From 1300 to 1380: what can happen in just one SAT tutoring session with me.

Preparing for the SAT can feel like climbing a mountain, but with the right guide, that journey becomes much smoother—and even more enjoyable! In this blog, I’ll share what happened in a single tutoring session with one of my students who made an impressive 80-point leap after just one meeting. This is what personalized, focused test prep looks like in action.

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Before meeting with me for the first time online, a student took a College Board practice test and got 1,300 (650 RW / 650 M).

The first thing I do after a student completes a test is gather a list of which specific questions they got wrong in the Reading/Writing and Math modules 1 and 2: 

RW: 4, 20, 21  /  3, 7, 10, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 25

M: 11  /  8, 12, 13, 14, 16, 20, 21, 22

We agreed that we should start with the verbal skills, given this particular student's goals and these results. By the time we worked through verbal module 2, we had a summary list that looked like this:

RW module 2: 3,7, 10,15 17,19,20,21, 25

The yellow highlighting above refers to the skills that we should work on FIRST because they are EASIEST TO ADDRESS. In this case, that meant vocabulary and grammar questions. The red highlighting above refers to harder skills to address, ones that we'll get to after we've seen significant improvement on the easier skills. In this case, the harder questions involved reading comprehension with charts and transitions.

As we went through the questions in yellow, we always wrote down a takeaway idea, such as the following:

• Prioritize learning new vocabulary words by (1) writing them down, (2) writing down definitions, (3) creating your own sentences.

• On vocab questions: (1) highlight key words, (2) predict your own answer, (3) POE.

• Cut out the prepositional phrases to correctly ID the noun / the subject.

This sort of identification of very specific skills tied to particular question types is so important, given that the College Board's score report only vaguely refers to ‘knowledge areas.’ By contrast, my students know exactly what they need to focus on.

We used the final third of the session to look over the math, resulting in this analysis of module 2:

 M module 2: 8,12,13,14, 16,20,21,22

The two questions marked in red are unlike most of what the College Board has put forth as practice questions. When one encounters something truly alien-looking on the Math test, it's wise to mark it, put down any letter as a placeholder, and move on. (If there's time to come back, great; if not, also great!) In this case, the student had gotten stuck trying to work these two difficult problems and then had to rush on the last three. In retrospect, skipping those two problems would have left plenty of time to calmly and correctly answer the last three questions.

And here are the takeaways from the questions in yellow:

• How many solutions = put the equations on two lines! See what they do.

• Use paper! Sometimes it's easier than DESMOS.

• Feel free to MARK AND MOVE on 2 or 3 questions!

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After this one session with me, they took another College Board practice test and got 1,380 (670 RW / 710 M). Wow! Of course we love to see a 60-point jump in Math after just one session, but after 15 seconds of celebration, we returned to work! :-)

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Every student’s SAT journey is unique, and that’s the beauty of one-on-one tutoring. It’s not just about drilling questions but tailoring lessons to individual needs, strengths, and goals. Whether it’s decoding tricky vocabulary or mastering complex math problems, my goal is to build confidence and clarity every step of the way.

I hope this information is helpful.
Thanks for reading!
AK.
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