Test Hacks: How To Master the Literature and History Subject Tests

by Stephen Cedars, Test Prep Specialist
stephen@forumeducation.nyc

First, students planning on taking SAT subject tests should start zeroing in on which tests to take now if they haven’t already. A diagnostic will help to determine both the type and the degree of prep necessary for a student to excel.

And then we can get to cracking the tests themselves.

Contrary to popular belief, the humanities tests don’t actually require an expert knowledge of their subjects. In fact, they’re quite susceptible to test strategies, including those often deployed for the more general ACT and SAT. To take just two tests:

• For the Literature test, for example, students should refine their ability to traffic in a passage’s ‘main idea’ instead of seeking a command of every detail in a centuries-old poem.
• Likewise, for the History tests, students first master the ‘big ideas’ of the subject before overloading with detail. Instead of memorizing every U.S. President, for example, they should focus on identifying how the big shifts in American history influenced the types of presidents we elected. If students know their historical trends, they can determine the *point* of the question based on the time period in question to determine which answer fits thematically.

Only a select few students will ever learn everything they need to know — on the history tests, there are 90 questions (95 on World History) with 5 answer choices each, meaning total knowledge would require command of up to 450 historical events — but all students can successfully navigate answer choices if they learn the way answers are constructed to represent big ideas. In other words, prep for these tests is as much about mastering patterns of the test as it is about mastering the patterns of history.

Of course, mastering these test strategies makes a difference only if a student has time to prepare — so if you haven’t already, it’s about time to get started.