For some time, it seemed that the SAT would gradually become obsolete. Many schools adopted test-optional admission policies, canceled testing dates, and many parents and students concluded that taking the SAT was no longer necessary. However, the situation has recently changed. Many colleges now require taking the SAT again, and students who initially wanted to skip it are rethinking their plans.
But why the sudden change? The main reason is that admissions officers, professors, and tutors in various institutions keep facing the same issue. Many students arrive at college without the fundamental mathematics knowledge required for their courses. In this guide, we will look at why the SAT still matters, where students struggle most when preparing for it, and the proven tutoring strategies that will help you succeed in this exam.
Why the SAT Still Matters
Critics have a couple of complaints about the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and some of them are valid. But there remain three important reasons why the test continues to hold value in the admissions process.
It is standardized
A grade point average is helpful, but it is not a universal currency. An A in one high school is extremely difficult to obtain, while in another school it is comparatively easy to achieve. Admissions staff reviewing hundreds if not thousands of applications cannot always discern what standard each transcript adheres to. The SAT offers a common scale. All students take questions that are created and graded identically, so the test allows for comparison of applicants from vastly different school systems.
It ensures level access
Because the SAT is a standardized test regardless of where a student studies, it allows the colleges to assess the students without consideration of their school environment. A student attending a school with limited class selection and poor reputation has a chance to prove their capabilities.
It is a genuine readiness check for college math
SAT mathematics results positively correlate with college readiness and especially precalculus readiness. A student who masters the SAT is generally well-equipped to start off in that class. That way, the test becomes not only an additional step but also a means of measuring where the gaps are while there is still time to close them.
The Bigger Trend Driving Reinstatement
Concerns over student readiness are one of the key reasons that many colleges are reinstating the SAT. The situation on campuses has been described as students having problems with basic math concepts like fractions and arithmetic, not just in remedial courses.
A UC Berkeley math professor has expressed frustration with the need to teach fractions to calculus students because standards have fallen so far. Similarly, a recent UC San Diego faculty report in 2025 shows a 30-fold spike in freshmen needing remedial math classes alongside a sharp decline in academic preparedness.
There isn’t any clear reason behind this, but there are a couple of possible causes. Several years without standardized testing have removed an element that once ensured that students were preparing and improving their skills. At the same time, constant access to mobile calculators has led to students becoming uncomfortable with doing calculations by hand, even in situations where doing it mentally or on paper would be faster.
Structural Challenges of the Test
Despite all the preparation students may have done, taking the SAT can be quite challenging, mainly due to its structure.
Pacing: This test has strict time limits in both of its sections. The Reading and Writing section contains two modules for 32 minutes each, with 54 multiple-choice questions in total, meaning that there are 70 seconds per question in the test. Following a 10-minute break, there are two more modules in the Math section, which last 35 minutes each and consist of 22 questions, meaning you have about 90 seconds per question. Approximately 75% of the mathematics questions are multiple choice, and 25% are free responses.
Free-response questions require the candidate to answer the problem on their own without multiple-choice answers provided. This does not leave much time for problem solving, especially when multi-step reasoning is required. Hence, you need to complete the easier questions quickly to allocate enough time for more difficult ones.
The adaptive format: The test consists of modules, and a student’s performance on the first module determines the difficulty of the second. An early stumble can limit your maximum possible score. Since the difficulty and scoring curve aren’t made public, students can’t easily predict their final score.
Where Students Struggle in Their Prep
Aside from problems associated with the structure of the test itself, there are issues connected to the preparation of the students. They come back to tutors consistently due to these issues. Notable ones include:
Resource overload: There are many SAT prep resources available on the internet and it is hard to filter out good information. A typical Google search leads to finding numerous complex SAT practice questions without any explanation of the most efficient way to solve them. Because of that, many students end up working hard without getting better, or they get demotivated by the process.
Doing it the long way: Most students know the right way to solve a problem, but often use a slow and inefficient approach. The slow route costs time and invites unnecessary errors.
Keyword-to-technique recognition: A significant part of SAT questions requires a quick connection of the keyword to a certain technique that solves the problem. While the keywords might not have been seen before, the technique itself might be known by the student. Recognizing that connection quickly is often what separates a fast, easy solution from a long struggle
Specific Content Gaps
Not all topics pose equal challenges to students. Tutors often identify several content areas where they need to help. They include:
“Unknown constant” questions: These questions give you an equation that is true for all values of x and ask you to find a missing value, like A. They trip up almost every student the first time because they require coefficient-matching skills that rarely show up in regular classwork.
Remedial geometry: Geometry is not often reinforced in later math courses, so formulas and diagram fluency tend to fade over time. Transversal, circle, and tangent-chord relationships fall into this category.
Mechanics of solving equations: Sometimes even those who are comfortable with techniques like completing the square or factoring fail to take the final step of isolating a variable. It may seem insignificant, but that final step often determines whether you get it right or wrong.
Over-reliance on tools: Students feel comfortable with Desmos and its graphing capabilities but sometimes they use it instead of doing something faster without it. For instance, to determine points of intersection between two functions on a graph. It is good to know how to use it but even more so to know when not to use it.
The Motivation and Accountability Problem
There is one more problem that has nothing to do with math. There are grades for homework and deadlines for assignments in school, making sure that students have regular practice in whatever they need. The SAT does not have either of these elements. Nobody monitors whether the student managed to squeeze in twenty minutes of practice on a certain night. So it is easy to neglect consistent practice. The problem surfaces only when the test is imminent and by then it is hard to make up lost ground.
Proven Tutoring Strategies That Work
Understanding the challenges is half the battle. The other half is knowing how to solve them. At Alexander Tutoring, we employ a series of strategies to address each of the struggles described above, and the list provides a useful template for any student looking to prepare.
1. Technique first, then application
Instead of overwhelming students with mixed SAT practice immediately, our tutors isolate a certain weak technique, drill it until it is fluent, and only then introduce real SAT questions that use it. The questions start straightforward and build toward disguised, harder versions of the same technique. Caleb Nastasi explains the process as follows:
“I really try to break it into maybe two or three phases. One is a technique-learning phase… After we have that technique, then I start showing you SAT questions, and then I build up from easy to hard SAT questions with that technique.” — Caleb Nastasi.
This sequence solves the keyword-recognition problem. When a student has drilled the technique separately, they are more likely to recognize it in the context of SAT questions.
2. Individualized diagnosis
No two students struggle in the same manner. One is struggling with a certain technique, another with a content area, and yet another with a tendency to solve everything in the long run. Our tutors figure out each individual’s weak spots and build the tutoring session around closing them rather than reviewing material in general.
Here is what Nastasi says:
“Let’s say that I’ve identified that you, Travis, are weak at synthetic division, right? Well, I’m going to spend some time just doing synthetic division, teaching the algorithm, and getting really fluent with it.” — Caleb Nastasi
3. Emphasis on efficiency
A correct solution is not enough on the timed test. Our tutors show students the quickest way of solving each problem type, and how to use tools such as answer elimination. They train students not to fall into the trap of using calculators and Desmos. Nastasi comments on this as follows:
“It’s a lot of, like, hey, look at this thing that you’ve seen before, what’s the best, fastest, most efficient way to do it? Or the way that you can do it, which allows you to eliminate two answers right off the bat.” — Caleb Nastasi
Being able to quickly eliminate two options changes the odds and the pace at the same time, which helps solve the time constraint problem.
4. Official practice tools, used on a schedule
Students work on Magoosh Online Test Prep and Bluebook, the official College Board practice tool, on a schedule depending on the date of the test. After completing each practice test, a tutor and a student review the detailed report of the score broken down by sections and topics in order to figure out the next steps. The schedule depends on the amount of time left.
“If you’re taking the test next month, I’m having you take one every week… If you’re taking the test in three months, maybe one every other week or so is fine.” — Caleb Nastasi
Doing the practice in the actual interface familiarizes students with the adaptive format of the test, which makes it less overwhelming.
5. Custom, targeted practice sets
There is an official SAT question bank maintained by the College Board, and our tutors use it to create highly targeted worksheets by topic, subtopic, and difficulty. Such sets are generated in the form of PDFs and are meant to be done regularly, for instance, five questions a day. Students eventually learn to generate these worksheets themselves.
Nastasi speaks about it as follows:
“There is a SAT test bank, official from College Board… It’s a really nice interface. You can really just check boxes on the questions that you want to add… and it generates the PDF for you.” — Caleb Nastasi
6. Built-in accountability
In contrast to the daily school assignments, the SAT requires no discipline. Due to that, our tutors provide students with one in the form of Bluebook score tracking, which gives students and parents a tangible way to track their progress between the sessions. Our tutors also emphasize the importance of parental buy-in, since consistent practice at home is impossible without it.
“I can see, hey, two weeks ago you took a Bluebook and it was 650; now you took a Bluebook and it was 670, and you improved a little bit in this section. I can tell you’ve been doing the work.” — Caleb Nastasi
7. Special preparation for advanced students
Students already scoring in the 700s require a special challenge. For them, our tutors prepare topic-based practice sets that are specifically more difficult than any SAT question.
“I have a whole bunch of these sheets where it has questions that are probably a bit harder than the SAT, but they’re all on the same topics… basically, the idea is, if you can do these ones, the SAT should seem easy to you.” — Caleb Nastasi
What This Means for Students
The SAT is important because it does things that grades alone cannot do. It provides colleges with a consistent measure, gives every student an equal platform regardless of where they come from, and determines the readiness of a student for college maths. With testing requirements coming back to many schools, understanding this exam will become worthwhile again.
The struggles are real, but they are also predictable. There is not enough time, getting lost in the adaptive test format, being overwhelmed by the amount of preparation materials; doing calculations manually; and skipping the practice when there is no deadline for it are the major issues. The good news is that each of these is fixable with the right approach: isolate the technique, practice it until it is automatic, apply it to real questions, measure progress with official tools, and keep the routine going with accountability.
Students who follow that path walk into the test knowing what to expect and how to use their time appropriately. Whatever your target score is, whether it is a first 600 or a push beyond 700, the skills you develop through this process, including logical reasoning, fast calculation techniques, and diligence, will be useful in your first college math class and even after that.
