Welcome back to another installment of Tricks of the Trade, where we give you a behind-the-scenes tour of all things test prep. Today we’ll be covering a common obstacle in SAT Math: quickly understanding and breaking down long, wordy problems.
In the latest redesign of the SAT, the test-makers have placed significant importance on context, opting to include real-world situations that ask test-takers to draw conclusions and identify key information. This means that you’ll need to filter out what’s not important in the search for keywords and context clues. Imagine you’re a prospector from the 1800s panning for gold in a stream. Every time you scoop up a pan of dirt, you’ve got to look closely and ignore all the rocks and mud as you search for those shiny little nuggets.
In many ways, standardized tests are the same, though the nuggets you’re looking for are made of words and meanings instead of gold.
Here’s an example of a classic SAT Math word problem (yes, that’s a math problem and not a reading passage):
Where to start on a problem like this? Let’s do an initial read-through, making sure to flag key information as we go. This way, when we look back to gather details and write an equation, we won’t have to read all the extra information again.
In the case of this question, the first few lines are all “setup.” Though they are explaining the context, there are no important numbers or details here. However, in the final sentence of the paragraph we see that the bank uses a daily foreign exchange rate and charges a 4% fee on each foreign transaction. Underline or circle that information so it’s easy to find later!
Now let’s move on to the second paragraph.
In this paragraph we meet Sara, who is probably a very interesting person, though we couldn’t care less. We just want to see some numbers, and we find those in the second sentence: a purchase of 602 Indian rupees. We also flag the $9.88 charge, noting that this number includes the 4% fee that was also mentioned in Paragraph 1.
Almost to the end!
The final paragraph is where we find our question, and we underline that as well. The question wants us to calculate the foreign exchange rate (the phrase we underlined in Paragraph 1) and round to the nearest whole number. It’s very important to underline phrases like “nearest whole number,” because gridding in a decimal will not get you the point for this problem, even if you’ve done the math completely right otherwise.
Let’s take a quick look back at our markup. Out of multiple paragraphs we’ve identified the important information, and now we just need to put the pieces together. We can start by working backward to remove the 4% fee from Sara’s total:
1.04d = 9.88
When we divide both sides of the equation by 1.04, we see that the dollar amount Sara actually spent was $9.50. We’ll use that amount for our next step.
Last, we can set up a quick proportion to find our exchange rate in rupees per dollar:
We cross-multiply and see that 9.5x = 602. Our calculator makes short work of the final step of division, telling us that the exchange rate is 63.3684211. So we should enter in 63.3, right?
WRONG! Thanks to our attention to detail in reminding ourselves that we should round our answer to the nearest whole number, we know that 63 rupees per dollar is our final, correct answer. Mic drop.
So next time you see a wall of text in the math section, do not fear! Just pull out your trusty pencil and get to marking. In addition to word problems in the math test, the skill of identifying and flagging keywords can help you to be more accurate and efficient on every single section of both the SAT and ACT. By practicing this technique, you’ll begin to streamline your testing procedure, absorbing key information more quickly and immediately disregarding all the “fluff” and filler.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Tricks of the Trade. There is way more where this came from, so if you want access to your very own standardized test expert, make sure to set up a free call with one of our Student Success Advisors and get started on your test prep journey today!