We at Knewton just launched our SAT course back in March, and now our inaugural class of students is all grown up. Many of these students took the May SAT, and they kindly agreed to share their test-day experiences with us.
So how did the May Day exam go? While the Math section proved to be trickier overall than Verbal or Writing, the majority of students polled felt that they had performed better than they expected. And 100% of the Knewton SAT students polled said they would recommend us to a friend. Thanks, folks! Check out the full breakdown after the jump:
Overall
• 16% of students felt they had pretty much aced the test; 44% said they thought they had done better than expected; 32% reported doing as well as expected; only 8% described their performance as worse than expected
• The Math section won the “most difficult” award, with 56% of the vote. Reading came in second with 28%. Writing was a distant third with 16%.
• Conversely, 48% of students polled felt “best prepared” for the writing section (can’t wait to hear about those essays!), 32% for reading, and 20% for math
Timing
• The majority of respondents felt they had “time to spare” or at least got to everything on all the sections (Math: 72%; Reading: 80%; Writing: 92%)
Math
• 42.9% of students felt they had performed “better than expected,” while an exactly equal 42.9% said they had done “as expected.”
• 90.5% approached the math with “a combination of math concepts and strategic approaches.” And a full 71.4% voted that Knewton’s strategies made things easier, while 14.3% said “I couldn’t have done as well without them.”
Reading
• 55% said they had done “better than expected,” and 35% reported doing “as expected.”
• 45% gave a shout-out to Knewton’s vocab quizzes and instruction for the extra help they provided and 70% appreciated Knewton’s passage “zoning” technique.
• Overall, 75% of students reported that Knewton’s strategies were helpful on the Reading section!
Writing
• A solid majority — 55% — of students felt they had performed “better than expected,” while almost all the rest (40%) said they had done “as expected.”
• The most difficult question type was Improving Sentences, with 40% of the vote. The Essay got 30%; Improving paragraphs got 20%; and good old Identifying Sentence Errors rounded it out with 10% of the vote.
• Knewton’s strategies also proved helpful on Writing, according to 80% of respondents.
Conclusions
• While the Math section posed the most challenges, most Knewton students felt they were pretty darn ready to tackle the test as a whole. When asked “How well did Knewton prepare you for the SAT,” 68.4% of students said they were better off taking Knewton, and 15.8% actually said they couldn’t imagine being more prepared. Only 5.3% felt unprepared.
Congratulations to everyone on being done with the SAT — we can’t wait to hear how you did!
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