SAT for Jocks

by Mark P. Lawley

By preparing for their big games, athletes have already equipped themselves with what they need to play the game of the SAT. They already know how to work hard and continuously, and they already know how to get themselves under control when it’s Go Time. And yet in all my years teaching college and high school students and tutoring for standardized tests, I’ve noticed that many athletes don’t do well on the SAT. There are five reasons for this. 1.) Most test prep materials are huge, unwelcoming, and targeted towards students who have more time to read--i.e. not athletes. 2.) People expect athletes to perform poorly on tests, and athletes start to believe this, too. 3.) Athletes have a lot of competing demands on their attention. 4.) No one has bothered to show athletes time-honored test-taking strategies, which are usually covered only in the most advanced classes. 5.) Because high school sports are so time-intensive, athletes are forced to take easy classes, which are often taught by unqualified instructors, and so they don’t get to develop their academic potential or address their weaknesses. In other words, athletes typically receive poor coaching for the elite academic sport we call the SAT. That’s where this book comes in. We will address all five points above as much as possible with what time we have left before you take the test. I’m aware that you might be opening this book with little time left before the big SAT game, so I’ll get straight to the meat of what you need to know. I won’t try to teach you every bit of grammar, math, and reading comprehension taught throughout middle school and high school; instead, I’ll leverage what you already know. I also won’t teach you every test strategy ever tried by any test taker anywhere on the planet; instead, I’ll show you the handful of strategies that have worked for my students over and over again. And finally, I won’t waste your time with exhaustively long exercises because the best questions to practice come from old SATs (free off the Internet), not any prep book. By the time you finish this book, you’ll have the tools you need to give your best performance on the test. If you have more time and want to take your game further, I’ll show you how to cultivate your mental athleticism at the end of the book.

56 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014