Self-Administering an SAT

Instructions for Self-Administering an SAT Test

1) Print out one of the College Board’s Practice SATs below. If you have limited access to printing but do have a tablet, one alternative is to look at the test booklet on your tablet’s screen. Make sure you're able to annotate the pdf in your tablet though to replicate taking notes, underlining, and working out math on a piece of paper.

2) Print out the answer sheet below.

3) Use the proctoring video, linked below, to self-administer the test. Alternatively, you can time yourself or ask someone to keep time for you.

4) Complete the test, keeping in mind the following directions:

• • All answers should be recorded on the answer sheet.

  • The test should be done in one sitting, with only small breaks between each of the four sections (Reading, Writing, Math without Calculator, and Math with Calculator).

  • Each section of the test is essentially a separate test from the rest, and the time allotted to each section should be dedicated to working exclusively on that section.

  • A calculator is allowed only for the Math with Calculator section (Section 4).

  • There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so make sure to fill in an answer to every question on the answer sheet before the time expires.

Materials

The most recent SATs should better reflect the current SAT test, and the later tests were published more recently, so Practice Test 10 should be a good place to start.

Besides the officially published College Board practice tests, we’ve also provided links to two officially administered College Baord tests that, while not having been published by the SAT, have been published by the state of Maine. While these are also recent tests (from 2018 and 2019), there are more limited free online resources discussing the questions of these tests when compared to those that have been officially published by the College Board, so the tests published by the College Board probably will present you with better learning opportunities, particularly if you’re a beginner.

Tests that have been created by the College Board but not officially published by them are called QASs. More of these QASs can be found online, but we haven’t placed links to them here due to copyright concerns. An internet search for the terms “SAT”, “QAS”, and “pdf” should yield good results, however. These QASs can also be found in online discussion boards like Reddit, where you will also find a plethora of test-prep advice.

Officially Published College Board Practice Tests

CB01 - The Strangeness of Beauty

CB02 - The Professor (Removed from Official CB Book)

CB03 - The Schartz-Metterklume Method

CB04 - The Balloonist (Removed from Official CB Book)

CB05 - US Test Administered on 2016-05 - The Folded Leaf

CB06 - Int. Test Administered on 2016-05 - Nawabdin Electrician

CB07 - US Test Administered on 2016-10 - Silas Marner

CB08 - US Test Administered on 2017-01 - The Angel's Game

CB09 - US Test Administered on 2017-10 - The Bonesetter's Daughter

CB10 - US Test Administered on 2018-10 - The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia: A Nove

Officially Released QASs

April 2019 QAS (State of Maine Released Test)

April 2019 QAS Answer Key & Scoring Guide

April 2018 QAS (State of Maine Released Test)

April 2018 QAS Answer Key & Scoring Guide

Mock Administration

Answer Sheet

Essay Answer Sheet

Proctoring Video

Scoring Instructions

1) While the SAT also contains an Essay section, this is an optional part of the Test and the Essay score is separate from your main SAT score. As it is not easy to score the essay on our own, we will skip this section altogether. This, however, is not a large omission when we consider that the Essay score is much less important than your main SAT score for college admissions purposes.

2) After you’re done with the four required sections of the test, turn a few pages to find the Answer Key, located after the essay. Using the Answer Key, count the number of correct answers for Reading (Section 1), Writing (Section 2), and the combined Math sections (Section 3 and 4). These are your raw scores.

3) Next, turn another page to find the Raw Score Conversion Table, to convert the number of correct answers into a scaled score. The Reading and Writing scores are scaled on a 10-40 range, while the Math score is scaled on a 200-800 range. Each test contains a unique Raw Score Conversion table, but using Practice Test 10, for example, 36 correct answers in each of the subscore sections would be equivalent to scaled scores of 29, 30, and 560, on Reading, Writing, and Math, respectively.

4) To get your combined Reading and Writing score, you must add your Reading scaled score and your Writing scaled score, and multiply that total by 10. Your Math scaled score is already given to you directly from the Raw Score Conversion Table. Your overall SAT score will be the sum of your Reading and Writing score and your Math score. So in the example that we gave above, where the raw score for each of the three scoring subsections was 36, the Reading and Writing score would be 590 ([29 + 30] x 10) and Math would be 560. The overall score here would be 1150 (590 +560).

5) The last pages of the printout are percentile score tables. A 1300 combined SAT score, for example, places you on the 86th percentile of test takers. This means that your scores are equal to or above those of 86% of test takers.

6) Remember that your SAT score is simply one factor weighed by college admission committees. Most of the more academically selective colleges will want applicants with an SAT score of at least 1300, however.