What's SAT Test

There are two types of SAT exams: 

· SAT General Test/ SAT-I
The general test of 3 hours and 45 minutes includes three sections of multiple choice questions:

o Writing The writing test assesses candidate’s knowledge about grammar, usage and word choice. 

o Reading It tests candidate’s capability of sentence completion, paragraph reading and reading comprehension.  

o Mathematics This test includes Basic Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Probability, Statistics and Data Analysis.

• · SAT Subject Test (Optional)/ SAT -II
  Some Universities or Colleges require or recommend SAT subject Test score with admission application form. SAT subject test is an optional test but it provides an additional opportunity to candidates to show their capabilities and knowledge about particular subject to universities and colleges. This test will be important if a candidate is applying for major in any specific subject.
   
• The SAT II is an hour test with multiple choice questions. Candidates are required to select three subjects per sitting from the list of 20 subjects like Chemistry, Physics, Social Studies, German Reading, Spanish Listening, World History, French, Mathematics, Literature, etc.

The Mathematics sections of the SAT consist 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 choices, with 20 questions.
 

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

· The shorter section is all multiple choices, with only 16 questions.

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 is 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 are 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 short reading passages as well as longer passages. Since this is a timed test, the number of questions about each passage is proportional to the length of the passage.

The writing section of the SAT includes multiple choice questions and a brief essay. 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.
 

The essay section, which is always administered as the first section of the test, is 25 minutes long. All essays must be in response to a given prompt. The prompts are broad and often philosophical and are designed to be accessible to students regardless of their educational and social backgrounds. For instance, test takers may be asked to expound on such ideas as their opinion on the value of work in human life or whether technological change also carries negative consequences to those who benefit from it. No particular essay structure is required, and the College Board accepts examples "taken from [the student's] reading, studies, experience, or observations." Two trained readers assign each essay a score between 1 and 6, where a score of 0 is reserved for essays that are blank, off-topic, non-English, not written with no. 2 pencil, or considered illegible after several attempts at reading. The scores are summed to produce a final score from 2 to 12 (or 0). If the two readers' scores differ by more than one point, then a senior third reader decides. The essay score accounts for roughly 30% of the writing score; the multiple-choice component accounts for roughly 70%.

Most of the questions on the SAT 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 choices. 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.
 

The SAT therefore recommends only making educated guesses, that is, when the test taker can eliminate at least one answer he or she thinks is wrong. Without eliminating any answers one's probability of answering correctly is 20%. Eliminating one wrong answer increases this probability to 25%; two, a 33.3% probability; three, a 50% probability of choosing the correct answer and thus earning the full point for the question.