Hey everyone,

I know it's been a while, but I'm back again with some juicy August SAT topic predictions. I'm actually quite partial to the August dates as that's when I got my 1600 two years ago. So, let's get into it.

First off, I'd like to point out that no one can predict the exact questions that will come up. But the same topics come up again and again, which is why I'm predicting these 3 major topics to come up:

Prediction #1: Tricky Surface Area and Volume

For those of you who took the May and/or June SATs, you might have seen some crazy hard geometry questions like this:

Cylinder A is similar to cylinder B. The volume of cylinder A is 5.13 cubic units and the volume of cylinder B is 1.52 cubic units. The surface area of cylinder A is 22.41 square units. What is the surface area, in square units, of cylinder B?

Try it out yourself before I go over it. Now, I'll point out that the SAT does not provide surface area formulas in the reference sheet for 3D figures. They expect you to know how to piece together surface area from the individual 2D faces. But for this question, you don't need those formulas at all.

Simply note that the volume ratio of A to B is 5.13 / 1.52, or 3.375. Since volume is 3-dimensional, and the cylinders are similar, we know that the volume will grow by the scale factor cubed. So, take the cube root of 3.375 to get a scale factor of 1.5. This means that all the sides of cylinder A are 1.5 times the lengths of cylinder B, and in 3 dimensions, that 1.5x turns into 1.5^3, or 3.375 times the volume.

Since we've reverse-engineered the original (linear) scale factor, and we know surface area is two-dimensional, that means any linear scale factor will be applied twice (one time for each dimension). So the ratio of Surface Area A to Surface Area B should be 1.5^2, or 2.25, meaning B is 9.96 units².

Prediction #2: Obscure Vocabulary

This is the category that trips up even the strongest students. Example below:

Although Mistress and Maid, which depicts two women perusing a letter, is atypical of Johannes Veremer’s genre paintings (scenes of everyday life) in that its subjects are set against a plain background instead of - as in Woman Writing a Letter, with Her Maid - a richly detailed one, the painting nonetheless ______ many signature traits of Vermeer’s art, including prominent use of yellow pigments.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

1. eschews

2. repudiates

3. predates

4. evinces

This type of question is tough when you don't know all the words. But there are tips we can use to boost your chances of success. First off, look at prefixes and suffixes. The word "predates" has "pre" in it, meaning before. I would eliminate that, as it means something came before (time-wise). I would also eliminate "repudiates", as the prefix "re" makes me think of "back" or "again", or similar words like "rejects". Instead, based on the context, the word I want is something that "shows" the signature traits.

At this point, you might just need to take a 50-50 shot — after all, it's better to answer quickly and move on than to stay stuck on a problem for 5 minutes. But for those of you who are wondering, the best answer is evinces, as it means to indicate or show something clearly, whereas eschew means to avoid or refrain from doing something. Keep those words in mind for your test, because they do come up a fair amount.

Prediction #3: Higher-Order Polynomial Problems

This isn't a particularly challenging topic, but it can still throw you off if you're not prepared for it.

One of the factors of 8x⁴ + 26x² + 21 is ax² + b, where a and b are positive constants. Which of the following is a possible value of ab?

1. 3

2. 12

3. 14

4. 28

This problem is a simple factoring question, though quite unusual, since most of these tend to be quadratics. Still, you can set up the factorization as (2x² + 3)(4x² + 7) in the same way you'd do a regular quadratic, just with x² instead of x. Since both factors are in ax² + b form, you can take either ab = (2)(3) = 6, or ab = (4)(7) = 28, making our answer D.

The actual SAT, in my experience, is always getting harder and harder — and further from the Bluebook practice tests. If you want to read my full predictions guide with all 10 topics (along with 15 fully solved, extra-hard practice questions) you can find it here.

I know many of you have already joined our SAT Bootcamp as well, but if not, stay tuned for my future test prep updates and predictions!

Keep prepping,

Dan