Unbeknownst to me, I started preparing for the SAT the minute I started kindergarten.

My mom immigrated from Moscow, Russia at the age of 21. She insisted that my three siblings and I communicate with each other in Russian, read the classics of Russian literature, and most consequential to my approach to standardized testing, grapple with problems in elementary, middle, and high school Russian math workbooks. So, I became friends with an abundant amount of mathematical concepts before my classmates had even heard of them. Seeing math problems that were bound to be on the SAT before even thinking about taking the exam was massively beneficial. Consequently, when I did start intentionally preparing to ace the SAT, practicing math was like a walk in the park.

The first time I consciously acknowledged that I was preparing for a standardized test was at the beginning of the spring semester of my freshman year in high school. I sensed that I’d be taking the SAT sometime in my junior year and believed that the earlier I started practicing, the more confident I’d be in my exam-taking skills. But, rather than spending hours every day on Khan Academy’s Digital SAT prep or poring over Kaplan SAT prep study books, for almost two straight years I’d devote two to three hours a week to intensely studying. This range of study time was perfect: I wouldn’t become burnt out with the exam itself and completely give up on studying, but I’d also slowly become accustomed to typical exam problems, progressively learn new skills, and master testing on a time crunch.

I took a few practice SATs to analyze my overall placement in the exam’s scoring distribution. Even during those first few practice exams, I stuck with a strategy. I made sure not to cling to one question for too long and accepted the fact that I wouldn’t be fully confident in my answer to all questions. Thanks to the assessment magic of Khan Academy’s Digital SAT prep, I was able to diagnose areas of the exam where I struggled frequently, particularly the SAT Reading section and a few SAT Writing section skills. I naturally felt more composed during both of the exam’s Math sections because I was acquainted and comfortable with the problems on the page. However, this wasn’t the case for the Writing and Reading sections. To overcome this obstacle, I’d dedicate more time to questions that would often appear in these sections; so, of my two to three hours of SAT time a week, at least an hour and a half was spent on the Reading and Writing sections. But I also practiced outside of my regular study times. I’d read Ray Bradbury short stories and other science fiction literature for fun on the weekends and almost immediately noticed a significant improvement in my exam scores.

So, my approach to preparing for a standardized exam is multifaceted: I cultivated an adaptive mindset that was prepared to attack any kind of problem, even those I may have never seen before. I developed a methodology that allowed me to break a question down into its components, create unique strategies pertaining to the category of the problem, and efficiently move through the exam. I amassed hundreds of hours of practice before I even stepped foot in a testing center. And even though I still felt nervous on the dreaded day of my SAT, I felt confident that the work I had put in would finally pay off.