SAT is a compulsory test to secure admission in any undergraduate program of any college of United state of America. This test is developed, managed and administered by College Entrance Examination Board, based in USA. SAT is prepared and scored by the Educational Testing Service. It is an approximately 4 hour long test. There are two types of SAT tests namely, SAT Reasoning Test and SAT Subject Tests.

SAT Reasoning test- Verbal, Mathematical and Reasoning skills-3 hours, 20 minutes

SAT Subject Tests- Assesses knowledge of a specific subject- 1 hour

SAT Test Format

SAT Reasoning Test Format:

Critical Reading- Sentence completions, reading comprehension, and paragraph-length critical reading- score 200-800- Time 70 minutes (25 +25+20 minutes)

Writing- Grammar, usage, and word choice ( multiple choice and student written essay)- score-200-800- Time-60 minutes

(25+25+10 minutes)

Mathematics- Algebra and functions; statistics, probability, and data analysis; number and operations; geometry- score-200-800- Time 70 minutes (25 +25+20 minutes)

Critical Reading, Mathematics, and Writing. Each section receives a score on the scale of 200-800. All scores are multiples of 10. Total scores are calculated by adding up scores of the three sections. Each major section is divided into three parts. There are 10 sub-sections, including an additional 25-minute experimental or "equating" section that may be in any of the three major sections. The experimental section is used to normalize questions for future administrations of the SAT and does not count toward the final score. The test contains 3 hours and 45 minutes of actual timed sections, although most administrations, including orientation, distribution of materials, completion of biographical sections, and eleven minutes of timed breaks, run about four and a half hours long. The questions range from easy, medium, and hard depending on the scoring from the experimental sections. Easier questions typically appear closer to the beginning of the section while harder questions are towards the end in certain sections. This is not true for every section but it is the rule of thumb mainly for math and sentence completions and vocabulary.

Critical Reading

The Critical Reading, formerly verbal, section of the SAT is made up of three scored sections, two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section, with varying types of questions, including sentence completions and questions about short and long reading passages. Critical Reading sections normally begin with 5 to 8 sentence completion questions; the remainder of the questions are focused on the reading passages. Sentence completions generally test the student's vocabulary and understanding of sentence structure and organization by requiring the student to select one or two words that best complete a given sentence. The bulk of the Critical Reading questions is made up of questions regarding reading passages, in which students read short excerpts on social sciences, humanities, physical sciences, or personal narratives and answer questions based on the passage. Certain sections contain passages asking the student to compare two related passages; generally, these consist of shorter reading passages. The number of questions about each passage is proportional to the length of the passage. Unlike in the Mathematics section, where questions go in the order of difficulty, questions in the Critical Reading section go in the order of the difficulty of the passage. Overall, question sets towards the beginning of the section are easier, and question sets towards the end of the section are harder..

Mathematics

The Mathematics section of the SAT is widely known as the Quantitative Section or Calculation Section. The mathematics section consists of three scored sections. There are two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section, as follows:

One of the 25-minute sections is entirely multiple choice, with 20 questions.

The other 25-minute section contains 8 multiple choice questions and 10 grid-in questions.

The 20-minute section is all multiple choice, with 16 questions.

Notably, the SAT has done away with quantitative comparison questions on the math section, leaving only questions with straightforwardsymbolic or numerical answers. Since the quantitative comparison questions were well-known for their deceptive nature-often turning on the student's recognition of a single exception to a rule or pattern-this choice has been equated to a philosophical shift away from "trickery" and toward "straight math" on the SAT[citation needed]. Also, many test experts[who?] have attributed this change, like the addition of the new writing section, to an attempt to make the SAT more like the ACT.

Writing

The writing section of the SAT, based on but not directly comparable to the old SAT II subject test in writing, includes multiple choice questions and a brief essay. The essay subscore contributes about 30% towards the total writing score, with the multiple choice questions contributing 70%. This section was implemented in March 2005 following complaints from colleges about the lack of uniform examples of a student's writing ability.

The multiple choice questions include error identification questions, sentence improvement questions, and paragraph improvement questions. Error identification and sentence improvement questions test the student's knowledge of grammar, presenting an awkward or grammatically incorrect sentence; in the error identification section, the student must locate the word producing the source of the error or indicate that the sentence has no error, while the sentence improvement section requires the student to select an acceptable fix to the awkward sentence. The paragraph improvement questions test the student's understanding of logical organization of ideas, presenting a poorly written student essay and asking a series of questions as to what changes might be made to best improve it.

SAT Subject Test Format:

SAT subject test can be divided into 5 general areas - English, History and Social Studies, Mathematics, Science, and Languages.

A college may require one or more of the subject tests for the purpose of admission and placement. SAT subject test consists of multiple choice questions.

It should be noted that there are some subjects for which questions are asked in a unique pattern.

SAT Eligibility Criteria

There are no eligibility criteria for SAT. You can take it during your Class XI or even after the XII boards. Just keep your college application deadlines in mind as admission decisions are largely dependent on SAT scores (along with GPA, transcript, recommendations, etc.).

Style of questions

Most of the questions on the SAT, except for the essay and the grid-in math responses, are multiple choice; all multiple-choice questions have five answer choices, one of which is correct. The questions of each section of the same type are generally ordered by difficulty. However, an important exception exists: Questions that follow the long and short reading passages are organized chronologically, rather than by difficulty. Ten of the questions in one of the math sub-sections are not multiple choice. They instead require the test taker to bubble in a number in a four-column grid.

The questions are weighted equally. For each correct answer, one raw point is added. For each incorrect answer one-fourth of a point is deducted. No points are deducted for incorrect math grid-in questions. This ensures that a student's mathematically expected gain from guessing is zero. The final score is derived from the raw score; the precise conversion chart varies between test administrations.

स्कॉलिस्टिक एप्टीट्यूड टेस्ट (SAT)

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