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The SAT Reasoning Test is the most common standardized test required by colleges and universities in the United States. It is administered by the College Board, a not-for-profit membership association based in New York. The latest incarnation of the test debuted in 2005 and made the test longer by including an essay, longer and more reading passages, and grammar questions (high school students around the country have yet to rejoice the changes…).
The test is comprised of 10 sections which are scheduled to take 3 hours and 45 minutes (hey, that’s longer than it takes to run a marathon!). Check-in procedures, directions, and break time add another hour or so. The College Board recommends that you plan on spending 5 hours of your Saturday on the test. The scores for each section on the test can range from 200 to 800, with possible combined scores of 600 to 2400.
Critical Reading section (Sentence Completion & Passage-based Reading)
- Two 25-minute sections
- One 20-minute section
Mathematics section (Multiple-choice & Student-produced responses)
- Two 25-minute sections
- One 20-minute section
Writing section
- One 25-minute essay (always the first section)
- One 25-minute section
- One 10-minute section (always the last section)
Experimental section
This section is included along with the other sections and could be a Critical Reading, Mathematics, or Writing section. It is not counted towards the final score on the test, but neither is it flagged, so there is no way of knowing which section will not count towards that final score. The College Board uses the date from the Experimental section for research purposes and uses these questions on future tests (after a few years, when they can be sure that students will have long graduated from high school with no chance that they’ll take a test with the same questions).
One Last Word about our classes
You will find the most current schedule of classes on our Schedule page. For most classes, many different sessions are available:
New Classes: these courses are designed for students who have not taken classes with College Prep.
Continuing Classes: these courses are designed for students who have taken courses with College Prep and now want to brush up on their skills before taking the actual test.
Testing Class: these courses are designed for students who simply want to take practice tests before the real deal. Students take full tests in the morning under test-taking conditions, and instructors will go over the tests in the afternoon.
Critical Reading
College Prep's Critical Reading Program is based on a focused approach to learning vocabulary and critical reading. Students are given new words to learn and work constantly with these words through drills, sentences, word origins (roots, prefixes & suffixes), reviews, quizzes, and tests. Students are also encouraged to use their newly learned words in their school setting, thereby making the words "their own." Instructors constantly emphasize that the words presented in class are not only "SAT words," but useful tools with which to express their own ideas more effectively.
The critical reading section of the class is focused on helping students learn the skills of critical thinking. Students work with a myriad of articles which they break down, analyze, and discuss. Instructors take the students through the process of realizing what they already know, understanding new information, and demonstrating that understanding through answers to questions.
Writing
The writing portion of the course will lead students in a basic review of English grammar such as parts of speech, agreement, and parallelism as they  relate to the tests.
The course includes practice with essay writing that will prepare students for the essay portion of the test. After lectures and exercises, students will also practice by taking timed tests that contain questions similar to those that appear on the test, including essay writing, identifying sentence errors, and improving sentences and paragraphs.
Mathematics
College Prep's program begins to build the knowledge foundation by teaching students the concepts they need to know in Geometry (such as triangles, quadrilaterals, circles) and Algebra (such as percentage, ratio, fractions). Once the students are secure in their knowledge of the mathematical basics, the course emphasizes the application of these concepts in solving SAT Reasoning Test (SAT I)/PSAT problems by practicing with questions similar to those that appear in the real tests.
Our program will reflect changes proposed by the College Board by incorporating advanced math concepts such as fractional exponents, absolute values, and function notations. After the March 2005 test, we will also adapt to the format changes in the new SAT Reasoning Test (SAT I) and PSAT by eliminating quantitative comparison questions and providing more multiple choice and free response ("grid-in") problems.
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