As a not-very-technical person this kind of thing is a nightmare. So I let it go for too long, resulting in a rocky transition instead of a smooth one. Lesson learned for the millionth time: ignoring the problem won’t make it go away.

Anyway, it looks like not only is the problem fixed, but now the site is running better than it ever has. You will likely notice that pages load faster, drills are scored more quickly, etc. Yay!

Unfortunately, a few folks who created accounts during the transition time will need to recreate those. If you are having trouble logging into the site, that is why. I have emailed all the users this applies to with procedures to get going again. If that email doesn’t help, or if you can’t find it, please reach out to webmaster@pwntestprep.com and we’ll get you sorted.

Sorry for the interruption this weekend, and happy prepping.

The Math Guide Online is pretty far along, and updates go live on the MGO as I make them. The print book (this will be the 6th edition of this thing, I can’t believe it) I hope to have available later this spring.

If you’re dead set on using a print book and you can’t wait for the new edition, the 5th edition is still a pretty good resource for you as long as you ignore a few outdated bits:

• Ignore all references to Official Tests, including the Official Test breakdowns at the end of every chapter and the full breakdowns at the end of the book. These are the paper tests and you aren’t taking the paper test.
• Ignore any distinction between “calculator” and “no calculator” questions/sections. This distinction no longer matters on the Digital SAT.
• Ignore the first two subsections in the General Test Strategies chapter. It’s no longer true that the hardest questions are the least important, and the concept of target numbers is also now obsolete.
• Ignore the chapter on Complex Numbers. Those aren’t appearing on the Digital SAT.

That’s all for now. Thanks for your continued interest and support. It’s wild to me that this little website that I started on a whim more than a decade ago is still going strong, and I will do my best to make sure the 6th edition of the Math Guide is worth the wait.

– Mike

One book to rule them all

I published the 5th edition of the Math Guide almost a year ago(!), in February 2022. In some ways, it was a minor update: much of the chapter-by-chapter content remains unchanged from the 4th edition because in my estimation, I had the content nailed down pretty well already. In another way, though, it was a big update: I added 200 additional practice questions, ranked by difficulty as determined by how well people did on them when they were used as Daily PWN questions.

Anyway, for a long time I left the 4th edition up for sale too, and I also continued to sell the supplemental Extra SAT Math Practice Volume 1 book, which had 125 Daily PWN questions sorted by difficulty. In 2023, I’ve finally taken those books out of print. You may still be able to snag used copies if you badly want them, but in my humble opinion the 5th edition (which contains all the content of both now-expired books PLUS A BUNCH MORE) is the way to go.

Daily PWN format change

Since its launch in (checks notes…omg) December 2016, The Daily PWN had been an email-based service. Sign up for the email list, get an email every (week)day with a practice question. What ended up happening was that a lot of people signed up and used the service for a few weeks and then stopped. Which is fine—it was supposed to work that way! But it ended up being a LOT of email list maintenance for me and it occurred to me (after I developed a Wordle habit) that people don’t need email reminders to do their daily puzzles, etc.

So starting in 2023, the questions are just being posted overnight every non-holiday weekday here on the website. There’s an RSS feed if you want to be reminded when a new post goes up, and you can even sign up for a service like Feedrabbit if you still want to receive email reminders. I’m just not going to be sending the email reminders myself anymore.

I’m very proud to announce that the 5th edition of the world-renowned PWN the SAT Math Guide is now available at Amazon. This book keeps all the best parts of the 4th edition (which also remains available, for now) and provides some sweet updates.

Most notably, the 5th edition contains 200+ new questions, most of which exist in a new section aptly named Extra Practice. These are questions from the Daily PWN, sorted by difficulty (according to correct and incorrect responses submitted online) and adapted for print.

It also includes a few highly requested content updates (e.g., box plots) and even some concepts trimmed out because College Board didn’t end up testing them—the Complex Numbers chapter got shorter.

And lastly, of course, the 5th edition also contains Official Test Breakdowns for all the available official College Board/Khan Academy practice tests (the 4th edition only had the first 6 in print, the rest you had to get online).

I finished working on this update at almost the exact same time College Board announced that they’ll be transitioning to online testing. Awesome timing, right? But for folks in the US, anyway, paper tests are still the main format through Spring 2024. Further, even for those testing digitally, the test content isn’t changing! So while I will of course be working on an updated guide for the digital future, the 5th edition is the book for today.

I’m real proud of it, and I hope it serves you well.

Note: Of course, the Math Guide Online is also up to date with all the changes to the 5th edition, and will always remain synced with the latest updates.

At long last, and just in time for the summer prep rush, the Math Guide is back to showing “usually ships in 1-2 days” at Amazon. (UPDATE 5/30/2020: now it’s all the way back in stock!)

I still don’t have stock to ship myself, so if you want a physical book you have to go through Amazon.

Also, we’re about 3 months until the August SAT, so if that’s your test, now is an optimal time to sign up for a 3-month subscription to the Math Guide Online. Pro tip: sign up for the free 3-day trial, and if you like it (I think you will), you can carry all your progress over into your paid subscription.

New 3-month subscriptions purchased between now and May 29 will also be extended through the August date.

Stay safe out there.

A bunch of folks have asked me if there’s a free trial for the new Math Guide Online. Well, at launch there wasn’t but now there is! Click above.

If you’re ready to purchase access to the whole guide, you may do so below.

With a subscription, you receive instant access to the Math Guide, enhanced with:

• Interactive quizzes
• Progress tracking
• Mobile-friendly* responsive layout

Subscriptions do not auto-renew—you’re only billed once for the subscription you purchase. If at the end of your subscription you want more, you can buy another subscription and pick up right where you left off.

* Some large images and tables may benefit from a zoom, but the vast majority of all pages display perfectly on smartphones.

Can you please share a list of topics that I need to master to achieve a 600 on the Math section? I do not think I have to learn all the topics, please give me as concrete and narrow list as possible. I think this would be useful for most of the people preparing for the test.

Apologies—I respect and honor your question but I cannot provide a concrete and narrow list. Hopefully you’ll find the answer that follows illuminating anyway.

You’re correct that you don’t need to learn all the topics to achieve a 600. What makes this question hard to answer generally is that you probably already know some topics pretty well, and others with the same goal might know different topics pretty well. Further complicating matters is that all topics are tested at a range of difficulty levels; even folks who have a pretty good mastery of parabola questions might occasionally miss a very hard parabola question.

A few months ago I published this post, which I think is important an useful in approaching your question. What it tells you is that, based on previous scoring tables, you’re probably going to need 36 correct answers to get a score of 600 (on the most forgiving scoring table you’d need 32 correct; on the most punishing scoring table you’d need 40 correct). So the real question for you is: what’s your path to about 40 correct (or what 18 questions can you ignore)?

There are 58 math questions on the SAT, broken out thusly:

• 19 Heart of Algebra
  • ~12 Translating between Words and Math
  • ~9 Algebraic Manipulation
  • ~9 Lines or Systems of Linear Equations
• 16 Passport to Advanced Math
  • ~3 Functions
  • ~3 Exponents and Exponential Functions
  • ~3 Quadratics, Binomial Squares & Difference of Two Squares
  • ~2 Parabolas
  • ~2 Polynomials
• 17 Problem Solving & Data Analysis
  • ~9 Data Analysis
  • ~5 Ratios & Proportionality
  • ~3 Percents & Percent Change
  • ~2 Measures of Central Tendency and Variability
  • ~1 Designing and Interpreting Experiments and Studies
• 6 Additional Topics in Math
  • ~2 Angles, Triangles, and Polygons
  • ~2 Circles
  • ~1 Right Triangles
  • ~1 Complex Numbers

To be clear, the indented, not bolded bullets represent my own subcategorizations and rough frequency calculations, while the main, bolded bullets represent College Board’s broad categories and official distributions. My categorizations don’t always line up perfectly with College Board’s. For example, I often assign a question multiple categories: a question can be both “Translating between Words and Math” and “Systems of Linear Equations”, not all “Translating…” questions are “Heart of Algebra”, many questions categorized as “Data Analysis” also include another topic, etc.

So anyway, while you could theoretically ignore Heart of Algebra, sweep everything else and still have a good shot at 600, that’s probably not your path. If you’re considering taking this test at all then you’ve probably already got some of the Heart of Algebra content locked down. You might, however, look at the list above and decide that you can safely avoid studying polynomials, exponents, and any geometry, if you hate those topics. Even with those exclusions, you’d have a pretty good cushion.

My real recommendation is to take a practice test or two and analyze your mistakes. Either use the tables at the back of my book to categorize your missed questions or make your own best judgments. Then use the list above to judge whether you afford to continue making that kind of mistake.

First, if you’re a senior and this was your last attempt before you finalize your applications, remember that the SAT is but one of many facets of your candidacy. You don’t get into your dream school (or any school) on scores alone—the most selective schools regularly reject people with perfect scores. The SAT is an important factor and it’s worth prepping for, but surveys of admissions offices consistently show that grades and strength of curriculum are rated higher than SAT/ACT scores as admissions factors (see chapter 3 of this report). So the breathless drama of score release day notwithstanding, you’ve been slowly solidifying the most important aspect of your college application for the last three and a half years. Stay positive, focus on the things you can still be doing to strengthen your application (personal statements, etc.) and enjoy the rest of senior year.

Now, juniors (and younger):

Don’t panic. The gif at the top of this post is a joke. Panic isn’t productive. You’re still way early in this process; you have many more chances to take the SAT and plenty of time to improve. Perhaps you’ve heard before that the best thing to do when thrown off a horse is to get right back on it. The same applies to the SAT. Feeling sorry for yourself won’t help; focused and assiduous prep will. Take today to lick your wounds, and start working in earnest tomorrow.

Stay focused. The options for test prep are vast, from books (I know a good one!) to Khan Academy to private tutoring, but the key to your success will be your own personal commitment to improving. If it felt crappy when you didn’t get the score you wanted today, remember this feeling every time you’re tempted to blow off SAT prep. Large improvements are possible, but they usually require dedication and focus.

Data is your friend. Keep track of questions that stump you, reading passages that flummox you, grammar rules that keep tripping you up. Maybe you take pictures of the questions you miss and keep them in a folder on your phone that you can swipe through on the subway, or maybe you cut questions out of your practice tests and make a physical scrapbook. Figure out an organized way to return often to your weakest areas and before you know it, they’ll be strengths.

Do something every day. Even if it’s just a single practice question (like my Daily PWN emails), keep yourself in the rhythm. Some days, you’ll need to spend some real time (like to take practice tests, ugh) but 2 minutes a day on tricky practice questions turns into an hour of valuable prep after a month.