College Admissions Expert Shares The 3 Things He Did To Get A Near-Perfect Score On His SAT
It took several tries, but it ultimately just came down to spending lots of time and effort, not money.
Jacob Lund | Canva Pro It's that time of year again, when high school students start preparing for university applications and all things college, and perhaps nothing strikes fear into the heart of students everywhere like the SAT (well, other than waiting to hear if you got into your dream school, of course). But one expert says getting a terrific score might not be as elusive as we think if you follow the right strategy.
A college admissions expert shared the 3 things he did to get a near-perfect 1590 SAT score:
Limmy is a content creator and Duke student known as @limmytalks on TikTok, where he creates deep-dive guides into what and what not to do when it comes to getting into college. Not only has he helped lots of other students, he's been through the process himself, of course, and for him, acing the SAT came down to three preparation steps.
Now to be fair, Limmy said it took "a few tries" for him to get his almost-perfect 1590 score, just 10 points shy of the A+ score of 1600 — a perfect 800 on the math section and a near-perfect 790 on the verbal.
1. Frequently read the New York Times.
Newspapers may not be your cup of tea, but when it comes to the reading and writing section of the SAT, the passages you'll read, analyze and write about are "very similar to newspaper articles," Limmy said.
This will also of course deepen your understanding of vocabulary, current events and cultural ideas that you'll encounter in the passages themselves, which will aid your understanding and analysis. Limmy said that in his case, "reading newspapers really helped me get to the main ideas of the reading section on the SAT a lot quicker."
2. 'College Panda' SAT guides
No SAT prep process is complete without some actual nuts-and-bolts studying, and Limmy said that of all the myriad test prep materials out there, the "College Panda" series was far and away the one he found the most effective.
"I've seen online people say that they've used Barron's or Uworld online, maybe Khan Academy, to improve their scores," he said. Everyone's different, so those might work best for some. But Limmy found the "College Panda" series to be above and beyond the rest.
3. Practice, practice, practice
"This is the most important step when it comes to improving your score," Limmy said. "It's taking as many [practice tests] as you can." For Limmy, this meant multiple rounds, improving each time and chipping away at that stellar score.
"My first score, without doing any preparation or looking at any previous exams, was a 1360," he said. He followed that up with lots of newspaper reading and preparing with the "College Panda" guides, and his next score was a 1490. But on his third try, his score actually went down.
So he decided to up the ante. He did a practice test every Saturday for three months, under the exact same conditions he'd face at the real test — getting up at 7:00, starting the practice test at 8:00, finishing by 11:00 for a dozen tries. When he finally took the real test, he got that 1590.
Sure, many kids have the advantage of access to expensive tutors and prestigious professional prep courses. (There are thankfully organizations that help low-income students with both SAT prep and SAT registration fees.) But the biggest expense among these methods is really just time and effort — so, you just might have a lot more control over the SAT than you think.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.