Do you desperately want a higher SAT Math score for your college applications? Are you constantly running out of time before you finish the SAT Math section - either the Calculator or No-Calculator portion (or both)? Does the “five minutes remaining” announcement on the SAT Math test send shivers down your spine?
Do you have low confidence in your SAT Math skills, or constantly feel like you should know how to solve an SAT Math question - but actually, you don’t even know how to start it? Does the wording of the SAT Math questions throw you off, making you feel confused, frustrated, or unsure “what you’re solving for”?
Maybe you think you need more SAT Math practice before you’re ready for the test? Do you do great in your school math classes, but constantly struggle to get a good SAT Math score that shows your true potential? Or do you feel rusty in the basic skills that you need to do well on the Math section of the SAT test?
If any of the questions above describe you, then you’re in exactly the right place. In this article you’ll find the key to your SAT math problems - the best SAT Math textbook that’s ever been written.
(And if you want to skip the article and just order on Amazon right away, here are the links: SAT Math Mastery Volume 1 and Volume 2.)
The Best SAT Math Prep Book Ever Written
In this article, you’re going to learn about the best SAT Math prep book that has ever been made available to students who want higher SAT Math scores.
Now, full disclaimer - I am the author of this SAT Math prep book. But by the end of this article, you’ll understand exactly why and how I can confidently claim that this is the best SAT math textbook ever written.
It’s not just an empty claim or a boast. It’s based on the facts.
After tutoring SAT prep full-time for 10 years, and getting multiple perfect SAT math scores myself, I’ve developed an extremely clear perspective on exactly what students are missing - why so many students like you feel that the SAT Math is hard, confusing, “stupid,” or unfair.
I know why many kids are able to get great grades in school math classes, yet do poorly on the SAT Math test.
I understand exactly why so many students run out of time long before they’ve finished the SAT Math section, and as a result, why you’re probably concerned about the time limit.
I also have an intimate view into the strengths and weaknesses of other SAT Math prep textbooks. I’ve used them with hundreds of students, and before I wrote my own SAT math textbook, I understood exactly what the other books on the market were missing.
Let’s talk about what you need to get a higher SAT Math score…
What You Need To Get a Higher SAT Math Score
Getting a high SAT Math test score requires five main things:
- Mastery of SAT Math concepts & topics
- Effective SAT Math Strategies
- Time Management & Speed
- SAT Math Practice
- Confidence on the SAT Math test
Let’s talk about each of these five requirements for a higher SAT Math score:
Mastery of SAT Math Concepts & Topics
Despite popular opinion, the most important requirement for a high SAT Math score is not strategies - it’s content.
In other words, you need to actually know how to do the Math questions. Success doesn’t come from magical guessing strategies - it comes from knowing the math.
You must be able to identify the correct math topics in each question, remember how they work, and apply those concepts without making any careless errors.
You probably don’t know this, but 85% of the SAT Math test is based on Algebra 1 and Algebra 2. It’s only about 11% Geometry and only 4% Statistics.
That means that confident mastery of Algebra 1 and 2 concepts is - by far - the most essential ingredient for a higher SAT math score.
Effective SAT Math Strategies
Still, I won’t ignore the importance of effective strategies for the SAT Math test.
The right strategies at the right times can save you time, prevent careless errors, or help you solve a problem when you don’t remember the key math concepts.
Strategies can add polish and speed to your SAT Math testing. They can also get you unstuck in a tight spot when you don’t know what else to do.
Although mastery of the math concepts is the most important requirement for a great SAT Math score, there’s no doubt that a mix of powerful strategies will also improve your results.
Time Management & Speed
The SAT Math is a timed test, of course. You can’t take as much time as you want to answer every question.
Some students can naturally finish without running out of time. But most students experience some level of time pressure. For many teens, the time limit is a huge problem, and a major source of stress.
That’s why time management is the next factor in a great SAT Math score. You need the content mastery, the strategies, and the ability to apply them within the time limit.
Or, if you run out of time before you finish, you want to make sure you’ve made the right decisions to maximize your final score, even if you don’t finish every single question in the time limit.
SAT Math Practice
So, you know the importance of content, strategy, and speed. But when you want to get better at something tough, there’s no substitute for practice.
As an SAT prep tutor, a pianist, and a motorcyclist, I am huge on the importance of practice. Everything I’ve ever done in my life has gotten easier with practice.
Whether it’s a sport, a musical instrument, or the SAT Math test, there’s nothing in the world that you can’t improve with practice.
If you put in the time, you will improve your score. If you don’t put in the time, you won’t improve. It’s incredibly simple.
Of course, that also means you need good practice materials, and a consistent study plan.
Confidence on the SAT Math test
The final piece of the puzzle for a higher SAT math score is confidence.
Athletes have known for centuries about the importance of confidence. If you’re scared of the other team, you’ll get crushed. But when you feel confident, you can make exciting plays that show off your true skill and win you the game.
When you’re confident, you feel better. And when you feel better, you do better.
Confidence allows you to focus and move accurately and efficiently through even the hardest problems. You don’t waste time worrying about whether you’ve done the problem right or not - you just know you’ve gotten the right answer and you move on to the next question.
Of course, confidence has to be realistic. You can’t fake it. You have to know that you’re ready.
False confidence is just as bad as under-confidence. False confidence leads to careless errors and an inability to notice your own mistakes. Under-confidence leads to wasted time and emotional stress.
There’s a “just-right” level of confidence that comes when you truly know what you’re doing, but also acknowledge the fact that you can still make careless mistakes.
Why this SAT Math Book Helps Your Scores So Much
Now let’s talk about how my SAT Math textbook grows your strength in each of the five requirements listed above.
Since I knew from experience exactly what students need for a higher SAT Math score, I set out to create the perfect textbook to provide a solution.
First, it needs teach you the math concepts you need. That means it also must help you reveal your weak topics.
Second, it needs to layer strategy on top of the content. You need to know the best ways to work efficiently and accurately, and also how to handle the hardest problems.
Third, it must improve your speed and time management.
Fourth, it has to give you tons of realistic practice so you develop the strength and skill that only comes from personal experience.
Fifth, you have to feel more confident about SAT Math when you finish the book.
And that’s exactly what my SAT Math textbook will do for you. So let’s talk about what’s contained inside this book…
What’s in this SAT Math Prep Textbook
SAT Math Mastery was originally written as a single giant book. But, I discovered that the finished book was literally too big to print!
I couldn’t cut anything out - everything was important. So, I split the textbook into two volumes: Vol.1 Essential Algebra 1 & Algebra 2 and Vol.2 Advanced Algebra, Geometry, and Statistics.
When you put the two volumes together, here’s what you get:
- Four diagnostic Pretests to reveal your SAT Math weak spots.
- 10 “Prelessons” on basic math topics and strategies that you need to support your skills.
- 38 lessons that teach every single concept tested on the SAT Math test.
- Four diagnostic Posttests to check your understanding.
- Over 650 realistic practice problems written exclusively for this book.
- Complete, detailed explanations of every single question.
- Over 1,000 pages of detailed content.
With so much information, it can be a bit intimidating when the books first arrive at your door. Fear not, I planned for this!
Let’s learn about how to use this gigantic, comprehensive pair of textbooks to get the most points in the shortest amount of time…
How to Use this SAT Math Prep Book
Although SAT Math Mastery is over 1,000 pages between the two volumes, I understand that most high school students have a very busy schedule and probably will not have enough time to complete the entirety of both volumes.
That’s why - from the very beginning - I purposefully designed SAT Math Mastery to have the biggest impact on your SAT Math scores in the shortest-possible time.
For maximum impact, this book is designed around a set of diagnostic Pretests, followed by 38 complete chapters covering every topic on the on the SAT Math test (with practice problems and explanations for each lesson), and concluded by another set of diagnostic Posttests.
The first step is to take the Pretests. These will identify and pinpoint the exact topics on the SAT Math test that you are struggling with - whether you realize it already or not.
Most students will not have trouble with every single question on the Pretests - therefore, you won’t need to study every single lesson in the books. You’ll only focus on the topics that you got wrong on the Pretest.
This optimizes my SAT Math textbooks for efficiency and ensure you spend the minimum possible time getting the maximum possible score improvement.
Get Better SAT Math Scores with Deep Explanations
Each math lesson contains a complete and thorough walkthrough of exactly what you need to know about each math topic to get every single question right on the SAT Math test. I explain concepts, strategies, techniques, and common mistakes - and supplement each lesson with examples and further explanation.
After each lesson, there’s a practice problem set with example questions that range from relatively simple to extremely challenging. I’ve made sure that every student can experience a progressive improvement in their understanding and confidence with harder and harder SAT Math questions throughout each lesson.
After the practice problem set for each lesson, you’ll find a complete and thorough set of explanations for every practice question.
I know that many students complain about poor explanations in other SAT Math textbooks, so I went deep on explaining exactly how to do each problem. Not only do these explanations cover the exact steps to solve each problem, they also explain my mindset and insights into how and why to solve the question in a certain way.
I don’t just walk through the steps - I explain how you figure out how to do each step. This is crucial to the power of this SAT Math textbook. It’s like you literally have a perfect-scoring SAT math tutor in the room with you, predicting every single question you’ll have and answering them all before you even think to ask.
Imagine how this whole process will create huge improvements in your SAT math score…
Imagine the Process
So, you’ll use the diagnostic Pretests to reveal the exact SAT Math lessons you need to study. You’ll work through those lessons one-by-one, following them immediately with the practice sets that bring you from easier questions to harder ones, and using the explanations after each practice set to completely understand any questions you truly can’t figure out on your own.
After you’ve worked through all the lessons for the questions you missed on the Pretests, you’ll then take the review Posttests at the end of the book. These are just like the Pretests, but harder.
If you have any remaining weaknesses in your understanding of the concepts on the SAT Math test, the Posttests will reveal them to you. This gives you another chance to identify any remaining weak spots or problem areas and return to the lessons for those topics - ensuring that you fix them and deepen your understanding of any topic you’re still shaky on.
By the time you’ve finished working through these books, you’ll have studied every single topic on the SAT Math test, supplemented by strategies and practice problems.
When you arrive to the actual day of the SAT test, you’ll be astonished at how easy the SAT Math test. Everything will look familiar - even obvious. There won’t be any unexpected questions or math topics. You’ll feel overwhelming confidence and speed as you crush through every SAT Math problem that once seemed impossible. Best of all, your SAT Math scores will go way up.
Now, many SAT math books may make similar claims. Let’s explore why this book is the best one you’ve ever seen…
How I Created this SAT Math Prep Book
As a 10-year veteran of SAT prep tutoring, I was constantly dissatisfied with the options I found for SAT math textbooks.
I’ve tried dozens of other SAT Math textbooks with my students, and none of them were satisfactory. Either they felt incomplete, or they didn’t have enough practice problems, or they were disorganized and wasted time, or the questions didn’t feel realistic - some books even covered math topics that I knew didn’t even appear on the SAT test. What’s the point of that?
So, I set out to create the most complete and powerful SAT Math textbooks ever written. Remember, these were intended to help me as an SAT Math tutor and make it easier for me to get great results with my tutoring students.
That’s one of the reasons this book turned out so well - because I was solving my own problem in the best way possible. I wanted the best, most complete, most effective SAT Math textbook that got score improvements for my students.
I spent weeks researching the SAT Math section before I even wrote a single page. I made a complete list of every single math concept and problem type on the SAT Math test.
Then I used my research (supplemented with what I’d already learned about the SAT Math test from my own perfect scores and 10 years of full-time tutoring) to create an outline for the most complete SAT Math textbook ever written - without a single topic that wasn’t necessary for the SAT.
I also wanted every single chapter to be perfect.
What does that mean? It means that a student could pick any topic on the SAT Math test and master it completely just by studying the relevant chapter in SAT Math Mastery. That meant I had to spend hundreds of hours figuring out how to explain each topic in the simplest, most effective ways.
Since I couldn’t be in the room to help you understand, I had to be certain that every lesson stood on its own. This meant writing dozens of supplemental examples and clear step-by-step explanations. It also meant I had to avoid going into unnecessary detail. If it didn’t help you get a higher SAT Math score, I didn’t talk about it.
And then there’s one of the most important parts…
A Textbook Filled with SAT Math Practice
I also wanted to be sure the book had a huge amount of practice problems. It’s so crucial to practice each topic. I am a musician in my free time, and I have always been amazed at the power of practice to break down difficult problems and bring you to a new level of understanding. So, I filled these textbooks with hundreds and hundreds of practice problems, covering a broad range from “very easy” to “extremely difficult.”
But then, what happens if a student didn’t understand how to solve a certain practice problem? I couldn’t stand in the room and explain it to them myself. Instead, the textbook had to make it possible for any student to understand any practice problem and learn from it. So, I put in another huge amount of time writing deep, detailed explanations of every single practice problem.
Finally, I needed to ensure that you double-checked your understanding. That’s why I wrote four final Posttests to put you through ever SAT Math topic again. They reveal any remaining weaknesses in your math skills.
Over all this SAT math content, I layered the best strategies and time-management techniques I’ve discovered in my 10 years of teaching.
So - this textbook finally covers all five requirements for a higher SAT math score: the content, the strategy, the time-management, the practice, and the confidence-building.
It’s truly the best, most comprehensive, most powerful SAT Math textbook that exists today. I created the perfect book that I had always dreamed about having as a tutor.
Results of Using this SAT Math Book
So, what can you expect after studying from SAT Math Mastery?
First, you’ll discover exactly what your math weaknesses are. No more guessing - you’ll know your strong and weak points with pinpoint accuracy.
Next, you’ll finally be able to break through those weaknesses and master the SAT Math topics you’ve always struggled with or feared. Finally, you’ll be able to attack your hardest problems with confidence.
You’ll feel totally prepared for the SAT math section. While your friends and peers whisper about “the hard questions” in hushed tones, you’ll laugh to yourself knowing just how easy those questions truly are.
And most importantly, when your scores come back, they’ll be higher than ever. New college options will open up for you. That dream school you keep thinking about? Your SAT Math scores will be good enough to apply.
Need scholarship money? They’ll be flinging it at you, begging you to come to their college.
You’ll finally have the SAT Math scores to prove what a great student you are. Your potential will shine through your application, and you’ll no longer be held back from the exciting college and career options you’re dreaming about.
But before that happens, you need to understand something…
Why You Need Both Volumes of this SAT Math Prep Book
This textbook, SAT Math Mastery, was originally written as a single giant textbook. I wanted to cover everything that a student could possibly need to massively improve their SAT Math score.
The problem was, when I went to have it printed, that the printer literally could not print such a massive book. It was well over 1,000 pages at that point. The page limit was 590 pages.
I was unwilling to cut or trim from the book. Everything was essential.
So, I made the decision to split the book into two volumes. There was no other way to include everything you needed.
In the end, this SAT Math textbook was released in two volumes: SAT Math Mastery Vol.1: Essential Algebra 1 & Algebra 2 and SAT Math Mastery Vol.2: Advanced Algebra, Geometry, and Statistics.
This was the only way I could publish the SAT math textbook that I dreamed of for my students, without compromises.
So, when you get your own copy of the textbook, you don’t want just one volume. Trust me - you need both volumes of this book for maximum results.
Because it was originally written as a single book, the two volumes make frequent cross-references to each other.
If you absolutely have to start with only one volume, I’d recommend Volume 1 to start with. But you’ll quickly realize what you’re missing and want to order Volume 2.
Save yourself the hassle and just order both volumes right away. Trust me, you’ll know it’s the right choice after you work with them.
How to Get This SAT Math Prep Book
So, now it’s time for you to get your hands on this incredible SAT Math textbook.
I’ve made it available on Amazon in paperback form here: Volume 1 and Volume 2. Remember, you need both volumes of this textbook for the full score-improving benefit. It was originally written as a single complete textbook - but the printer physically couldn’t handle a book that big, so I had to split it into two volumes. Make sure you order both - you’ll need them.
If you’d prefer to download it as an eBook, I’ve set that option up too. Personally I’d recommend the paperback versions - because for most students, it’s easier to work directly on the paper. But, you can also download both volumes of SAT Math Mastery from our website in eBook form here. One advantage is that you’ll get your copies delivered instantly. Still, I’d recommend the paperback versions if possible.
No one writes an SAT Math textbook for fun. I wrote it to help you. There’s only one reason I wrote this book: to help you get higher SAT Math scores. I promise you, this SAT Math textbook will do exactly that.
The sooner you start, the better your score results will be. If you truly want higher SAT Math scores, order your copies today. Every day you wait is a missed opportunity. Order your copies today.
Leave a comment below if you have any questions!