I scored a 1350 on the March SAT with about 3 months of studying and my goal is to score above 1500 on the next one I take in October. What is the best way to study without getting burnt out? I see some people spending hours doing hundreds of practice problems and I’m just not sure I can stay sane while doing that.

I only spent about an hour a day using Khan Academy. I liked that site because it was like a game where you could level up for each skill you practice. I raised my score by 160 points.

Raising your score from 1350 to above a 1500 is not easy and going to take a lot of hard work. I was also worried about getting burnt out studying but making a study schedule really helped. You can use it to keep yourself on track and motivate you.

I only studied with Khan academy and the official practice tests. Spending about 10 hours a week was enough for me and I improved from 1380 to 1540.

It’s probably most effective to study every single day but honestly who has time for that. I just studied whenever I had spare time. I knew I had to improve my reading score the most so I would do like 2 or 3 reading passages when I had the time.

I think what helped me most was taking practice exams. The SAT is a study-able exam so taking practice exams really helps you know what to expect. I would only take them over the weekends because I had no time after school, so I never felt burnt out.

I strongly recommend that you take as many practice tests as possible. Print them out and then sit down and pretend you are actually taking them. Use a timer and finish them all the way through. To me, this is the best way to maximize your time spent studying. Doing one every weekend leading up to your test would make a significant difference.

It’s super easy to get burnt out studying for the SAT so take a couple practice tests and focus on the areas that you struggled with. That way you don’t have to keep repeating questions that you already understand.

Let me just start off by saying that studying for the SAT is a marathon and not a sprint. You are definitely going to fade if you start by spending a crazy number of hours doing millions of practice problems. Start off by studying for fewer hours so that you don’t lose motivation by the time the actual exam comes around. Also switch up the resources you use to study, don’t rely on just one.

Everyone knows what’s up… official practice tests, khan academy and uworld are your best friends. If you want over 1500 you have to work for it.

Understanding how to do each problem is way more important than trying to cram hundreds of practice problems in before test day. Yes, take practice tests but make sure you really study the questions you get wrong and understand why other answer choices are wrong. Purposeful studying is how you are going to see giant leaps in scores- quality over quantity.

Focus on your weaknesses and avoid doing a bunch of questions you already know how to do. Usually test prep resources let you pick a question type to work on so you don’t have to go through entire practice exams.