PSAT Review! The Final Blow S1E5.

It's testing season, and the CollegeBoard is high on cash right now- and unfortunately, I had to take the PSAT with everyone else. Luckily, this me the opportunity to give it a bit of a review.

So, let's just get straight into this- the purpose of the PSAT is to prepare you for the SAT, and it does it well. It covers the SAT topics well, if maybe a bit more simple manner. However, it does happen to lack an essay portion.

For it's purpose, it does its job well. However as test, it's not very good. It's writing portion asks subjective questions- they provide no context for what they want, besides grammar. For example, answer A may seem more suitable for my reading taste, and answer B may not. However, if a context was provided, I could base my answer off of the provided context. But, like I said, there is none. When most of its answers can have a case for them, something is wrong. At the very least, it could ask you for an explanation. Your answer is based more on the opinion of the grader than the cold hard facts. Which is pathetic.

And unfortunately, the reading isn't much better- the articles are not even borderline captivating. There's is absolutely no *flavor* in any of the articles. Even more mainstream ones I find to be more interesting.Which isn't a good thing. It is very easy for someone to subconsciously zone out of an article as bland as they appear on the test.

Luckily, the math portion is far better. The answers are based on fact, the problems not to hard, and they have a decent grasp on the concept. However, the problems are terribly mainstream, bit to be honest, there's not much room for improvement there.

And, really that's all one needs to know about the PSAT. It's good for what it needs to be, but for a test, it's a pretty terrible one. Which definitely doesn't mean good things for it's big brother.

My suggestion? Well, if you are taking the SAT, I would go for the PSAT to see where I am- bit if I really wanted to see closer accuracy to where I am, I'd prefer looking somewhere else. It's great for it's use, but after that, it's got nothing going for it. I'd give it a 4/10.

Which, ironically is probably a more accurate score than one that you might find on the real PSAT.