Any experiences test takers know how I can get full score on the Math SAT?

Question

Eh, today I took the "practice" math SAT and I think I'm going to get 770 out of 800 (one of the problems I'm not sure if I did get it wrong or not, but I just realized I made a mistake on another).

I don't really have much problem doing the math and understanding word problems, but I find myself making a LOT of mistakes. Usually, on a test I rarely ever make arithmetic mistakes, but there are some cases where I forget to change inches to feet, finding an answer to something else, or leaving out an important factor. Rare cases include arithmetic mistakes (as I have mentioned before), assuming a number must be an integer (this happened for this test. FIRST TIME!), algebraic mistakes.

Is there a way to notice these mistakes?

This time I managed to so luckily find a mistake on a problem where I forgot to add on the missing minute I took away, but this is probably the 2nd time of my life I found a mistake.

How can I avoid these mistakes?

Never got 800 on these tests before!!!

Answer 1

It's tough to cut back on silly errors on the math section of the SAT if you are prone to making them simply because there is not a whole lot of time to check your work. A couple of your concerns (conversions, finding answer to something else, neglecting some factor) can be avoided by taking a couple extra seconds to read the problems through slowly and carefully (and in the cases of word problems maybe read them through twice).

To avoid arithmetic mistakes you could (a) check your work once you finish the problems or (b) occasionally do the arithmetic in 2 ways (i.e. if you are summing 113+228+459, compute it in two different orders). Here option (a) is only reasonable if you go through the problems very quickly (5+ minutes left over). Otherwise you may just want to look back at the ones that were more difficult. I usually tried to do option (b) in my head on these questions. In general I find I make less mistakes when I go through the problems at a slightly slower pace than I could. Good luck and I'm sure it's simply a matter of time before you notch an 800!

Answer 2

Although I haven't taken the Math SAT, my friend has told me that only a perfect score can get you an 800. IE you're very close to an 800 :-)

I have similar problems in math. For conversions... usually, I have to take a moment and ask myself what units my number need to be in for the math to work, and then afterwards I try to remember to make sure they're in the unit the question asked for. And as for forgetting things... usually I have to rely on my gut for these things, though it doesn't always work. Sometimes, when I look at a problem, something doesn't look right, and after further investigation I can see I missed something. But this doesn't always work for me.

Answer 3

Basically what you should do is finish the math parts with enough time to do the entire section over again. Doing the question more than once sometimes makes you notice mistakes, but I think that in the math sections it's hard to finish with a lot of time to spare. Another easy thing to do is once you've found the answer, reread the question until you're positive it fits. Hope this helps

Answer 4

My experience has nothing to do with the SAT because that's seems to me its an American thing.  But when I've written tests I do every problem all over again, rather then look over each question because I never find my mistakes like that.  However, your mistakes seem like they are not only arithmetical , but making assumptions which aren't right - now those are harder to find because they're not written on your paper.  The only thing I could recommend is reading the question many times before actually solving it, but I'd find it hard to stop doing those type of mistakes to be honest.

Hope this helps!