The Best Way to Review Your Mistakes for the SAT/ACT

All these tips apply equally to the SAT and the ACT, though for simplicity I'll mostly use the SAT for specific examples in this guide.

feature image credit: "Questioned Proposal" by Ethan Lofton, used under CC BY 2.0/ Cropped from original.

Reconsidering How You React to Mistakes

Getting questions wrong on an SAT practice test or ACT practice test can be anywhere from mildly disappointing to absolutely infuriating. Discovering that you have answered a question incorrectly can trigger any or all of the following impulses:

Impulse 1: Focusing on what you did well and ignoring what you did wrong (not helpful).

Impulse 2: Disregarding questions you got wrong because they were just "careless mistakes" (not helpful).

Impulse 3: Focusing on the fact that you got things wrong and ignoring review in favor of self-loathing (popular among some overachievers, and yet...still not helpful).

Reviewing the questions you missed, however, is an extremely important part of test prep. As this article on preparing for the LSAT states, "Reviewing...preptests is the point at which you switch over from mere practice to actually teaching yourself."

Strategy: Analyze Your Confidence for Each Question

It is not only important that you review missed questions, but that you also review them effectively. A helpful way to do this is by going through the questions you messed up on and sorting them into categories.

Many times, questions can be sorted into these general categories: Skipped (guessed randomly on), Guessed (through elimination), and (thought you) Knew. Seeing how many questions you skipped, how many you guessed, and how many you were certain were correct can help to focus your studying.

For instance, if the majority of the questions you missed were ones you skipped answering, it's possible that you could be eliminating more answers before guessing on more questions. Alternatively, you might be accidentally skipping over some questions because you're rushing and end up zipping right past them.

Once you've sorted the questions you missed into these general categories, make sure to review all of the questions you guessed on, including the ones you answered correctly. Compare these questions with the questions you guessed incorrectly on. Was it just blind luck, a combination of the process of elimination and Pin the Pencil on the Scantron^®? Or is there a difference between the way you approached the guessed questions you got correctly and incorrectly?

Strategy: Understand the Reason for Missing Each Question

Sort the questions by the fundamental reason you missed them. Don't just think, "Well, I got that one wrong." That's not useful in figuring out where you're really making mistakes.

I find that nearly all mistakes fall into four categories:

Time Issue: You were pressed for time.

Question Comprehension Issue: The question was too complicated, you weren't exactly sure what it was asking, or you were tricked by the question.

Procedural/Content Issue: You didn't know how to find the answer to the question, or didn't know the material the question covered.

Careless Error: A.k.a. careless mistakes, a.k.a. stupid mistakes, a.k.a. the most frustrating mistakes of all.

We'll cover each one in more detail. I'll also give you tips on how to prepare, depending on whether you're scoring around a 500/21 level or around a 700/31 level.

Mistake Type 1: Time Crunch

These are questions where you were pressed for time and couldn't answer the question. This is often the case with skipped or incorrectly guessed questions.

Out of all the questions you missed, how many of these "ran out of time" questions are there? If the majority of your missed questions happened because you were running low on time, you may have a time management issue.

Do You Have Good Time Management?

So how do you know if you have a problem with time management? One way to check is by taking a timed practice test (under realistic conditions). If you run out of time to answer all of the questions, continue answering questions, but mark the questions for which you needed the extra time. Afterwards, you can go back and categorize the questions you needed extra time for and sort them into the remaining three categories of errors.

How many questions did you get right with extra time, as compared to questions you answered correctly during test length? If your scaled scores differ by more than either 50 points on any section of the SAT, or by more than 4 points on any section of the ACT, then you have a time management issue.

For more information about why time management is so important, look into our article on scoring perfectly on the SAT.

If you want more specifics on how to combat time management weaknesses, especially for Reading and Writing, definitely check out 10 Strategies for getting a perfect SAT Reading and Writing score and how to avoid running out of time on SAT Reading and Writing (or ACT Reading).

You may notice particular skill weaknesses across all the questions you ran out of time on. Make a note of these: if you know what is wrong, then you can fix it. If there are no commonalities between the questions, you might just be spending too much time on some questions, and you need to improve your fluency with taking the test by following some of our suggested actions.

Actions for a 500/21 Scorer:

Don't get sucked in—monitor your time on each question. On the SAT, the breakdown of total time allowed for each question (including double-checking!) is as follows:

And here's the breakdown of time per question for the ACT:

You can do the math yourself, if you want the practice! For more information on the SAT and timing, try our expert guide on the SAT's length, or read our equivalent article on the ACT's length here.

Do you find that you always run out of time?

If you're scoring in the 500 range on the SAT and running out of time before you can answer all of the questions, guessing on the questions you don't know can help boost your score. Since a large portion of the SAT is multiple choice (100% of the Reading and Writing section and 75% of the Math section), there's a 25% chance you'll guess correctly when randomly guessing, because one of those answer choices is the correct answer. There’s no penalty for incorrect answers, so make sure and mark something for each question on the test!

This might go without saying, but the very best way to improve your score on the new digital SAT is to improve your knowledge of the test content so you can answer more difficult questions. The digital SAT is adaptive, and so it actually changes based on your performance. This is done by breaking each section of the test into modules. 

Questions in Module 1 of both the Reading and Writing and Math sections will have varying degrees of difficulty. The difficulty level of the questions in Module 2 will be a direct result of how you performed in Module 1. If you do pretty well, you’ll see more difficult questions. If you don’t do as well, you’ll see easier questions. 

This new format of adaptive testing means questions are no longer valued equally. On the old SAT, students could guess on the most difficult questions on the exam and focus their energy on easier questions, effectively raising their score by getting more questions correct. On the digital SAT, the more difficult the question, the more value it has to your score. So we really mean it: the best way to improve your score on the digital SAT is to get better at answering the most difficult questions on the test. 

But how do you know which questions are the hardest ones? This will be different for the two sections of the test. 

In Math, the questions at the end of each module are the most difficult. This means that  in the 22-question Math modules, the last 2-3 questions in each module will be the most difficult and will be weighted more heavily in your score. You can use the official digital SAT practice tests to get a feel for how these questions will look and what you’ll need to know to solve them correctly. 

Keep in mind that the Math section doesn’t arrange the questions by content, so the hardest questions (just like the easiest ones) can cover any of the four Math categories: Algebra, Advanced Math, Problem Solving and Data Analysis, and Geometry and Trigonometry. For more surefire strategies to attain a 600 in SAT Math, read our article on improving your SAT Math score.

The SAT Reading and Writing section is a little trickier because it doesn’t arrange the questions from easiest to hardest in a completely linear way. Instead, the questions in each of the content categories are arranged from easiest to hardest. The four content categories for this section include Craft and Structure, Information and Ideas, Standard English Conventions, and Expression of Ideas. 

The best way to locate the most difficult questions on SAT Reading and Writing, then, is to know which category each question falls into. Questions on this section of the test are grouped together by category because they test similar skills and knowledge, helping students to avoid switching context and skills from question to question. 

So in the first module of the SAT Reading and Writing, the 27 questions will be arranged by content category. Questions on Craft and Structure will come first, then Information and Ideas, then Standard English Conventions, and then Expression of Ideas. And within these category groupings, the questions will be arranged from easiest to most difficult. Module 2 will follow this same format. If you can learn to categorize the questions effectively, you’ll know when you get to the end of one category and the beginning of another, and so you’ll be able to pinpoint the most difficult questions. 

Locating and correctly solving the most difficult questions on each section is just one method of improving your score. Our blog has more specific information in our post on improving your SAT Reading score, but the basic takeaways are:

• When faced with a lengthy passage, read the question about that passage first. This way, you will already know the information you should be considering when reading the passage.
  
  
• Skim the passage on your first read-through. Sometimes, several lines of the passage will not have relevance to the question being asked about it, so why spend extra time on a detailed read the first time through? If possible, try finishing the passage in 3 minutes or less.
  
  
• If you cannot answer a question in 30 seconds or less, guess "B" on it and move on. You won't have points taken off for incorrect answers, so if you guess the same answer choice for every answer you don't know, you should get it right about 25% of the time.

Overall, practice can help you get faster at taking the SAT/ACT, and the more high quality practice questions and tests you do and take, the more comfortable you'll be.

Actions for a 700/31 Scorer:

If you're already scoring in the 700 range, and you know time management is not the issue, chances are you just need to up your speed (whether for one particular type of question or overall). Again, this comes from practice, like endless lay-up drills in basketball or scales on a musical instrument.

When I had to learn piano scales as part of the graduation requirements for my Master's program, I started out by seeing what my natural pace was (average of 1 note every 4-5 seconds). I followed this by calculating the difference between that and the target pace (1 note/second) for the exam, then setting incremental goals for myself so that I could create a realistic timeline for learning this new skill and focus my practicing towards that timeline.

The same strategy works for test prep. For every section, you should calculate your own time per question. For ACT Math, for example, there are 60 minutes to solve 60 questions. This means an average of 1 minute per question, but the questions at the end will likely take you much longer than 1 minute. This means you might have a goal of 30 seconds per question for questions 1-20, 60 seconds per question for #21-40, and 90 seconds per question for #41-60.

The key here is that during the test, if you find yourself spending more than your target time goal, you need to skip that question. You want to avoid getting sucked into wasting time on a question. On these points every question is worth the same point, and at your level every point counts. Therefore, your goal should be to answer as many questions correctly as possible.

Mistake Type 2: Question Comprehension

SAT questions might need to have one unambiguous answer, but that doesn't mean that they can't trick you with the wording of the question. Oddly, this is especially lethal for those who read quickly, because it can lead you (and by you, I perhaps mean me) to focus on the wrong part of the question.

The first time I looked at this question, I read through it too quickly and solved for p, rather than 3p + 2.

Always make sure you know what the question is asking before you look at the answers. Often, the SAT will give several incorrect answer choices that each could be correct if you'd misread the question a particular way.

Actions for a 500/21 Scorer:

In some cases, it can help to write out the information the question provides in simpler form. Take this sample math question:

In one semester, Doug and Laura spent a combined 250 hours in the tutoring lab. If Doug spent 40 more hours in the lab than Laura did, how many hours did Laura spend in the lab?

Now, write out the information given in the question separately, on your physical piece of scratch paper or by using the annotation tool in the testing software (available only in the SAT Bluebook software):

It might seem redundant, but writing out the information separately not only gets it into your brain, but also prevents you from grabbing the wrong number or unit of measure when you go to plug it into your equation or answer. If you're concerned that writing everything out will take too much time, underlining or highlighting the relevant information in the question can also be useful. The annotation tool in the SAT Bluebook software gives you both of these options, and the digital ACT test software allows for highlighting.

Example (underlining mine):

Actions for a 700/31 Scorer:

Slow down when reading the question for the first time. Students who leave time to double (or even triple) check their answers sometimes don't bother re-reading the question on their second (or third) time through, which means that if you misread the question the first time, it doesn't matter how many times you double-check your thinking process—you won't be able to correct your mistake. Because of this, re-reading the question is important as well, because it allows you to make sure the question is asking what you think it was asking when you go through it again.

Mistake Type 3: Procedural/Content Issue

If it is a multiple choice question, identify what type of question it is. For instance, we at PrepScholar have identified the major SAT Reading and Writing passage question types as:

#1: Information and Ideas

#2: Craft and Structure

#3: Expression of Ideas

#4: Standard English Conventions

For more information about these question types, check out our full guide to the new digital SAT format. We also have a breakdown of SAT grammar rules, if you need to brush up in that area.

For a breakdown of the SAT Math question types, read our article here. If you want to learn more about the Writing section, try our complete breakdown of SAT grammar rules.

Is your problem with how to answer certain types of questions, like Inference questions? Or is the problem knowing the content, like specific grammar rules or trigonometry formulas?

Actions for Everyone:

For these kinds of missed questions, there are two main steps to take.

Step 1: Find a source for lesson material. For content issues, this could be class notes, textbooks on the material, or a test prep book or a complete prep program like PrepScholar. For procedural issues, definitely check out SAT prep books and sites on strategies.

Step 2: Practice answering questions, over and over and over (see above regarding lay-ups and scales), reviewing them well.

If you follow these two steps, you will be full of well-founded confidence when questions that previously stymied you (whether in terms of how to answer them or what they were asking about) pop up on test day.

"consumer confidence" by Chris & Karen Highland, used under CC BY-SA 2.0/ Cropped from original.

Cape not suggested as part of your test-day apparel.

Bonus (or possibly not, depending): You are far less likely to drive your siblings crazy by drilling yourself on practice questions than by drilling yourself on piano arpeggios! Not that I would know from personal experience. Nope.

Mistake Type 4: Careless Error

My favorite type of mistake—seemingly innocuous, but with a potentially fatal impact.

Story time: Once upon a time, during my very sleep-deprived junior year of high school, I added 2 and 2 together to get A) 8 and B) 2. At various points on the SAME CALCULUS TEST. And while yes, I was sleep-deprived, this was not the only factor.

Rushing headlong through answer choices (or problem solving, in the case of some math questions) is often the prime culprit for careless mistakes. This is completely understandable, as you are taking a timed test, but ultimately it can be counterproductive if you don't have the appropriate backups in place.

Common Careless Errors

Here I've broken down some of the most common careless errors by subject area.

Reading: Misreading the question, particularly by not noticing words like "except." On practice tests, I would sometimes lose valuable time by trying to choose among answers that seemed to be all correct, only to realize that the question was actually asking for the one that was INcorrect.

Math: Solving for the wrong value. I cannot stress enough how annoying it is to finish a practice test and realize you solved for the wrong value (particularly since these are often answer choices). See my previous example of the sort of questions where this can happen particularly easily.

Writing and Language: Reading through the question too quickly and choosing "NO CHANGE," particularly with questions at the end of the section. Don't just select "No Change" if the sentence looks right to you—also make sure you can eliminate all three other answer choices.

Actions for a 500/21 Scorer:

Ask yourself why you made the careless mistakes. Were you feeling pressed for time? Were you actually pressed for time? What can you do in the future to help head this off? Check out our article on top SAT test day tips for some helpful suggestions.

Actions for a 700/31 Scorer:

Make sure you leave yourself enough time to go back over questions—not just going over your work, but redoing questions (especially those you are unsure of). PrepScholar co-founder Allen Cheng suggests leaving yourself at least 5 minutes to spare in his article on how to get a perfect SAT score.

How to Streamline Future Review

Okay, you know everything now about what you were doing wrong with your reviewing of missed questions. How can you make it more efficient (and effective) in the future? A few final tips:

#1: When going through tests, always mark the questions you think you have a 3/4 or less chance of getting correct. If you’re taking a pencil and paper test, circling the numbers of the questions works well, because you can circle them lightly on your first time through the test, and circle ones you're still unsure of more heavily on your second time through. If you’re using computer tests to practice for the SAT or for the ACT, you can use the Mark for Review tool (SAT) and the Flag for Review tool (ACT) to mark these questions.

You'll be able to review everything you were unsure about, even if you ended up getting them right. Knowing you've looked over everything you were unsure about, even if you ended up getting the question correct, will make you more confident you're choosing the right answer in the future, because you will have put in the time.

#2: Just like a tooth with a cavity, the best way to get better is to...drill.

I have no regrets about this wordplay. I am also 100% serious. Practice may not make perfect, but it does make answering the questions you have trouble with more routine, which in turn can get you closer to perfection. See also my earlier explanation for why you should structure your practice.

"Facepalm" by Philipp Boisserée, used under CC BY-ND 2.0.

#3: Don't immediately go back and try to re-do missed questions (or if you do, don't let that be the only time you re-do them). It's more helpful to let some time pass in between attempts—a day is usually good enough, but anywhere between few hours or a week can also work, depending on the person—because then you can try it again fresh.

#4: Keep a notebook or computer record of questions you got wrong, sorted by subject (Math, Reading, Writing and Language for the SAT, or English, Math, Reading, and Science for the ACT) and question subtype (e.g. big picture vs. little picture questions in Reading).

Note for each question why you missed it and how you plan to remedy this in the future (even if the remedy is just "Practice this kind of question until it appears in my dreams, possibly accompanied by piano scales").

Reviewing questions you got wrong is integral to effective test prep. Learning from one's mistakes is not just a saying—it reflects the reality that can help you break through a score ceiling and drastically improve your score on the SAT or ACT. The trick is to know not just where you are making mistakes, but to practice those same types of questions over and over until you have mastered them.

What's Next?

What's a good target score you should aim for? Find out in our guides for the SAT and the ACT.

Want to score a perfect SAT score or ACT score? A perfect scorer has the advice you need. Read our guide on getting a 1600 on the SAT or getting a 36 on the ACT.

Not sure when to start studying? Get advice on how much time you should put into studying for the SATs here.

If you want more specifics on how to prepare for each section for the SAT, try our study guides for low scorers (Math, Reading, Writing) or high scorers (Math, Reading, Writing).

Looking to review mistakes in your code as well as on your SAT/ACT? Our guide to the JavaScript TypeOf Function explains what TypeOf can tell you and how to use it.