STUDY SMART TUTORS
A SMART START
Welcome to the start of your SAT mastery! It might sound a bit counterintuitive, but the best place to start is to ask yourself what you want in the end.
What do you want on the SAT?
Many students say nebulous things like, “I want a good score.”
“a high score” “to not fail” “1600” “whatever”
But what is good ? What is high ? What is failing ? 1 Those goals are not specific and thus not smart goals. Now, 1600 is not nebulous at all—it’s very specific. But is it a smart goal? Well, that depends.
Whatever is actually a great goal! 2 You’re destined to succeed!
Anyway … to be successful at anything requires a plan. The SAT is no different. That’s why we recommend the SMART goals framework.
S pecific M easurable A chievable R elevant T ime-bound
Now, let’s apply this framework to your SAT preparation with an example.
S pecific
I want a 1400.
“What’s wrong with that? That’s specific.” “Not specific enough.”
Specifically (pun intended), the question you need to answer is not what score do you want; it’s how many points do you need to get the score that you want? Do you need 100 points? 200? Let’s say it’s 200. Is it an even split? 100 more points in Math and 100 more points in Reading/Writing? When it comes to the SAT, your specific goal should be the score improvement , not the actual score.
“I want 80 points in Math and 70 points in Reading/Writing.” ✓
1 You can’t “fail” the SAT (at least not in the traditional sense). 2 This is known as sarcasm .
2
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