The SAT takes three hours and consists of three tests: (1) the Reading Test, (2) the Writing and Language Test, and (3) the Math Test. Compared to the ACT®, the SAT provides 43% more time per question:

Component	Time Allotted (minutes)	Number of Questions/Tasks
Reading	65	52
Writing and Language	35	44
Math	80	58
Total	180	154

Most of the questions are multiple choice, though some of the math questions ask you to write in the answer rather than select it.

On all questions, there’s no penalty for guessing: if you’re not sure of the answer, it’s better to guess than leave the response blank.

The Reading Test

Familiarize yourself with the SAT Reading Test so you can prepare for test day.

The SAT Reading Test: Overview

The Reading Test presents five reading passages followed by multiple-choice questions about each passage. You have 65 minutes to complete this test, which includes 52 questions total.

What the Reading Test Passages Are Like

The five passages on the Reading Test include four standalone passages and one pair of passages that you read together. The standalone passages and the paired set are each 500–750 words. The passages are drawn from the following types of documents:

1 literary passage from a work of fiction.
1 or 2 passages from a U.S. founding document or a text in the Great Global Conversation they inspired. An example of a founding document would be the U.S. Constitution. The Great Global Conversation refers to works from around the world that focus on topics such as freedom, justice, or human dignity. A speech by Nelson Mandela would be an example.
1 passage from a work of economics, psychology, sociology, or some other social science.
2 passages from scientific works that examine foundational concepts and developments in Earth science, biology, chemistry, or physics.

What the Reading Test Questions Are Like

The questions on the reading test fall into three broad categories:

1. How the Author Uses Evidence

Some questions ask you to show that you understand how an author is using evidence to support a claim. Questions like this might ask you to:

Identify the part of a passage that supports a point the author is making.
Find evidence in a passage that best supports the answer to a previous question.
Find a relationship between an informational graphic and the passage it’s paired with.

2. Understanding Words in Context

Many of the questions on the Reading Test ask you to identify the meaning of a word in context. The “in context” part is important: the questions ask you to use context clues in a passage to figure out which meaning of a word or phrase is being used. Other questions will ask you to decide how an author’s choice of words shapes meaning, style, and tone.

3. Analysis in History/Social Studies and in Science

The Reading Test includes passages in the fields of history, social studies, and science. You’ll be asked questions that require you to draw on the reading skills needed most to succeed in those subjects. For instance, you might read about an experiment and then see questions that ask you to:

Examine hypotheses.
Interpret data.
Consider implications.

The answers are based only on the content stated in or implied by the passage, not your prior knowledge of the subject.

SAT Vocabulary

You don’t need to learn a lot of unusual or difficult vocabulary words to succeed on the SAT. Instead, the words you’ll be asked about are words that come up often in college-level reading and professional life.

The SAT also doesn’t ask you to supply the definition of a word without any context to guide you. All of the words you’ll be asked about will appear in the context of reading passages, so you can use context clues to guide you to the best answer.

That said, it’s worthwhile to take the time to build your vocabulary by learning the meaning and usage of the words that appear most often in college-level assignments. If you do, you’ll have a much easier time with the test because you won’t have to spend time guessing from context clues what a word might mean. Your sight recognition of vocabulary words will help you read passages faster and with greater confidence.

You should also practice identifying the meaning of words in context with Official SAT Practice on Khan Academy®.

The Writing and Language Test

The Writing and Language test is a multiple-choice test in which you read passages and find and fix mistakes and weaknesses.

This part of the SAT is 35 minutes long, includes 4 passages, and contains 44 multiple-choice questions.

What the Writing and Language Test Passages Are Like

The 4 passages on the test are each 400–450 words. The complexity of the passages varies: some are more challenging and others more straightforward.

The passages are about a variety of topics, including careers, science, the humanities, and history and social studies.

The purpose and format of each passage varies:

At least 1 is a narrative, meaning it describes events in a story like way. This passage is not a work of fiction, but it could be a nonfiction account of an historical event, or it might describe the sequence of events in a scientific experiment.
The other passages are either argumentative, meaning they try to convince or persuade the reader of something, or else informative and explanatory.

Some of the passages contain charts, graphs, or infographics that you interpret together with the written part of the passage.

What the Writing and Language Test Questions Are Like

Each passage has 11 multiple-choice questions.

The questions fall into two main types: those where you improve the expression of ideas, and those where you have to recognize and correct errors in sentence structure, grammar, usage, and punctuation.

Expression of Ideas

These questions ask you to improve the substance and quality of the writer’s message. They can be divided into three kinds:

Development questions are about main ideas (topic sentences and thesis statements), supporting details, focus, and quantitative information in tables, graphs, and charts.
Organization questions focus on logical sequence and placement of information and ideas as well as effective introductions, conclusions, and transitions.
Effective Language Use questions ask you to improve precision and eliminate wordiness, consider style and tone, and combine sentences to improve flow and to achieve particular rhetorical effects (such as emphasizing one point over another).

Standard English Conventions

These questions focus on recognizing and correcting grammar, usage, and mechanics problems in passages. These questions ask you to recognize and correct errors in sentence structure (like run-on or incomplete sentences), usage (like lack of subject-verb or pronoun-antecedent agreement), and punctuation (like missing or unnecessary commas).

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