12 Tips For Scoring 800 on the SAT English Section - 2025-2026
When I took an SAT practice test for the first time in 9th grade, I ran into a common challenge many students face on the English section: after eliminating two obviously wrong answers, I was left torn between two that both seemed reasonable. After weeks of practice, I realized that the English section felt challenging because I was unfamiliar with its structure and question types. Once I began to recognize that the SAT is written according to specific patterns, the test became much more predictable, and I was able to consistently achieve a perfect 800 on the English section.
The SAT is not a test of IQ, but of how well you can study. With the right tools, strategies, and an early start, it is possible to improve your SAT score significantly, even to an 800. Here are the study tips and strategies I used to help me get there.
Part I: Strengthening Your Foundational Skills
Many SAT English strategies only work under the assumption that you actually understand what you are reading. If you’ve ever stared at a passage on the SAT and thought, “I have no idea what this author is even saying,” it’s completely normal to feel this way at first. The truth is, comprehension - not test tricks - is the foundation of the English section. To aim for a top score, there is no getting around strengthening your ability to read dense texts and learning the necessary grammar rules to answer Writing & Language questions.
1. Read Actively and with Purpose
One of the most common culprits causing students to struggle with comprehending what they are reading is reading passively. While the passages are only typically a paragraph or two, they can still be quite dense. To avoid needing to reread each passage many times, which can be costly when you only have 32 minutes to answer 27 questions in a module, practice reading each passage as if it is the most interesting thing in the world – even when it isn’t. When you trick your brain into thinking that what you’re reading is interesting, you're more likely to focus, absorb, and retain the information for longer periods of time.
One of my favorite strategies to encourage active engagement is to read the question before the passage. That way, you can guide your reading with a purpose in mind. This allows you to look out for specific information along the way that may be helpful to arriving at the right answer more quickly. On the digital SAT, I recommend becoming familiar with the highlighting tool and using it to help mark important information (i.e. people, main ideas, transitions) as you read. Especially on a digital screen, physically engaging with the text can help you stay on track and better process key information.
2. Build Your Vocabulary
While you may not need to know every word to answer a question correctly, knowing a wide range of words will undoubtedly help you read passages faster and understand questions more accurately. Many of the vocabulary words you will encounter on the SAT will be everyday academic words, but the SAT will often use words with secondary meanings.
As you are reviewing your practice tests, note down all unfamiliar words and look up their meaning(s), paying attention to the different contexts in which you might use them. One exercise that may help you more easily remember the different usages of a word is to write down example sentences for each usage of the word. Then, use flashcards to help regularly test your knowledge.
While this may seem laborious, most of the vocabulary words you will encounter will be useful to know going into college and beyond, so it may be fruitful to become familiar with these terms now. Over time, this consistent vocabulary practice will make reading dense passages feel more approachable.
3. Master Grammar Rules
The SAT English section contains questions that test Writing & Language, and for these questions, you need to master key grammar rules. If you are a native English speaker, you may be able to answer some questions by instinct, but it isn’t enough to guarantee a perfect score. The test is specifically designed to assess your understanding of formal grammar rules, so relying solely on your intuition is risky. Learning the rules directly is the only way to consistently ensure that you will choose the correct answer. Focus on mastering the rules that appear most frequently on the test: subject-verb agreement, verb tense, parallelism, modifiers, punctuation, and transitions. These rules form the backbone of most Writing & Language questions, so building a strong foundation in them will help increase your accuracy.
When practicing, take the time to dissect why the correct choices are right and, just as importantly, why the incorrect ones are wrong. For every incorrect choice, ask yourself “What grammar rule did it stumble over?”
4. Don’t Panic Over Hard Words
A lot of students lose confidence when they encounter unfamiliar vocabulary, especially technical jargon in science passages. The truth is, you almost never need to know the technical jargon. When a passage mentions something like “Coriolis effect”, treat the technical term as a placeholder – you should be able to tease out the general meaning or at least tone of the word using the context around it.
When analyzing context, pay attention specifically to sentence structure. Here is where understanding grammar rules can also prove to be helpful. Ask yourself whether the unfamiliar word is a noun, verb, adjective, or other part of speech, and think about its relationship to other pieces of the sentence. For example, in the sentence, “The flu was inexorable, striking me despite all my precautions”, the vocabulary word “inexorable” is an adjective used to describe the flu. Without looking up its definition, we can infer from the participial phrase “striking me despite all my precautions”, which shows the effect of the flu being inexorable, that inexorable most likely means inevitable.
Transitions are another key tool for understanding unfamiliar words. Words and phrases like “since”, “although”, and “therefore” also signal the relationship between ideas and can help reveal what the word means in relation to other parts of the sentence. For instance, if an unknown word appears after “however”, it may indicate contrast or opposition to what came before “however”. Paying attention to these cues can help you infer meaning for unfamiliar vocabulary.
5. Build Reading Into Your Daily Routine
Getting better at SAT Reading isn’t just about doing practice questions, but it’s also about training your brain to read complex material efficiently. Try incorporating reading into your daily routine leading up to the exam, whether it’s a novel, short story, or news article – even if it’s just for 15 minutes a day. Reading different texts can expose you to the same types of vocabulary, sentence structures, and argumentative patterns that appear on the SAT. Just as consistent running helps you prepare for a marathon, consistent reading is the most effective way to improve your reading speed and comprehension by test day.
Part II: Mastering Strategic Test Taking Skills
Once you have built the foundational skills to comfortably read complex passages and apply key grammar rules, the next step is to master strategic test taking skills.
The SAT English section consists of specific, defined question types that consistently appear on every test. Understanding this is crucial: when you recognize that each question belongs to a certain type, you can apply different strategies accordingly. For example, some questions ask you to determine the meaning of a word, some questions ask you to identify the main purpose or overall structure of the provided text, some require identifying the piece of evidence that most strongly supports that claim, and others test your ability to apply a specific grammar rule.
We’ll save the unique strategies that may be helpful for each question type for a future blog post so we can explore them in detail. Right now, let’s delve into some tips that can be helpful across many different question types in the English section.
6. Understand that every question has one correct answer and, therefore, three wrong ones.
The SAT is a standardized test used to evaluate college readiness for millions of students across the nation and internationally every year. Therefore, it cannot be a subjective test. For every question in every section, there’s exactly one correct answer and three that are wrong for specific reasons. Many students get tripped up by this because they don’t understand what constitutes a right vs. wrong answer.
For reading comprehension questions, in particular, a correct answer directly and fully addresses the question and is ENTIRELY supported by evidence from the passage. An incorrect answer, on the other hand, can be any of the following:
Stated in the passage but doesn’t answer the question: Some answers may be factually true based on the passage but fail to address what the question is actually asking.
Not stated or supported in the passage: Even if the answer seems plausible or aligns with your prior knowledge, it is incorrect unless the text provides clear evidence to support it.
Partially right and partially wrong: Many wrong answers reuse exact words or phrases from the passage to make them look correct, but they also slip in details that are inaccurate. Watch out for choices that directly contradict what the passage says. Even a single wrong word is enough to make an answer incorrect.
Stitches evidence together incorrectly: Some wrong answers combine pieces of information from different parts of the passage. While each piece may appear accurate on its own, they may be joined in a way that is not actually supported. Pay attention to answers that seem to “mix and match” details in a way the passage never does.
Too broad or too narrow: Some answers may seem related but don’t match the scope of the question. For example, a main idea question requires a broad summary, while a command of evidence question requires a precise detail. If the answer choice is broader or narrower than what the question is asking, it’s incorrect.
Presents a creative interpretation of the text based on subtle or inferred ideas instead of direct evidence: In English class, you are often encouraged to come up with different creative interpretations of a text. On the SAT, however, the correct answer must be directly supported by evidence in the passage and should not be a stretch.
Too extreme: The SAT prefers moderate, text-supported statements rather than sweeping generalizations, so answer choices that use extreme qualifiers like “always”, “never”, or “must” are often incorrect.
When you’re studying, practice consistently identifying three wrong answers rather than just hunting for the correct one. This trains you to better understand common SAT traps, making it easier for you to recognize them and arrive at the right choice on test day. And remember: even inference questions are based on evidence. If you’re stuck between two choices, reread the relevant part of the passage carefully and ask yourself, “Which one is 100% backed up by the text?”
7. Predict Before You Look at the Answer Choices
Another strategy many of our top-scoring students find effective is predicting the answer before looking at the answer choices. First, think about what the correct answer should be based on the passage or sentence, then compare your prediction to the answer options to find the one that matches most closely.
Looking at the options first can cause your brain to get anchored to them, tempting you to rationalize why a choice might be correct even if it isn’t. By predicting first, you establish a clear standard and can evaluate the answer choices against your reasoning, rather than being swayed by options that sound plausible but aren’t supported by the text. If you often find yourself stuck between two seemingly convincing answers, this strategy can help you focus and make the correct choice more confidently.
Part III: Practice, Practice, Practice
Mastering the SAT English section isn’t just about learning rules and strategies – it’s about reinforcing them through consistent, focused practice. The best way to improve your score is to practice with real SAT-style questions.
8. Focus on High-Quality Materials
When it comes to SAT practice, how you go about it matters. Spending hours on low-quality third-party materials may be counterproductive, because they often do not reflect the style and logic of real SAT questions. The College Board’s official practice tests are, in my opinion, the best tool for learning the test’s exact patterns.
Ideally, you should complete 7 official digital practice SAT tests before test day and space them out to allow for thorough review between each one. In the beginning, you might opt to take the paper version of these tests in an untimed setting to answer all the questions and assess your knowledge gaps without the time pressure (Note: Unlike the digital version, the paper test is nonadaptive, and therefore has 33 questions instead of 27 per module). However, as you approach test day, it’s important to simulate real testing conditions as closely as possible to build pacing by taking the digital versions.
Need more practice? The College Board has two official PSAT practice tests, which can serve as helpful additional practice, as the PSAT tests the same question types as the SAT. The College Board also offers an Educator Question Bank, which contains hundreds of additional official practice questions broken up by question type. You can choose to “Exclude Active Questions” to remove the subset of questions that exist in the full-length digital practice tests, so you don’t spoil these before you have had a chance to take the tests.
Some students may also find it helpful to retake the official digital practice SAT tests, often switching from digital to the paper version which would give you 6 additional SAT English questions per module. If you’re concerned about relying solely on memory when retaking these tests, I still strongly recommend at least revisiting questions you previously answered incorrectly, ensuring you fully understand what makes the answer correct the second time around.
As for third-party resources, one area where I would specifically recommend picking up a third-party resource is for learning and practicing grammar rules. My favorite book for this is Erica Meltzer’s The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar.
9. Track and Analyze Your Mistakes
One of the biggest shifts in my SAT preparation came when I started tracking my mistakes systematically. After each practice test, I would log every missed or guessed question in a notebook, noting the question type and why I chose the wrong answer.
You can use the official explanations from the College Board to help you understand your mistakes. However, if you find the official explanations too vague (which they often are), it might be helpful to work with a high-quality tutor who can break down the logic clearly and help you develop strategies for avoiding the same errors in the future. At NexTier Prep, our tutors – all in the top 1% of scorers – have guided students to an average score improvement of over 150 points by focusing on key concepts and effective test-taking strategies. Check out our SAT prep service here.
10. Drilling Your Weaknesses
Once you’ve identified the types of questions that trip you up, the most effective way to improve is targeted drilling, focusing on one question type at a time. Instead of randomly practicing questions, pick a single area of weakness, such as punctuation errors or main ideas, and drill questions in that area using the Educator Question Bank and/or other resources of your choosing. Again, as you practice, make sure to actively review the questions you get wrong to help you recognize recurring patterns and common traps for that specific question type.
Part IV: Avoiding Careless Mistakes
Once you’ve built up your accuracy, the difference between a top score and a perfect score often comes down to avoiding careless mistakes. These small errors, such as misreading a question or overlooking a subtle detail in a reading passage, can cost you points even if you know the material perfectly.
11. Mind the Details
To help prevent slip-ups that could cost you unnecessary points,
Read through all answer choices before deciding. Even if you think you have found the correct answer, make sure to read all of the other options to make sure you didn’t fall for a trick answer.
Use the strikethrough feature to track eliminated answers. This can help prevent second-guessing and make it easier to revisit questions if needed.
If you finish a section early, don’t move on immediately. Use all of the remaining time to carefully review your work. Double-checking often catches small errors, such as questions you’ve misread or details you’ve overlooked.
Mark questions you’re not 100% sure about and prioritize revisiting them when time allows. Marking uncertain questions ensures that you are using any extra time you have to think through the difficult questions that are most likely to cost you points.
12. Get a Good Night’s Sleep Before Test Day
Finally, sleep plays a crucial role in memory and focus, so the lack thereof can directly affect your performance. The night before the SAT, aim for a good night’s sleep and avoid cramming late into the night. On test day, having a clear mind will help you read passages more efficiently, catch subtle details, and avoid careless errors.
Parting Thoughts
Scoring a perfect 800 on the SAT English section requires both preparation and focus. Even if you are not aiming for a perfect score, building strong foundational skills, learning strategic test taking skills, doing consistent practice, and avoiding careless errors can help you improve your score drastically. As this can quickly become a lot to manage, especially during the school year, I recommend creating a clear schedule that spaces out your practice tests, targeted drills, daily reading exercises, and review sessions over several weeks or, ideally, several months.
If you want personalized guidance to make this process even more effective, our SAT program at NexTier Prep pairs you with tutors in the top 1% of scorers who help students identify weaknesses, master core strategies, and craft study schedules tailored to their needs.
And keep in mind that the SAT is just one component of your application – getting a perfect score on it is absolutely not necessary to get into your dream school. However, just aiming for it can significantly help you achieve your highest potential score.
