somehow get focused practice
questions for this skill so you can drill your mistakes.

Bonus: If all of this is making sense to you, you'd love our SAT prep program,
PrepScholar.

We designed our program around the concepts in this article, because they
actually work. When you start with PrepScholar, you’ll take a diagnostic that will
determine your weaknesses in over forty SAT skills - in Critical Reading, Math,
and Writing. PrepScholar then creates a study program speci cally customized
for you.

To improve each skill, you’ll take focused lessons dedicated to each skill, with
over 20 practice questions per skill. This will train you for your speci c area
weaknesses, so your time is always spent most e ectively to raise your score.

There’s no other prep system out there that does it this way, which is why we
get better score results than any other program on the market.

Check it out today with a 5-day free trial:

Improve Your SAT Score by 160+ Points,

Guaranteed

Strategy 4: Only Use High-Quality SAT Reading Sources

SAT Reading passages are very speci c in how they work. And SAT Reading questions
are very speci cally phrased and constructed to have bait answers.

If you want to improve your Reading score, you have to use realistic SAT Reading
sources. If you don't, you'll develop bad habits and accidentally train the wrong skills.

Think about it like this: say you're trying out for the baseball team. Instead of
practicing with real baseballs, you decide to practice with Wi e balls. It's a lot
cheaper and easier, and hitting the ball makes you feel good about your skills.

So you train and train and train with a Wi e ball. You understand how the Wi e ball
curves when it's thrown, how to hit it, and how to throw it.
Eventually, you try out for the baseball team. A pitch comes, but it's way faster than
you've ever practiced with. It doesn't curve like a Wi e ball does.

Swing, and a miss.

You've trained with the wrong thing, and now you're totally unprepared for
baseball.

This is not real baseball.

SAT Reading works the exact same way. Train with poorly written tests, and you'll
develop bad habits and unhelpful strategies.

Far and away, the best sources for SAT Reading passages are o cial SAT
practice tests. This is why we include these o cial practice tests in our SAT prep
program—so that we can accurately gauge your progress and provide you with
quality training.

The problem is that there aren't that many o cial SAT practice tests available.
Because you want to use these to train your endurance for the full-length test, it's
best to try to conserve them.

This means that to get enough SAT Reading practice, you'll need to use other
materials, too. 

Our rst suggestion is to use prep resources speci cally geared toward the
SAT. Be careful, though, since many test-prep companies tend to release poor-quality
passages and questions (most books you see on SAT Reading are pretty terrible, too).
Check out our picks for the best SAT prep books here.

This is especially harmful for SAT Reading because the style of its passages and
questions are quite complex, as opposed to SAT Math whose questions are more
straightforward.

To write realistic questions, you need to understand the SAT inside and out.
That's why we've created what I believe are the highest quality Reading questions
available anywhere. Here's what we've done:

We've deconstructed every o cial SAT practice test—question by

question, answer by answer. We've statistically studied every question type on
the test and understand exactly how questions are phrased and how wrong
answer choices are constructed. 

As head of product, I'm responsible for content quality. I hire only the
most quali ed content writers to craft our test content. This means people
who got perfect SAT scores, who have hundreds of hours of SAT teaching
experience, and who graduated from Ivy League schools.

All of this results in the most realistic, highest quality SAT Reading questions.

Even if you don't use PrepScholar, make sure that whatever resource you do use
undergoes the same scrutiny we exercise. If you're not sure how helpful
something is or notice lots of negative reviews, it's best to avoid it.

Strategy 5: Don't Focus On Vocab

Vocab gets way too much attention from students. It feels good to study vocab
ashcards because it seems like you're making progress. "I studied 1,000 vocab
words—this must mean I improved my Reading score!"

This is why other test-prep programs love teaching you vocab—you feel as though
you're learning something and it's worth your money. But the truth is that learning
vocab isn't really helping you.

Fortunately, vocab doesn't play a big role in your SAT Reading score anymore.

This is especially true for the current version of the SAT, which no longer
has Sentence Completion questions. (On the old, pre-2016 SAT, these were the
questions that required you to ll in blanks with vocab words.)
The reasoning behind this decision was that the College Board received a lot of
criticism for forcing students to memorize advanced vocab that wasn't that useful in
college or for future careers. (And students rejoiced everywhere!)

That said, there are still some SAT Reading questions that ask about vocab, such
as this one (taken from an o cial SAT practice test):

As used in line 68, "hold" most nearly means

A) maintain
B) grip
C) restrain
D) withstand

Wait—"hold"? They're asking a question about the simple word "hold"?

Yes, it's a common word—but the key to this question lies in understanding how a
word is used in context. Hold can mean all the things listed in the answer choices,
but only one of them is correct.

 Here are examples of words you'll need to understand in context for the SAT:

ambivalent
convey
lament
postulate

These are somewhat advanced words, but they're nowhere near the level of the
words you used to have to know, such as "apportionment" and "expropriated."

If you have a pretty typical vocabulary of an American teen, there will be at most two
to three SAT Reading questions that'll really stretch your vocabulary. But like I
mentioned above, you can miss 16 out of 52 questions and still get a 30 on the
Reading section.

 
 Don't go crazy studying vocab—most likely, it's not the best use of your time.
 

That time is far better spent learning how to deal with Reading passages
better. There are so many more questions about passages that it's a better use of
your time to learn passage strategy and how to answer reading questions than it is to
memorize vocab words.

Strategy 6: Skip the Most Di cult, Time-Consuming Questions

Here's an easy strategy most students don't do enough.

Remember what I said above about raw score? To score a 30 (600) on SAT Reading,
you only need a raw score of 36—that's just 36 correct answers out of 52 questions.

But what does this mean for your strategy exactly? You can completely guess on 20
questions, get ve of them right by chance, and still score a 600 on Reading.

Once again, you can completely guess on 40% of all questions and still hit your goal!

 
 Skip questions carefree, like this woman does.
 

Why is this such a powerful strategy? 

It gives you way more time on easy and medium di culty questions—the
questions you have a good chance of getting right.

If you're usually pressed for time on SAT Reading, this will be a huge help.

Here's an example: on the Reading section, you get 65 minutes to answer 52

questions. This is usually pretty hard for most students to get through, as it's just 75
seconds per question.

The average student will try to push through all the questions. "I've got to get through
them all since I've got a shot at getting each question right," they think. Along the
way, they rush and make careless mistakes on questions they should have gotten
right. And then they spend ve minutes on really hard questions, causing them to
make no progress and waste time.

Wrong approach.

Here's what I suggest instead. Try each question, but skip it after 30 seconds if
you're still not getting anywhere. Unlike math, Reading questions aren't ordered
by di culty, so you can't tell right away which questions are harder or easier. This is
why you should try out each one but move on if it's costing you too much time.

By doing this, you can raise your time per easy/medium question to 100 seconds
per question or more. This is huge! It's a 30% boost to the time you get per
question. As a result, this raises your overall chances of getting easy/medium
questions right.

And the questions you skipped? They're so hard you're honestly better o not
even trying them. These questions are meant for 700-800 scorers. If you get to 600,
you have the right to try them out—but not before you get to 600.
How do you tell which questions are going to take you the most time? This
varies from person to person, but here are two question types that commonly take
more time than others:

Questions without line numbers that make you hunt for details: You can
spend a lot of time rereading the passage looking for where Virginia Woolf
mentioned a staircase.

Questions that ask you to compare two passages: If you really struggle to
understand passages, paired passages will be twice the trouble. 

Do your SAT Reading prep with all of this in mind. If you get stuck on a question, think
about what type of question it is, and gure out whether there's a pattern to the
questions that consistently trip you up.

Strategy 7: Understand All Your Reading Mistakes

Every mistake you make on a test happens for a reason. If you don't understand
exactly why you missed a question, you'll make the same mistake over and over
again.

Too many students scoring at the 400-600 level on SAT Reading refuse to study their
mistakes.

It's harsh. I get it. It sucks to stare your mistakes in the face. It's draining to learn
di cult concepts you don't readily understand.

So the average student will skip reviewing their mistakes and instead focus on the
areas they're already comfortable with. It's like a warm blanket. Their thinking goes
like this: "So I'm good at Big Picture questions? I should do more Big Picture
problems! They make me feel good about myself."

The result? No score improvement.

You don't want to be like these students. So here's what you need to do

instead:

On every practice test or question set you take, mark every question you're
even just 20% unsure about.

When you grade your test or quiz, review every question 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 making that mistake in the future. Have separate
sections by subject and sub-topic (e.g., Big Picture, Inference, Vocab, etc.).

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 speci cally failed on a
question.

For Reading questions, you must nd a way to eliminate every single incorrect
answer. If you were stuck between two answer choices, review your work to gure
out why you couldn't eliminate the wrong answer choice.

If you don't do this, I guarantee you will not make any progress.

But if you do take this structured approach to your mistakes, you'll now have a
running log of every question you missed as well as your re ections on why you
made the mistakes you did.

No excuses when it comes to your mistakes.

Strategy 8: Guess on Every Question You Don't Know

You might already know this one, but if you don't, you're about to earn some serious
points.

The SAT does not have a wrong answer penalty.

On the old SAT, each wrong answer deducted 0.25 points from your raw score. This
required you to have a smart guessing strategy.

But no longer! Now, there is no penalty for getting a wrong answer. This means
there's no reason to leave any question blank.

So before you nish the Reading section, make sure every blank question has an
answer lled in. You don't want to look at your answer sheet and see any blank
questions.

For every question you're unsure about, make sure you guess as best you can. If
you can eliminate even just one answer choice, you'll have a much better shot at
getting it right.

If you have no idea, just go ahead and guess! You have a 25% chance of getting it
right anyway.

Most people know this strategy already, so if you don't do this, you're at a serious
disadvantage. 

Overview: Tips for Raising Your Low SAT Reading

Score

Those are the main strategies you should use to improve your SAT Reading score. If
you're scoring around 350, you can use these to get to 500. If you're scoring around
470, boost your score to 600. I guarantee it—as long as you put in the right amount of
work and study as I suggest above, you're bound to hit your goal score on test day.

The main point, though, is this: you need to understand where you're falling
short and drill those weaknesses continuously. You also need to be thoughtful
about your mistakes and leave no mistake ignored.

This is really important for your future. Make sure you give SAT prep the attention it
deserves— before it's too late and you get a rejection letter you didn't want.

Finally, if you want to go back and review any of the above strategies, here's a quick
listing:

Strategy 1: Save Time on Reading Passages by Switching Your Reading Strategy

Strategy 2: Learn to Eliminate the 3 Wrong Answers
Strategy 3: Find Your Reading Skill Weaknesses and Drill Them
Strategy 4: Only Use High-Quality SAT Reading Sources
Strategy 5: Don't Focus On Vocab
 Strategy 6: Skip the Most Di cult, Time-Consuming Questions
Strategy 7: Understand All Your Reading Mistakes
Strategy 8: Guess on Every Question You Don't Know

What's Next?

We've got a lot of useful guides you can use to raise your SAT section scores. For
Math, read my detailed guide to improving your SAT Math score.

You can also learn how to raise your SAT Writing score or your SAT Essay score.

What's a good SAT score for you personally? Use our step-by-step guide to gure
out your SAT target score today.

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points? We have the industry's leading SAT
prep program. Built by Harvard grads and SAT full scorers, the program learns your
strengths and weaknesses through advanced statistics, then customizes your prep
program to you so you get the most e ective prep possible.

Check out our 5-day free trial today:

Improve Your SAT Score by 160+ Points, Guaranteed

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Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

alaen john 16/05/2015, 13:24:40

Hey Allen,my name is alaen john I got 1500 on sat I want to improve to 1800 what is
your advise and how days should I study and how many hours per day how many
vocab ashcards

Reply to alaen john

Allen Cheng 24/05/2015, 15:50:12

Hi Alaen- This is a di cult question to answer since it depends on a lot of factors.

We just published a new guide here: http://blog.prepscholar.com/how-long-
should-i-study-for-the-sat-6-step-guide

I would focus your time on learning core skills for the test rather than vocab
ashcards. Also, check out our program www.prepscholar.com for an online
program that customizes your learning to your strengths and weaknesses.

Reply to Allen Cheng

Lance Wong 28/09/2015, 18:00:10

Hey Allen, I'm in 8th grade, looking to take SAT soon. What should I do about
reading? Everyone tells me to do wordly wise or VOCAB. What's your advise?
I want to shoot for a 2400 when I'm in 9th or 10th grade.
Thanks

Reply to Lance Wong

 Laura Sta aroni 12/10/2015, 16:37:50

Hello, Lance!

I'm not Allen (clearly), but I can still point you in the direction of some of
our articles that might be useful for you. Our article on prepping for the
SAT as an 8th grader (http://blog.prepscholar.com/should-you-start-
prepping-for-the-sat-act-in-8th-grade) has helpful tips and strategies for
test prep, while our article about what a good SAT score for an 8th
grader would be (http://blog.prepscholar.com/whats-a-good-8th-grade-
act-/-sat-score) will help you keep that score in perspective.

Finally, if you're worried about your vocabulary, I'd recommend reading

our article on the best way to study vocab for the SAT:
http://blog.prepscholar.com/the-best-way-to-study-sat-vocab-words

I hope this helps, and good luck!

Sang Joon Park 13/07/2015, 19:00:21

Hi! I read your guide and I have the biggest problem for Critical Reading. I've been
stuck on 500 for over 2 weeks of practicing. So my grade stays around an 1800.
My problem is the passages; I seem to be reading words, understanding what I just
read, but not understanding the TONE.
FOR EXAMPLE, someone could read "yeah, sure.." and understand it as a response
"yes". But he or she might not pick up the sarcasm it intended to portray.
But im being more general. I cannot understand the WHOLE tone of the passage,
getting 50% of the passage questions wrong.
On top of that, I tend to forget a lot about what I have just read, almost
like a short term memory.
I only have 3 months and a shitload of time to study, can I get a 700..?

Reply to Sang Joon Park

Laura Sta aroni 09/10/2015, 15:38:29

If you tend to have issues with remembering what you've read, I would
recommend reading the questions rst and going back to the passage question-
by-question. This way you can focus on the information you need to answer the
question, rather than reading the whole passage and then forgetting the
beginning by the time you nish the passage. We have more information on the
best ways to read the passage in SAT Reading here:
http://blog.prepscholar.com/the-best-way-to-read-the-passage-in-sat-reading
 I would also encourage you to focus in on what kinds of questions you're
missing. You've written that you have di culty with author tone questions, which
is totally understandable (it's hard to get the tone when you're reading in such a
short amount of time); however, author tone questions are only a small fraction
of the SAT Reading question types (for more on what's actually tested on SAT
Reading, go here: http://blog.prepscholar.com/whats-actually-tested-on-sat-
reading-skills).

Another article that might help you is on the best way to review your mistakes
(http://blog.prepscholar.com/the-best-way-to-review-your-mistakes-for-the-sat-
act). The rst step to improving on any part of the SAT is to gure out why you're
getting the questions wrong.

Best of luck,

Laura

Reply to Laura Staffaroni

M 19/09/2015, 05:27:01

Hi Allen. I'm very late but I really hope you answer my question as fast as possible. My
reading score is currently 550 and I just can't improve it to a 600. I don't know what
else to do. Any tips??

Reply to M
Laura Sta aroni 12/10/2015, 15:48:11

Hi, M!

I'm not Allen, but I do have a suggestion for you. Try this article on reviewing your
mistakes: http://blog.prepscholar.com/the-best-way-to-review-your-mistakes-for-
the-sat-act

The article discusses how to nd where you're messing up and how to learn from
your mistakes. Doing this could help you push your score up those last 50 points.

I hope this is helpful!

-Laura
 Reply to Laura Staffaroni

Nishaank Rawat 24/09/2015, 06:30:51

Firstly, thanks for authoring such a wonderful blog.

I have been studying a long time for the SAT. I have improved my score to an 1830 in
practice tests. However I really want to cross the 2000 mark. I only have problems in
the reading section, but no matter how many strategies I try, I am not able to get
even a 600 in Critical reading. its like, I am con dently making mistakes, without even
realizing. Please o er help. I am writing the October SAT, and need to improve my
score to 2000 in this weeks time.
Please reply by the earliest

Reply to Nishaank Rawat

Laura Sta aroni 12/10/2015, 16:03:57

Hello, Nishaank,

I'm sorry we weren't able to get to your comment before the October SAT. I hope
that it went well for you, and that you don't have to take the SAT again!

If you do end up wanting to retake the SAT, however, you might want to read our
article on how to review your mistakes for the SAT
(http://blog.prepscholar.com/how-to-get-800-on-sat-reading-10-strategies-by-a-
perfect-scorer). It shows you how to gure out where exactly you're making
mistakes and the best way to x these mistakes.

Good luck,

Laura

Reply to Laura Staffaroni

Tausif Rahman 27/09/2015, 02:51:48

Hi Allen,

I am scoring in the 2000-2100 range right now, but I would like to shoot for a 2200.
My critical reading score is the only thing that is dragging me down. I seem to always
get around 600 on my reading score. I have taken advice from many people, but my
score does not seem to improve. Do you have any advice, besides what you
discussed in this article, on how to improve my reading score?

Reply to Tausif Rahman

Laura Sta aroni 12/10/2015, 16:17:43

Hello, Tausif!

If you're looking to score 700+ on the reading test, I'd recommend reading our
"how to score an 800 on SAT Reading" article: http://blog.prepscholar.com/how-
to-get-800-on-sat-reading-10-strategies-by-a-perfect-scorer

You can also improve your reading score by nding out where you're making
mistakes and solving those problems. For more information about how to gure
out your weak areas, read this article: http://blog.prepscholar.com/the-best-way-
to-review-your-mistakes-for-the-sat-act

I hope this helps!

-Laura

Reply to Laura Staffaroni

Ranjeet Kumar 07/10/2015, 18:53:38

I usually select the wrong choice because of careless errors and I hate this. I don't
have the problem with any particular type of question. What should I do! I have the
Critical reader book (you suggest this book in one of your blogs), so can you please
help me. How I can use this book to x errors. I almost get all the question right the
critical reader book exercise but not on the actual practice test.

Reply to Ranjeet Kumar

Laura Sta aroni 09/10/2015, 20:00:19

Hi, Ranjeet,

Choosing the wrong answer because of careless errors is always frustrating. I

encourage you to go even deeper into the errors you're making - is it because
you're rushed for time? Is it because the passage is boring or confusing? Is it
because of the passage type (longer passage, shorter passage, paired passage)?
The only way to eliminate mistakes is to understand the real reasons you're
making them. For more information on how to review your mistakes, read this
 article: http://blog.prepscholar.com/the-best-way-to-review-your-mistakes-for-
the-sat-act

If you're getting almost all of the Meltzer questions right, but not the ones on the
o cial practice test, you also might be struggling with the SAT's weird question
wordings. While Meltzer is a great source for SAT Reading strategy information
and goes into great detail dissecting the di erent types of questions, the
questions she uses in the book are still not o cial SAT questions. For more
o cial SATs you can use for Reading practice, check out this article:
http://blog.prepscholar.com/free-old-o cial-sat-practice-tests

I hope this is useful!

-Laura

Reply to Laura Staffaroni

Redwan Alotmy 05/12/2015, 15:48:36

thank you very much

you really showed me the mistakes that I may fall in

Reply to Redwan Alotmy

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