Okay, so that's not what it stands for, and that "and" shouldn't even be cap­i­tal­ized… but rid­ing the wave of col­lege appli­ca­tion tips galore, today's BG piece of advice will focus on prep­ping for that behe­moth of a col­lege app mile­stone: the SAT. And I nes­tled in a great vocab study word in that last sen­tence for those of you cram­ming for a pend­ing test date.

A quick def­i­n­i­tion: The SAT is a four-hour stan­dard­ized test that mea­sures if a stu­dent is ready for col­lege. While the test used to be scored out of 1600 points, it has since changed its grad­ing struc­ture be scored out of 2400 points (a com­bi­na­tion of three 800-point sec­tions: math, crit­i­cal read­ing and writing).

(While the ACT is another good stan­dard­ized test to take to sup­ple­ment SAT scores, which I took as a high schooler, this post will focus on the SAT.)

Here's the gen­eral rubric every SAT-prepper needs to know for the exam:

Reg­is­ter

Sign up for the SAT at www.collegeboard.com. Col­lege­Board is a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion (like Bet­ter­Grads!) that runs the SAT, and you'll need to go through them to sign up for the test. Not only do they hold the lock and key to how you'll look in com­par­i­son to the num­ber 2400, but they offer a ton of great study mate­ri­als on their site, here.

Take advan­tage of their prac­tice tests, "ques­tion of the day" and test-taking tips.

Study

While this is a no-brainer (wait, that's an oxy­moron), Col­lege­Board is only the first place you should look for study mate­ri­als. The fol­low­ing are other avenues to con­sider when prepar­ing your­self for the SAT:

Kaplan study mate­ri­als.

Buy one of their books. Seri­ously. Not only does Kaplan take an inves­tiga­tive approach to stan­dard­ized tests to teach you the ins and outs of how they work, but their mate­ri­als are writ­ten in a con­ver­sa­tional, relat­able lan­guage. Plus, if you sign up for one of their many SAT-prep courses, you're bound to get an intel­li­gent, ener­getic teacher who will moti­vate you to study way more than that dreary packet of math prob­lems you down­loaded from Col­lege­Board. The courses are pricey, but most tes­ti­mo­ni­als will attest to get­ting your money's worth.

Dictionary.com Word of the Day.

Sign up! There's noth­ing worse than com­ing across a 5-answer multiple-choice vocab­u­lary ques­tion and know­ing that it couldn't pos­si­bly be the first three, think­ing it could maybe be the fourth one, and won­der­ing if the last one is in the wrong lan­guage. If your test is in two months and you learn one new word per day from Dictionary.com until then, that equals up to… well, you need math prac­tice, too, so I'll let you fig­ure that one out.

Spar­knotes isn't just for Shake­speare anymore.

Did you know that Spar­knotes is a great free resource for math study guides? While they go all the way up to cal­cu­lus II, you'll want to peruse (and even­tu­ally tackle) pre-algebra through alge­bra II. Many high school seniors haven't taken alge­bra or geom­e­try for a few years, so instead of jump­ing right into these study guides after a long dry spell, see if you can find your old notes and quizzes to jog your mem­ory. Rehash­ing for­mu­las and word prob­lems in your own hand­writ­ing where you had to "show your work" can bring back rules of expo­nents and the­o­rems you thought were lost to the depths of math­e­matic oblit­er­a­tion forever!

(Once you fol­low us on Twit­ter, fol­low Dictionary.com and fol­low Spar­kNotes, too!)

Pre­pare

Like a boyscout. You can study your butt off and scour Kaplan and Col­lege­Board mate­ri­als until you're parked at the test­ing cen­ter. How­ever, a lot of good, hard work often­times goes to waste by stu­dents who don't ade­quately pre­pare them­selves for test day.

A few mind-preserving tips for the day of the test:

Get a good night's sleep. Cram­ming in a few extra vocab words at 2 a.m. before you have to wake up at 6 a.m. will only hurt you. You're prob­a­bly not think­ing clearly and acci­den­tally study­ing words from your French class, any­way. Just chill out and give your mind the REM cycles it deserves. You're as pre­pared as you're gonna be.

As a mat­ter of fact, don't even study the day before. Take the whole day before your test to clear your mind, eat a good meal, pep-talk your­self to instill con­fi­dence, and make sure you've orga­nized your test-day materials.

Which brings me to.… your test-day mate­ri­als. Make sure you thor­oughly read CollegeBoard's "SAT Test Day" Web site, which lists every­thing you'll need to bring. This includes an ID card, pen­cils, a cal­cu­la­tor, your brain…

Bring a sweat­shirt, and don't drink too much water before the test. Nothing's worse than chat­ter­ing your teeth in an over-air-conditioned room and jump­ing out of your chair to ask the proc­tor to use the restroom every twenty min­utes. While you should eat break­fast, test day may be a good time to slightly dehy­drate your­self and bun­dle up with layers.

Many college-prep Web sites offer great SAT advice, and these are some that have worked for the col­lege grad­u­ates here at Bet­ter­Grads. If you have some more juicy tips for our read­ers who are cur­rently prep­ping for the SAT, please share your insights with a com­ment below.

Are you cur­rently prep­ping for the SAT? Still have ques­tions? Let us know!