There tend to be a large variety of factors that may be involved in why students struggle with time management on the SAT / ACT. Students may second guess themselves, have trouble with deciphering complex passages with difficult or strange verbiage, utilize algebraic strategies that involve unnecessary computations, ineffectively utilize calculators and graphing tools, or simply be used to reading more slowly. 

Regardless of what your particular issue may be, there are certain factors that may contribute to time pressure that are universal, and relevant to all students. Why? Because they’re built into the exam. Address these, and you’ll be on your way to better efficiency, higher speed, and a higher score. 

1. The SAT and ACT, especially in modules and sections that involve reading comprehension and analysis intend to overcomplicate. 

   You’re probably very familiar with passages describing papers straight out of research labs, speeches written in Old English, and poems with the most flowery and fancy wording you’ve ever heard. One thing all of these passages have in common is that they are chosen because they are more complicated than they need to be. Most of the key ideas, concepts, and messages within passages, graphs, and descriptions of research are actually SIMPLE. It’s everything else that surrounds this core idea that is complex, confusing, and misdirecting. Keep that in mind, and trust that you have the capacity to understand what they want you to. Practice reducing passages to their key ideas, and not squandering brain power on unnecessary materials. 

2. The SAT and ACT also tend to overcomplicate their writing sections.

   Sentences that are actually testing simple syntactic constructions and structures may be lengthy, full of technical jargon and information that is irrelevant to the grammatical accuracy of the sentence.

   This is a tough skill to master, and one that can backfire if you don’t do it correctly, but it is incredibly powerful. Just like in your reading passages, learn to simplify sentences to their grammatical core, and reassess the question. It will likely be much clearer. 

3. On the SAT’s math section, there are questions that are simultaneously extremely easy to solve with the Demos calculator built into Bluebook AND possible, but timely, to solve by hand.

   The student who uses Desmos and the student who does it by hand can both get the right answer, but one will save time that they can apply to the advanced questions that follow. Invest time in learning how to use Desmos and try your best to migrate from being dependent on the graphing calculator I know you’ve been using for years. It can save you key minutes on test day that can be applied to the hardest questions in the module / section. 

4. Use the Mark for Review Tool on the SAT & circle back on the ACT. 

   One key error that students may make on their standardized exams is getting stuck on particularly difficult questions. With each minute that passes on questions where you’re stuck between two answer choices, or puzzled as to what the passage even means, there are likely diminishing returns on the potential benefit to your score that you will see by spending more time. It is crucial to recognize when it is no longer worth it to spend more time on a question. Follow your gut, choose an answer, circle it or mark for review and move on!

5. Pattern Recognition and Question Pacing / Rhythm is crucial.

   Being efficient with time on standardized exams means not only being able to address the most difficult of problems in a reasonable amount of time but also answering simple questions quickly. There are cases where difficult questions may require a reasonable amount of time spent on evaluating different strategies and in these cases, the most practical method of increasing your likelihood of getting the problem correct is having enough time. This depends not on the difficult question itself, but the efficiency with which you were able to get other simpler questions correct.

   This means that you should review not only difficult problems and questions you got incorrect, but even those that you got correct that simply took too long. Tools such as Test Innovator’s practice exams record the time that you’ve taken to choose an answer to a question, and it’s a valuable, more nuanced insight into your test-taking.

6. Focus on the QUESTION.

   Not only is focusing deeply on what the question asks crucial for accuracy in choosing the correct answer on the SAT and ACT (something we can discuss later), but it is absolutely important for being able to efficiently make your way through a problem. Use the question itself - identify what it is asking for and any key phrases - to effectively frame your reading of the passage. In conjunction with Tip #1 and Tip #2, can help you in zooming in on what is important, and not wasting time on what is not.

7. Assess the ANSWERS.

   The answer is always in the answers. The criteria by which we choose the correct choice must be, by the very structure inherent to a multiple-choice exam, written into the potential answer choices. If you find that you have no idea what a question is asking or a passage is saying, first look at how the answer choices are structured. In math and writing this is particularly apparent - how are answer choices presented? Are there fractions or exponents? What terms are being used? Secondly, look at what differs among the answers. In every single question, all that separates the correct answer from the incorrect one is a key difference in what is presents that corresponds with the criteria the question poses.

You got this.

Keep practicing, speed and fluency comes with more awareness and encounters with the patterns on these standardized exams!

- Johann