Carefully consider your own unique perspective and
knowledge before deciding what point of view to take.
Chapter 12 walks you through the writing process so
that you can adapt any SAT essay assignment to your
personal point of view.
Thinking Logically
Logic is one of the most powerful reasoning tools you
can use on the SAT: sentence completion questions
ask you to analyze the logical structure of sentences,
critical reading questions often ask you to make
logical inferences or examine logical assumptions
based on the claims made in a passage, and SAT math
questions often require you to figure out what must
be true based on some given assumptions. All of these
are exercises in logic.
Chapter 6, Lesson 7 discusses three logical methods
for solving tough SAT math problems; Chapter 4, Les-
son 7 teaches you to analyze critical reading questions
logically; Chapter 5, Lessons 2 and 3 help you to ana-
lyze the logical structure of sentences; and Chapter 12,
Lesson 7 helps you to strengthen your essay with logic.
Checking Your Work
Everyone makes dumb mistakes now and then.
Good students, however, always check their work for
errors. Don’t wait until you’re completely finished
CHAPTER 1 / CONQUERING THE SAT WITH THE COLLEGE HILL™ METHOD 5
with a problem, and don’t merely repeat the same
steps to check (because you’ll probably just repeat
the same mistake you made the first time). Instead,
as you solve an SAT math problem, ask: Am I getting
closer to my goal? Is there a quicker way to get to my
goal? Do I need to find something else before I can get
to my goal? Then, after you’ve found an answer, ask:
Did I show my steps clearly? Are they correct? Does
my solution make sense when I reread the problem? Is
there another way I can look at the problem to check
my answer?
On SAT math questions, estimate whenever you
can to check your work. If you can make an easy esti-
mate of the answer, then you can eliminate choices
that are way off base, as well as check your work
when you do it “the long way.” This and other math-
checking strategies are discussed in Chapter 6, Les-
son 8. On sentence completion questions, always
reread the sentence one more time with your answer
“filled in,” and check that it works logically. On the
critical reading section, check that your responses
make sense, given the overall purpose of the passage.
Chapter 4, Lesson 8 discusses some other checking
strategies for critical reading. On the writing ques-
tions, check that any error you find is reallyone of the
legitimate grammatical errors listed in Chapter 15,
and not just something that sounds a little strange.3 THE COLLEGE HILL COACHING SAT POWER READING LIST
Students who ace the SAT have one impor-
tant thing in common: they read a lot. Good
reading habits give you an enormous advan-
tage in life and on the SAT. One of the best
ways to prepare for the critical reading sec-
tion of the SAT is to dive into books like those
below, which deal with the world of ideas you
will explore in a good liberal arts education:
philosophy, the arts, history, biography, sci-
ence, and the humanities. Read books that
challenge your thinking and introduce you to
new ideas.Internet Resources
Set your homepage to one of the following, and save
bookmarks of the others. Some of these sites may
require a subscription, but most provide a good deal
of their material free of charge.
The New York Times:www.nytimes.com
Read the op-ed page every day, the Science
Timeson Tuesdays, and theWeek in Review
on Sundays.
The Atlantic:www.theatlantic.com
Read the features and the Atlantic Voices.
Slate Magazine:www.slate.com
Read the News & Politics section.
BBC News:http://news.bbc.co.uk
Read the Features, Views, Analysis section,
and the Backgroundlinks to the right of the
feature stories.
Salon:www.salon.com
Read the Editor’s Picks.Narratives
One Hundred Years of Solitude, G. Garcia-Marquez
The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kozinsky
Candide,Voltaire
Macbeth,William Shakespeare
The Wall, John Hersey