This year’s juniors are facing a turbulently changing atmosphere when it comes to the SAT. What can they do to best prepare themselves to take this on?
The SAT has had a multitude of changes this year, so current juniors are the first to take the new version of the exam. Regardless of the changes, North is offering a SAT prep course that students can attend twice a week after school. The course has been reworked to fit the changes.
“The materials that we had been using in the past were materials that were based off of the paper and pencil test. What we did is we took all of the materials from the College Board like educator practice, and we had to remake the books, which took a long time to make, but we ended up with roughly 100 math questions and 100 English questions to be completed over eight weeks,” said math teacher and co-director of the SAT prep course Jodi Sokolowski.
The changes make it more challenging to take the test because students are the first taking that version. No one has taken the same exact version to give a good idea of what to expect. This has caused some juniors to feel more stressed about the test.
“I didn’t want it to be digital, but it’s going to be digital this year. Personally, I feel like it’s going to be harder during the online because I can’t really write on the actual test itself,” said junior Nereida Alanis.
A good resource for students taking the test this year is talking to seniors that already took the test. Even though the test is quite different, there are still many useful tips that they learned taking the SAT from time management to handling the stress and pressure of the test.
“Taking the SAT was definitely a stressful time. I did the classes at school and then I also practiced by myself. I ended up taking a lot of practice tests to make sure that I knew the format of the test and the type of questions,” said senior Jayashri Madan.
In the past, there have been days where full, timed tests were organized, similar to the PSAT taken in October, to help students get used to the feeling of sitting down and taking the test exactly like they would on the official date. They had the mandatory PSAT and practice SAT with an essay in January. On top of this, the SAT prep course hosted three full practice tests without essay on the weekends. With so few practices available in the new format, there will no longer be any practice tests held at school; however, there are still a variety of teachers who have been gathered to give students a wide range of information and prepare them for the new test.
“Take your time and don’t stress out about it because you can always retake it. It’s not like a make or break deal. At this point, you can always retake it over summer. Just make sure that you’re taking care of your mental health and not putting too much stress on that. It’s really about the studying part. So just spread out your time and don’t do it all at once, like the day before the SAT,” Madan said.
“Some of the teachers that are teaching the math sections are Mrs. Grunloh, Mrs. Iverson, Mr. DeGroh, Mrs. Carbone, and Ms. Liverant. For the English teachers, we have Ms. Burkel, Mrs. Meyer, and Mrs. Smith. Also, we have a couple social studies teachers because there’s a lot of the same rules for English. So, we have Mr. Scibbe teaching a few and there’s a new teacher, Ms. Nabbit,” Sokolowski said.
