About SAT Exam CONTENT

The Math Test focuses on the areas of math that play the biggest role in college and career success: 

• Heart of Algebra, which focuses on the mastery of linear equations and systems.
• Problem Solving and Data Analysis, which is about being quantitatively literate.
• Passport to Advanced Math, which features questions that require the manipulation of complex equations.

The Math Test also draws on Additional Topics in Math, including the geometry and trigonometry most relevant to college and career readiness. 

The Math Test is divided into two parts: a no-calculator portion and a calculator portion. In both portions, most of the test is multiple choice, but some of the questions at the end ask you to write the answer (these are called “grid-ins”).

The Reading Test presents five reading passages followed by multiple-choice questions about each passage. You have 65 minutes to complete this test, which includes 52 questions total.

The five passages on the Reading Test include four standalone passages and one pair of passages that you read together. The standalone passages and the paired set are each 500–750 words. The passages are drawn from the following types of documents: 

• 1 literary passage from a work of fiction. 
• 1 or 2 passages from a U.S. founding document or a text in the Great Global Conversation they inspired. An example of a founding document would be the U.S. Constitution. The Great Global Conversation refers to works from around the world that focus on topics such as freedom, justice, or human dignity. A speech by Nelson Mandela would be an example.  
• 1 passage from a work of economics, psychology, sociology, or some other social science. 
• 2 passages from scientific works that examine foundational concepts and developments in Earth science, biology, chemistry, or physics. 

The Writing and Language test is a multiple-choice test in which you read passages and find and fix mistakes and weaknesses. 

This part of the SAT is 35 minutes long, includes 4 passages, and contains 44 multiple-choice questions.  

The 4 passages on the test are each 400–450 words. The complexity of the passages varies: some are more challenging and others more straightforward.

The passages are about a variety of topics, including careers, science, the humanities, and history and social studies.

The purpose and format of each passage varies:

• At least 1 is a narrative, meaning it describes events in a storylike way. This passage is not a work of fiction, but it could be a nonfiction account of an historical event, or it might describe the sequence of events in a scientific experiment.
• The other passages are either argumentative, meaning they try to convince or persuade the reader of something, or else informative and explanatory.

Some of the passages contain charts, graphs, or infographics that you interpret together with the written part of the passage.