The SAT can be a daunting and nerve-racking test for high school students. After all, it’s a huge part of the journey toward applying to colleges! That’s why we’ve put together a list of ways you can significantly increase student SAT scores. Just follow these tips and you’re on your way to improved student SAT scores! (Remember: You will have 3 hours and 45 minutes to take the SAT. Students with learning disabilities will receive time and a half.)

The Writing Section:

1. The highest score that you can receive on the SAT is 2400 (800 for the writing, critical reading, and math sections). The essay counts for 30% of your writing score. You will have 25 minutes to write a well-developed essay, for which you will receive a score of 1-6.

2. Decide if you agree or disagree with the essay prompt and write your thesis. Then give yourself no more than 5 minutes to quickly outline your essay response! Your essay should consist of 4-5 paragraphs: an introduction, one paragraph each detailing two or three different examples that support your thesis, and a conclusion. Try to use one example from literature / history / current events and your own personal experience.

3. After briefly outlining your essay, give yourself about 5 minutes to write each of the two or three supporting paragraphs and another 4 minutes to write your conclusion. Use the remaining time to proofread. This may seem overwhelming now, but the more you practice taking the essay portion of the SAT while timing yourself, the easier it will become!

4. Review the types of multiple-choice questions on the writing section: approximately 18 identifying sentence errors, 25 improving sentences, and 6 improving paragraph questions. Two sections will take 25 minutes each and 1 section will take 10 minutes. There is generally an unknown experimental section (an additional math, writing, or critical reading section) on the SAT that will not count toward your score.

5. Common errors tested are: subject-verb agreement, faulty parallelism, incorrect tenses, inappropriately used adjectives and adverbs, wordiness, irregular verbs, and idioms (common phrases/expressions). Examples of idioms are “better late than never” or “forget about it.” An answer choice may say “better late than forever” or “forget over it,” and you must determine that this answer is incorrect.

6. Since you will receive 1 point for correct answers and lose