SAT/Trig Questions

[PsychoAndy]

hello to you all on this wonderful evening. tomorrow is the SAT, which i am taking for the first time. now, i've taken the act twice, and got a 29 on it, but it's a completely different test. i don't have any science reasoning or reading comprehension tests to compensate for my poor english/math skills on the SAT. therefore, i need some help on 2 things:
what can i do the night before the test (read: now) to help myself generally on the SAT?
and
is knowledge in sines/cosines/tangents/random trig functions needed? as i said, my math isn't too stellar. and if so, can someone give me a crash course in SOH CAH TOA, what it means, and what it has to do with finding angles and such?

if someone can help, i'd greatly appreciate it

 

[hdeck]

you sure did wait long enough before posting this one. at least you can take the test more than once.

as far as math, you pretty much need to know everything up to pre-calculus to do well.

 

[PsychoAndy]

Originally posted by: hdeck
you sure did wait long enough before posting this one. at least you can take the test more than once.

as far as math, you pretty much need to know everything up to pre-calculus to do well.

At around 2 PM today, I was in the following conversation:
friend: ugh, i've done 40 sat practice tests and i can't go out tonight
me: woah, we have SATs tomorrow? damnit.
of course, it's not like i was gonna get any action tonight, so i'm not missing out on anything.

and i can't really take it more than once; i'm a senior, and i have no idea how the score sending thing works. i'm assuming schools want apps before january, so i don't think I can get results for the next test on time to go on my app.

 

[Dudd]

as far as math, you pretty much need to know everything up to pre-calculus to do well.

That's wrong. There is nothing beyond geometry on the SAT. Hell, they even give you the geometry formulas at the beginning of each section. So, don't worry if you don't know a thing about derivitives or integrals or any of that. Basically, all the SAT does is give you simple questions to do, but since you have at most 30 minutes to do 20 or so questions, it tests how quickly you can analyze a simple problem and get the answer. There really is nothing you can do the night before except get your ass in bed. If you had asked this back in August, I could have recommended review books. They do work, a guy at my school went from 1260-1540 just by going over one book. But, it's too late now, just get some sleep. Just so you know, I just took the SAT's at the beginning of October, so this information is all up to date.

 

[PsychoAndy]

Originally posted by: Dudd

as far as math, you pretty much need to know everything up to pre-calculus to do well.

That's wrong. There is nothing beyond geometry on the SAT. Hell, they even give you the geometry formulas at the beginning of each section. So, don't worry if you don't know a thing about derivitives or integrals or any of that. Basically, all the SAT does is give you simple questions to do, but since you have at most 30 minutes to do 20 or so questions, it tests how quickly you can analyze a simple problem and get the answer. There really is nothing you can do the night before except get your ass in bed. If you had asked this back in August, I could have recommended review books. They do work, a guy at my school went from 1260-1540 just by going over one book. But, it's too late now, just get some sleep. Just so you know, I just took the SAT's at the beginning of October, so this information is all up to date.

I'm mostly doing this outta curiousity, to be honest. I'm pretty sure my 29 on the ACT and a ~3.5 GPA should be enough to get into college.

 

[Evadman]

Originally posted by: Dudd

as far as math, you pretty much need to know everything up to pre-calculus to do well.

That's wrong. There is nothing beyond geometry on the SAT. Hell, they even give you the geometry formulas at the beginning of each section. So, don't worry if you don't know a thing about derivitives or integrals or any of that. Basically, all the SAT does is give you simple questions to do, but since you have at most 30 minutes to do 20 or so questions, it tests how quickly you can analyze a simple problem and get the answer. There really is nothing you can do the night before except get your ass in bed. If you had asked this back in August, I could have recommended review books. They do work, a guy at my school went from 1260-1540 just by going over one book. But, it's too late now, just get some sleep. Just so you know, I just took the SAT's at the beginning of October, so this information is all up to date.

What he said.

Just remember, in the math section, there are no boxes to check. you have to write out the answer. So no working backwards like on the ACT.

 

"What he said.

Just remember, in the math section, there are no boxes to check. you have to write out the answer. So no working backwards like on the ACT."

Uhmm . . . they must have changed SAT. As far as I remember, I didn't have to write out the answers for math questions. It was the usual shading.

"'as far as math, you pretty much need to know everything up to pre-calculus to do well.'

That's wrong. There is nothing beyond geometry on the SAT. Hell, they even give you the geometry formulas at the beginning of each section. So, don't worry if you don't know a thing about derivitives or integrals or any of that."

Oh really? I didn't know that integrals and derivatives was part of precalculus. When last I checked, that was part of Calculus, not precalculus. Precalculus is about trigonometry, combinatorics, and a few things that I forget at the moment. But nothing about derivatives and integrals.

You are right though that most of the questions were geometry. I can't really remember if it contained trigonometry too. But I know that it was a combination of algebra and geometry, with emphasis on geometry, when I took it; and that was a while back. Things may have changed now.

"you sure did wait long enough before posting this one. at least you can take the test more than once."

I agree. He was probably too busy confusing us and himself with the whole mutiple identity thing.

I hope that you have put much effort in performing well, Psychoandy. And I do hope that you reap the fruit of your labour.

 

[Evadman]

Uhmm . . . they must have changed SAT. As far as I remember, I didn't have to write out the answers for math questions. It was the usual shading

I took it in 98' if I remember correctly. but I am 100% sure I had to write the answers out. because I freaked out. I am used to working backwards on things I can not do.

 

[Dudd]

Oh really? I didn't know that integrals and derivatives was part of precalculus. When last I checked, that was part of Calculus, not precalculus. Precalculus is about trigonometry, combinatorics, and a few things that I forget at the moment. But nothing about derivatives and integrals.

Semantic differences. At my school, we do all that in pre-calc. It's actually quite redundant as we take trig/alg II our soph year, pre-calc our junior year, and Calc AB our senior year, which through one quarter is just a rehash of last year's derivatives. It would have been just as easy to just skip pre-calc and take two years of calc instead.

 

[zippy]

Originally posted by: Evadman

Uhmm . . . they must have changed SAT. As far as I remember, I didn't have to write out the answers for math questions. It was the usual shading

I took it in 98' if I remember correctly. but I am 100% sure I had to write the answers out. because I freaked out. I am used to working backwards on things I can not do.

There are only ten math questions in which you must write out the answers into boxes. I took the SATs in May.