Scholastic Aptitude Test is an entrance examination required by most of the colleges for undergraduate admissions (Bachelors Degree courses). Princeton New Jersey. SAT is administered 6 times a year. (Once every January, May, June, October, November and December)

SAT scores form an important criterion to assess the eligibility of the students for admissions as well as for scholarships and other financial aids. SAT I is a mandatory test for students seeking undergraduate studies abroad whereas SAT II is required by some universities in addition to SAT I.

SAT I (Reasoning Test)

• It is a three-hour, primarily multiple-choice test that measures reasoning abilities in two areas viz. Verbal and Math. Each area is scored out of 800 points. Therefore the SAT I is scored out of 1600 points.  SAT I is a paper-based test.
• Verbal questions test your ability to understand and analyze what you read, recognize relationships between parts of a sentence, establish relationships between pairs of words.
• Math questions test your ability to solve problems involving arithmetic, algebra and geometry
• Students are allowed to use calculators for SAT

Questions: SAT I

 Math Section 

• Multiple Choice : These would be singular questions followed by five answer choices. One requires basics of Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry to solve these questions.
• Quantitative Comparison : In these types of questions there are two columns and each column mentions a quantity. The students are required to compare both the quantities and answer the question.
• Student Produced Response : These questions are also called Grid-In questions. These questions have no answer choices. The students are required to solve the problem and mark the answer on the special score sheet provided.

Version Section

• Sentence Completion: These are basically Fill in the Blanks. The students have to select the words that best fits in the sentence. The questions can have either one or two blanks followed by 5 options. These types of questions basically require good vocabulary. Further they also require you to understand the usage of the words in a sentence. Some questions are straightforward vocabulary questions. The other questions require you to reason out the logic of the sentence and then select the right option.
• Critical Reasoning: These types of questions test one's analytical skills and vocabulary. A passage or a pair of passages is given which is followed by questions based on the passage/s. The questions involve drawing inferences from given statements, recognizing the assumptions made by the author in the passage. Some questions ask you to infer the meaning of the words from their context in the passage.  The students are not required to have any prior knowledge of any particular subject to answer these types of questions. The passages can be from any field viz. sciences, humanities etc.
• Analogies: In these types of questions a related pair of words will be given followed by five pairs of words. The student has to select the pair that best expresses the relationship similar to the one expressed in the original pair. These types of questions require good vocabulary. Further they also require you to figure out the relation between the two words.

Notes

• The SAT I comprises of 7 sections; 3 Verbal, 3 Math and 1 Experimental (Verbal or Math)
• The verbal sections have a total of 78 questions (19 - Sentence completion, 19 - Analogies and 40 - Critical reading). All questions in verbal sections have 5 answer choices
• The math sections have a total of 60 questions (35 - Multiple choice having 5 answer choices, 15 Quantitative comparisons having 4 answer choices and 10 Grid-in questions with no choices where the student has to write the answer on the sheet in a specific grid)
• The SAT-I has negative marking in all sections except one (Maths - Student produced responses - 10 Questions).
• In the Verbal sections, 1/4th of a point is deducted for every wrong answer.
• In the Math sections, 1/4th of a point is deducted for every wrong answer to questions having 5 choices and 1/3rd of a point is deducted in case of questions of Quantitative comparison. The questions needing student-produced responses do not have a negative marking.
• These 7 sections can appear in different orders in a test book. So your test book may have sections in a different order than the test book of someone else who is taking the test at the same time, though the questions may be exactly the same.
• The 7th section is called the Equating or thee Experimental section and may be a verbal or math section. This section is a 30-minute section.
• This section is used for preparing future SAT questions by first running them through students and testing their level of difficulty.
• A candidate will not know which section is the Equating / Experimental one. This is done to elicit sincere responses for these questions.