Whether you’re short on time or short on energy, chances are you’ve chosen to read this post because you simply don't have much capacity to learn new content for the SAT at the moment.
That’s why this article is going to help you quickly raise your Digital SAT score…exclusively by tweaking how you approach the test, not by cramming new facts into your brain.
Come with me, friend, to the land of low-hanging points.
Article Contents
1. Video version of this article
2. One overall strategy that works for the whole test
a. English-to-math “translations”
c. For Coordinate Geometry Qs, use the built-in calculator
d. If you're not sure how to solve a problem, follow the answers
e. Write out the formulas for Work, Distance, & Average problems
4. Reading and Writing strategies
a. Read the question stems first
b. For Sentence Completion questions, skip the answers (at first)
c. How to answer Claims questions quickly
d. Learn a small handful of high-impact punctuation rules
e. How to answer "Research Notes" SAT problems
5. Conclusion
Watch this article as a video:
Easy overall strategy for the DSAT
Before we dive into individual hacks for the Math and Reading & Writing sections, I'm going to first give you a general strategy that is helpful throughout the WHOLE test.
This strategy concerns the best way to guess.
Because the ugly truth is: the Digital SAT is designed to be moved through at warp-speed, and that’s just hard to do without sacrificing accuracy. So you may occasionally run out of time.
Alternately, sometimes you flip to a new problem…and simply draw a blank as to how to solve it. Maybe you can’t make ANY sense of what the given passage is saying, or you haven’t a clue how to go about solving a certain math topic because you've never encountered that topic before.
Since you’re not penalized for guessing on the SAT, it’s definitely better to at least select an answer than to leave those questions blank. But which answers should you select? Should you go about it totally randomly?
For the SAT questions that are multiple-choice (which is all Reading and Writing questions, and about 75% of Math questions), you're going to pick a letter. Doesn’t matter which one; doesn’t matter if you’ve used it as your guessing letter on past tests. Just choose A, B, C, or D, and stay with it EVERY time you’re forced to guess at that test sitting.
Now you're probably asking, “Well, what about those 11 student-produced response math questions? The ones where I actually have to type in my answer?”
Well, if you have time and a bit of relevant knowledge to carry out the problem, of course you’re going to do your calculations and give it your best shot. But if it's one of those cases where you have literally NO time or NO relevant background with the subject….
The best guess for you is going to be a single-digit integer. That means a number between 0 and 9. Now, as you may have guessed (see what I did there?), your chances of randomly picking the correct answer will still be mighty slim. But my extensive experience with the test indicates that they'll be way LESS slim than if you were to pick 7.56 or another non-integer number like that.
No-Study SAT Math Tricks
Now for your subject-specific strategies. Let’s start with math!
English-to-math "translations"
What’s the biggest intervention you can make into your Math score that won’t require any further studying after you read this blog post?
In my decades-long experience, it’s understanding translations—specifically, how to translate English (words) into Math (equations).
Chances are that many of these already exist somewhere deep in your brain, but once you actually memorize the quick way of thinking about them, they’ll be instantly available—which will save you a ton of time with any word problem you encounter. In fact, the resulting sentence will often literally solve the problem for you.
Let’s talk about the heavy-hitters that most students don't know.
Of: means multiply. Always, forever, every time you encounter it in a word problem.
Per: means divide. (Always, forever, etc.)
What or how much or a number, or a quantity, some unknown thing like that: that’s your variable (x, m, y, k, whatever you want your variable to be).
Is, are, was, were, and other forms of to be OR to have in any tense: means the equals sign.
Now let's put a few of these together in a small example.
When I encounter the word “percent,” well, that's really the word per, and then the word cent, which (if you've taken a Romance language or Latin), you’ll know means a hundred, right? So percent literally means divided by a hundred.
So, when I get to a statement like “What percent,” that literally means “x percent”—so, “divided by a hundred,” which becomes “x over one hundred.”
Making these quick translations saves you time and accuracy.
Easy percents
That example we just discussed makes a good segue to my second math trick. Because once you’ve got certain English-to-Math translations under your belt, solving percentage problems is a breeze.
For instance, if you get an SAT math question that asks, “What is 35% of 60?” You can literally translate it word for word, in order, reading from left to right:
what is = X equals
35 per cent = 35 divided by 100
of = times
60 = 60
Now I can literally solve it: X is 35 percent of 60?
X = 35 / 100 * 60.
By simply translating word for word, you no longer have to think about what percents mean. You can simply translate them bit by bit, solve for the variable, and you're done.
For Coordinate Geometry Qs, use the built-in calculator
My next piece of advice for the SAT Math section: if you are dealing with a coordinate geometry question, use the Desmos calculator that appears automatically in Bluebook as you’re taking the test.
These questions are the ones that show you what something looks like on the XY Cartesian plane (or the “rectangular plane”), and asks you to solve the relevant equations. Maybe it's two lines together, maybe it's a line with a parabola, or maybe it’s some combination of those things.
And what’s nice about the Digital SAT (as opposed to the discontinued, paper-based version) is that you get a built-in calculator that makes these types of Qs a lot easier.
So, in your Desmos calculator, you’ll see “Y =,” and the moment you type in the rest, the calculator immediately graphs it for you. That already does a lot of the work for you. So, when you're trying to find how many solutions or figure out exactly what the X, Y coordinate point of the solution is, just use your Desmos.
Now, there’s one case where you might not want to use the Desmos: on a system of equations written out in standard form. By that, I mean that both equations are NOT written in the form of y = but rather something like y + 2x = 7. In that case the SAT’s built-in calculator might not be the best tool. You could instead use the elimination technique, where you see if you can subtract one equation from the other, and if a variable cancels out.
Don't know how to solve a problem? Follow the answers
Let's say that you arrive at a certain math problem…and you're totally bamboozled. You haven’t the faintest idea how to solve this question. Well, another beautiful thing about the SAT becoming Digital is that the Bluebook app lets you easily flag that question and move on. Since every single question is worth as many points as every other question, it’s not worth wasting your time on a really tough question.
So that's the first part of this strategy: don't spend more than a few seconds on a problem that makes you draw a true blank about how you should even go ABOUT solving it.
This approach frees you up to then keep moving through the module. Let’s say that you do so, and manage to finish—as in, you’ve solved all the problems that you know how to solve the moment you set eyes on them. And—yippee!—it turns out you’ve still got time to spare. Now is when you go back through the test and answer those flagged questions.
Let’s say you return to some of those flagged questions….and STILL don't know how to do them. It wasn’t just a momentary brain blip—you’re still totally in the dark.
In that case, what you're going to do is one of my favorite strategies for problem solving—one that I also talk about in my online SAT math course. It's called following the answers.
What do I mean by that? Well, if you have a multiple-choice math question, consider what the answer choices LOOK like—i.e., what format they’re in. Then, ask yourself, “What's one thing I can do to the equation or the numbers I was given to make it/them look one step closer to my answers?”
Are your answer choices all decimals? Are they fractions? Well, try to figure out how to make the numbers or expression you’ve been given into a fraction or a decimal. Do the answer choices have b² in their denominators? Okay, maybe you can divide both sides of the provided equation by b². Or, maybe you need to square both sides of things so that the regular b becomes b². You get the idea.
Once you’ve done this, it will often inspire another thought about what the next step is. Basically, what you're doing is looking for clues in the answer choices and literally thinking, hmm, how can I make what the question has given me more closely resemble the answer selections?
Work, Distance, Average problems: write out the formulas
Let's say the test throws you one of these types of problem:
Qs about averages/means
Qs about distance (as in: “I'm traveling 40 MPH on a train. How long does it take to travel 5 miles?”)
Qs about work
In all three cases, what you are going to do involves your piece of scratch paper (one of the key items that I still recommend my students bring with them to Test Day, despite the fact that the SAT is now completely digital)! And before you even start thinking about HOW you solve the problem, you are going to quickly jot down the relevant formula in its most basic form.
So for averages, you're literally writing down average = total / number of things.
(Personally, my preferred version of this is actually total = average * number of things, which is what you get if you cross-multiply the above.)
You're literally just jotting it down before you even start to THINK about what you're doing in the problem. If it's a distance problem, you're literally going to write down distance = rate * time. And if it's a work problem, you're going to write down work = rate * time.
Now the reason that I want you to actually write these out is because with average, distance, and work problems, I’ve noticed that almost every student out there tends to overcomplicate the problem as they try to solve it.
But in actuality, there are only three variables. You were probably given two of them. Therefore, you need to find out what the third one is because that's either the answer…or a step that you need in order to THEN find out the answer.
Cross-multiply fractions on the SAT
If you see any sort of equation and it has a fraction in it, please, I implore you, cross-multiply before you do anything else.
Doesn't matter if it's a single fraction equal to a number, or if it's a fraction equal to another fraction. Just cross-multiply and watch your life get SO much simpler. Then figure out what your next step is.
Related to that is my last mini-tip: if you see a bunch of fractions in an equation or you have a bunch of decimals in an equation, think about multiplying out the fraction or multiplying out the decimal.
If you have a bunch of fractions, what's the least common denominator of all of them? Can you multiply those fractions by a least common denominator—and thus change your whole equation from fractions into integers, which are usually easier to work with?
Same with decimals. If everything is like 0.23x + 0.48 = 1.97, or something like that, you can see that if you were to multiply each of those by 100, you’d get to move the decimal two places to the right—and thus no longer have decimals, but integers. Again, way easier!
That’s it for Math section tips. And by the way, I go WAY more into detail for each of these hacks in my online course and ebook, “The Ultimate Guide to DSAT Math.”
Reading & Writing SAT Shortcuts
Now let's proceed to the Digital SAT’s Reading and Writing section.
Read the question stems first
My first piece of wisdom for this section is that for MOST (though not all) of the questions in these modules, you should initially skip the text that you’re being asked about and read the question stem first.
Without getting too into the weeds about why this is, and the handful of questions this doesn’t apply to (you can check out my fully online Ultimate Reading and Writing guide to the Digital SAT if you want to know more), this strategy will save you a bunch of time on MOST of this section’s questions.
You’ll find the question stem on the right side of Bluebook, right above the four multiple choice answers:
Knowing what you’re looking for BEFORE you read the passage will save you so much reading and re-reading of the passage.
For sentence completion questions, skip the answers (at first)
My second quick way to improve your R&W score has to do with sentence completion questions. These are the questions that occur at the very beginning of each module. The test will provide a sentence or two that includes a blank, and you’re asked to fill it in with the word that makes the most sense.
These might at first seem like vocab questions. And they sort of are. However, that’s not the full story, because most of these problems involve words that you already know—it's just that maybe you know different definitions of those words. So, my tip here is that when you are reading a question like this and encounter a blank, keep reading. Do not look at the answer choices yet.
Instead, after you finish reading the two or three sentences you’ve been given, you are going to jot down (again, on your handy piece of scratch paper) the word or short phrase that you would put there to make the whole sentence make sense. It doesn't have to be a complicated, four-syllable “SAT” word. On the contrary—you want to make sure it’s very comprehensible to you. It just needs to be a very clear description of the sentiment that you think should fill that blank.
Then, once you've written that down, you can finally go ahead and look at your answer choices. Now your task is to ask yourself, “Do any of these words match what I wrote?” If they do, then you have your answer right there. If not, there are other strategies you can use. (My Digital SAT R&W guide spells them out.)
Either way, you’ve avoided second-guessing yourself about what the blank should say by reading four different possible answers and talking yourself into one of them that isn’t correct because, well, it sort of works.
How to answer Claims questions quickly
My next pointer for the Reading and Writing section involves questions that I lovingly call “Claims questions.” They tend to fall somewhere in the middle of the modules. You'll know you’re looking at a Claims question when you see a passage (often with an accompanying bar graph, chart, or table), and you’re asked to:
to strengthen the passage’s argument;
to weaken its argument;
what example would illustrate the passage’s claim;
what example would illustrate the passage’s conclusion;
or something similar.
Here’s how you’re going to proceed.
1. Read the question stem first. Before you spend any of your precious time reading the passage, you want to know whether you’re looking to strengthen, weaken, or illustrate that passage with an example.
2. Read the text, but with an eye towards determining what the claim is. By that, I mean this: what is the main conclusion or thing that the author is trying to prove in that little chunk of text?
3. Once you’ve identified that claim, you can return to what the question is asking you to do WITH that claim. What evidence would support that author’s primary argument? Or, what would put pressure on their theory? Or, what would be a specific example that would illustrate their main conclusion?
This method increases the accuracy AND speed with which you answer Claims Qs. That’s because you only have to read the text once…and you can say very focused as you do so.
Which punctuation rules to know for the SAT English section
My fourth R&W insight does require that you study some content. But I include it in this low-time-commitment-tips post because you can learn it relatively quickly—and once you know it, you will always get these questions right.
What’s this magical “it,” you ask? Well, I want you to know your punctuation rules.
Why? Because punctuation is the single most tested grammar topic that you will find on the DSAT. As a rough guesstimate, I’d say that punctuation accounts for ~75% of all grammar questions on the test!
Now, I include the full set of punctuation rules that the SAT tests on my four-page punctuation cheat sheet. (You can own that when you purchase my Reading & Writing section guide for the Digital SAT.) But for now, I’m going to share with you a few heavy hitters that confuse many students.
Note: in the below punctuation rules,
“Complete” = “complete clause, aka independent clause”;
FANBOYS = the conjunctions For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So
And here are some of the most-tested rules:
Complete, complete. ❌ (This is called a comma splice.)
Complete, FANBOYS complete. ✅
Complete; FANBOYS complete. ❌
Complete; complete. ✅
Complete; transition, complete. ✅
If you struggled with grammar Qs before, there’s a good chance that memorizing just these rules will help you get three or four more questions right! Did someone say “points, please?”
How to answer Research Notes SAT problems
The last SAT question type I want to talk about in this post is what I call the “Research Notes” question. These are going to be the very last questions you encounter in each of the Reading and Writing modules.
There are three ways you’ll be able to recognize this genre of question:
They come last in a given module.
They have telltale bullet points.
They’ll always begin with lead-in text along the lines of, “A student made the following research notes about X, Y, Z topic” before proceeding to a bulleted list of facts that the student has discovered.
Then, after all that other text, you’ll see the question itself.
Here's how you answer these in a way that saves time, keeps your eye on the prize, and gets the answer right.
1. Your first move will be one you’re already nice and familiar with by this point in the post: before consulting the bulleted research notes, you’re going to read the question stem. I know I’ve said this a few times already in this post, but this step is especially important with this type of Q because every single “research notes” question asks something very different. One might ask you about the two ways that jellyfish procure their prey. And then another question might ask about which answer option introduces an author with a strong emphasis on her critical reception.
2. Now it’s time to go back and actually read the notes—yup, you guessed it—with a keen focus on the question.
3. Then you’re going to look at your answer options. The correct answer choice is going to have three qualities:
a. It's going to be grammatically correct.
b. It's going to be true according to the bullet points in the research notes. You might not think it's true, but that doesn’t matter—all that matters is that what the student wrote down in their research notes is true.
c. It is going to directly carry out the very specific task you were asked about. Think of it as a game of Simon Says. It doesn't matter what you would have written in a perfect world. It's what they asked me to talk about in the introductory sentence—say, the artist’s background.
Once you’ve found the option that checks all three of those boxes, that’s all, folks! You can select that answer and move on.
Conclusion
I’m so excited to hear about how high your score climbed after implementing these tricks!
If you’re looking for way more detail about how to drastically raise your Digital SAT Reading Writing score, check out my free webinar: The Three Biggest Mistakes to Avoid in the Digital SAT’s Reading Writing section (and, of course, how to fix them!).
Or if you prefer personalized help, I also offer one-on-one SAT and ACT tutoring sessions.
