Scholastic Aptitude Test, which is popularly known as SAT test, is conducted with the purpose of examining the students’ skills in the fields of reading, writing and mathematics. It is one of the widely accepted tests conducted for admission into various colleges and universities in the United States. SAT test consists of questions based on critical reading, writing and mathematics, which a test taker is required to answer within duration of three hours and 45 minutes. In the following lines, you will come to understand the exact test structure of Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).
Test Structure for Scholastic Aptitude Test
The first step in the way of successfully cracking SAT is to have an idea of the test content or test pattern of the entrance exam. SAT question paper is divided into three parts - critical reading, writing and mathematics. These three sections are further divided into ten sections.
Critical Reading
- The critical reading section of SAT consists of multiple-choice type questions, which are required to be answered within 70 minutes duration.
- All the questions of this section are divided into three parts, in which two parts have to be completed within 25 minutes, while the remaining one needs to be completed within 20 minutes duration.
- The questions are generally asked in this section as sentence completion and passage based reading.
Mathematics
- The mathematics section of the SAT Test is based on two types of questions:
Multiple-choice type questions
Student-produced questions - These types of questions are based on four skills:
Numbers and operations,
Geometry and measurement,
Data analysis, statistics and probability, and
Algebra and functions - The mathematics section is divided into three parts, with two parts that are required to be completed within 25 duration and one part is be completed within 20 minutes duration.
Writing
- The writing section of the SAT exam consists of an essay and multiple-choice type questions.
- The candidates will be given 60 minutes to complete the essay and multiple-choice type questions.
- The writing section is also divided into three parts, in which the essay has to be completed within 25 minutes, while the second and third part must be completed within 25 minutes and ten minutes duration, respectively.
- The multiple-choice type questions in this section are asked to check the students’ knowledge about sentence structure, selection of piece of writing and improvisation in paragraphs.
Unscored Section
Out of the three hours and 45 minutes duration, 25 minutes section is unscored. It is also called ‘variable’ or ‘equating’ section, which may consist of critical reading, multiple-choice type questions or mathematics. The score of this unscored section is not counted in the final score of the candidate. The main purpose of this is to try new questions that are comparable to earlier SAT tests.
