How to Achieve a Score of 800 in SAT Reading and Writing

Is your SAT reading and writing score between 600 and 750? Do you want to work hard to raise your score to a perfect 800? Achieving a perfect score on the SAT reading and writing sections is no easy feat; it requires substantial effort and a commitment to excellence. However, with dedication and effective strategies, you can come very close to, or even achieve, this goal.

Brief Overview: This article is suitable for advanced students whose SAT reading and writing scores are at or above 600. If your score is below this level, it’s advisable to first read the article on how to improve your SAT reading score to 600, applying those tips until you reach 600 before returning here.

Why is this the best guide for achieving a perfect SAT reading and writing score?

Many guides online about scoring 800 are of poor quality and are often written by people who have never actually achieved that score. It’s evident because their advice is often vague and impractical, simply reminding you things like, “Make sure to guess on every question!” is insufficient.

In contrast, this article will serve as the ultimate guide for attaining an 800 score. I will explain why achieving 800 is beneficial, what it takes to reach this score, and then introduce several key strategies for SAT reading and writing, so you know how to strive for perfect scores.

Listen up—As a high school senior, you likely recognize how important it is to score high. However, understanding why an 800 in reading and writing is valuable can also motivate you to aim for that high score. This guide has been updated for the digital SAT, ensuring that my advice is relevant for the exam you are about to take.

Final Note: This guide primarily discusses how to achieve an 800 score, but if your goal is 700, the strategies provided will still apply.

Let’s clarify: Why strive for a perfect SAT reading and writing score of 800?

First, a total score of 1550+ is roughly equivalent to a perfect 1600 on the SAT. No top university will give you more credit for scoring 1590 instead of 1550. If your score is already at 1550, there is no need to waste time trying to achieve 1600. You have already met the score requirement for admission to top universities, and it’s time to focus on the other aspects of your application.

However, if your score is at 1540 or below and you want to apply to a top ten university, it’s worthwhile to spend time improving your score to 1550 or above. There is a significant difference between a score of 1450 and 1550, primarily because achieving 1450 is easier—and there are more applicants in that range.

If your score is 1540, you would rank around average for schools like Harvard and Princeton. For Ivy League admissions, being average is not particularly advantageous, given that acceptance rates are usually below 10%.

So why aim for an 800 in SAT reading and writing? Because it can help compensate for weaknesses in other areas. Overall, schools place more emphasis on your composite score rather than individual section scores. If you achieve a perfect 800 in SAT reading and writing, you can still feel confident about receiving a score of 750 in SAT math, providing you with more flexibility in your academic profile.

Another scenario is if you plan to apply to top schools in the humanities or social sciences (such as English, Political Science, or Communications), an SAT reading and writing score of 800 becomes very important.

The reason is as follows: college admissions are comparative assessments of applicants. Schools want to admit the best students, and you are competing against others within the same “category.” If you are applying to programs in the humanities or social sciences, you will be up against peers who may find the SAT reading section easier—very easy.

Consider this: for Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and the University of Chicago, 75% of students score 780 or above in SAT reading. This means that at least 25% of students at these institutions have scored 780 or higher in SAT reading.

If you can strive to reach 800, it shows that you are performing at the same level (at least in this regard). Even if it requires a considerable amount of effort, what ultimately matters is the score you achieve.

Believe You Can Do It

This isn’t vague, feel-good information—I'm serious. The truth is, you and all the other ambitious students out there can score an 800 on the SAT reading and writing sections. Most importantly, your SAT scores reflect the level of effort and efficiency you put into your studies.

Here’s why: the SAT is a peculiar exam. When you take it, don’t you feel as though the questions are entirely different from what you’ve seen in school? That’s because they are. The SAT is designed to test whether you’re prepared for college, which includes assessing your ability to apply what you’ve learned to unfamiliar problems. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t prepare for it—I’ll tell you how.

The SAT Reading and Writing Sections Aim to Deceive You — You Need to Learn How to Outsmart Them

I bet you’ve faced this dilemma: in the SAT reading and writing sections, you often miss questions due to guessing incorrectly. You try to eliminate some answer choices, but you find the remaining options all seem equally good to you.

This is one of the major issues you encounter while preparing for the SAT, and here’s the secret: the SAT is designed to intentionally confuse you.

In English class, the focus is typically on how to analyze texts and craft compelling arguments. You frequently write essays on topics of your choosing as long as you can support them with evidence. Likewise, grammar is often viewed as a tool for building clear arguments—you may not always know the precise rules you’re following.

The SAT has a unique challenge. It’s a national exam designed to create a fair testing environment for all students across the country. It can only assess topics that every high school student is expected to learn. Because they cannot test obscure or highly challenging subjects, the College Board has to find ways to make certain questions harder, often by testing familiar concepts in strange ways. Moreover, each question must have a clear and unequivocally correct answer.

Imagine if every question had two potential correct answer choices. When scores are released, every student who answers incorrectly complains to the College Board about mistakes in the exam, forcing them to invalidate those questions and undermining the exam's credibility.

SAT Reading Tips

The SAT reading questions disguise the fact that there is only one correct answer by asking questions such as:

- Which of the following statements is the author most likely to agree with?

- The primary purpose of the first paragraph is to:

- In line 20, the closest meaning of “dark” is:

Notice the pattern here? The wording encourages you to hesitate between two or three of the most likely answer choices. When this happens, you might guess randomly and then answer incorrectly.

Every year, millions of students fall for this trap. But if you learn the tricks of the SAT reading section, you can avoid these pitfalls.

SAT Writing Tips

The SAT writing prompts cover topics that you’ve studied in school and likely use every day: subject-verb agreement, sentence coherence, pronoun selection, etc. However, to increase the exam’s difficulty, the SAT tests these concepts in unusual ways. This can trip up unprepared students but rewards those who understand the exam's structure.

Consider this example:

Can you spot the error? The problem lies in subject-verb agreement. The subject of the sentence, “commissioner,” is singular, but the verb is “run.” Since the subject is singular, it should be “runs.”

If you didn’t catch this, you’ve fallen into a classic SAT writing trap. The SAT intentionally includes the interrupting phrase “along with his 20 staff members” to mislead you. Now you picture 20 people running for the position, leading you to think a plural verb is necessary!

The SAT writing section is filled with such examples, often more complex. Almost every grammar rule is tested in a specific way, and if you aren’t prepared, your score may suffer significantly.

The good news is: while encountering this type of question for the first time may be confusing, the next time you see a similar problem, you’ll know what to do: identify the subject and verb, and ignore the interrupting phrase.

Once you prepare for the SAT correctly, you’ll recognize the tricks it plays on you. To improve your score, you simply need to:

- Understand the types of questions on the SAT exam

- Learn strategies using the skills you’ve already mastered to tackle these questions

- Practice extensively, so you can learn from your mistakes

The key point is that even if you don’t consider yourself a strong reader or an excellent English student, you can learn these skills. I will explain in more detail how to achieve this.

How to Achieve an 800 in Reading and Writing

When we have a target score in mind, it helps to understand what you need to do in the actual exam to achieve that score. In the past, we could fairly accurately calculate how many questions you needed to answer correctly to achieve a perfect score. We knew you might get one or two questions wrong and still obtain an 800.

Unfortunately, the new adaptive format has rendered those calculations irrelevant. Currently, if you want a perfect score on the digital SAT, we must assume that you can’t miss any questions.

The safest approach is to aim for perfection. You need to strive to answer every question correctly.

Strategies for Achieving a Perfect SAT Reading and Writing Score

We’ve already discussed the importance of scoring higher on the SAT reading and writing sections, how you can improve your scores, and how many questions you need to answer correctly to reach your target. Now, I will introduce practical strategies that you should incorporate into your study routine to maximize your score, starting with some advanced study tips and moving on to specific strategies for different types of questions.

1: Identify Your High-Level Weaknesses

Every student has different weaknesses when it comes to SAT reading and writing. Some may struggle with basic grammar rules or how to approach passages, while others are familiar with the content but have trouble reading questions quickly or become distracted under test conditions.

The two main advanced weaknesses are content knowledge and time management. Students with content gaps may not understand some concepts covered in SAT reading and writing, while those with time management issues may find it difficult to finish the exam or may rush through answers, leading to careless mistakes.

After completing your first practice test, you need to analyze the questions you got wrong and dig deep into why you answered incorrectly (more details on this below). During this process, consider asking yourself the following questions:

- Did you run out of time during the reading and writing sections? If not, did you use any extra time to carefully review your answers? Leaving questions unanswered typically indicates a time management issue, but even if you completed every question, it doesn’t mean you used your time effectively.

- Look at the questions that took you the longest to answer, regardless of whether you got them right. Why did those questions take so much time? Is there a faster way to find the answers?

- For questions that confused you (even if you eventually got them right), was the confusion due to a lack of understanding of underlying grammar, vocabulary, or concepts, or did you have difficulty grasping the question?

- Did you skip any questions you were confident you could answer? Did you overlook them because you rushed through the questions?

I often find that students face both time and content issues, but you may discover that one problem is more pronounced for you than the other.

2: Practice Diligently and Understand Each Mistake

On the path to perfection, you need to make sure you address every weakness. As we saw in the scoring section, even one mistake can keep your score below 800.

- The first step is to practice extensively. If you’re using free resources or books, you can access a large number of practice questions.

- The second—and most crucial—step is to genuinely understand your mistakes. Every error you make on the exam has a reason behind it.

If you don’t fully understand why you got a question wrong, you’ll likely repeat the same mistakes over and over again. I’ve encountered students who have taken dozens of practice tests and answered thousands of questions, yet they remain far from achieving a perfect SAT reading and writing score.

The issue? They never grasp the reasons behind their mistakes. They merely cycle through the same errors repeatedly.

To avoid repeating mistakes, you need to take the following actions:

- In each practice test or question set you complete, mark each question you feel only 80% confident about.

- When scoring your test or quiz, review each question you marked as uncertain and every question you got wrong. This way, even if you guessed right on a question, you’ll still make sure to review it.

- Document these problematic questions, and write down:
#1: A summary of the question
#2: Why did you get it wrong
#3: How will you prevent making the same mistake in the future.

Organize these by topic and subtopic (e.g., reading: vocabulary/writing: punctuation, etc.). Simply thinking about the issue and moving on isn’t enough. Merely reading answer explanations won’t suffice either. You must deeply contemplate why you missed that question. By adopting this structured approach to your mistakes, you’ll create a record of every question you missed and reflect on the reasons why.

Digging Deeper—Why Did You Miss This Question?

So, what are common reasons you might miss a question? Don’t just say, “I missed that question.” That’s evasion. Go further: What specifically did you overlook, and what do you need to improve on in the future?

Here are some examples of common reasons for missing reading or writing questions, along with how to analyze them further:

- Elimination: I couldn’t eliminate enough wrong answer choices, or I eliminated the correct answer.
-- Go deeper: Why couldn’t I eliminate that answer choice during the exam? How can I avoid similar answer options in the future?

- Content: I didn’t learn the grammar rules necessary to answer this question.
-- Go deeper: What specific rules do I need to learn, and what resources will I use to study these grammar rules?

- Overlooked Rules: I understand the grammar rules, but the way SAT phrases the questions caused me to overlook them.
-- Go deeper: How can I approach this question now? Are there strategies that will help me notice this grammar rule in the future?

- Careless Errors: I misread the question or selected the wrong answer.
-- Go deeper: Why did I misread the question? What can I do to prevent this in the future?

- Vocabulary: I didn’t know the meaning of a key word.
-- Go deeper: What is that word? What’s its definition? Are there other words in this question that I don’t know?

Got it? You need to dive deeper into why you missed the questions.

Yes, this takes effort, is mentally demanding, and requires hard work. That’s why many students struggle to improve; they don’t know the correct study methods. Even when they do, few will diligently apply the right strategies day after day.

But you are different. By reading this guide, you have already shown that you care more than the average student. If you apply these principles and analyze your errors, you will improve more than your peers.

Additional Tip: Re-solve Questions Before Reading the Answer Explanations

When reviewing the practice questions you missed, you might be tempted to read the answer explanations right away and then move on. However, this approach is too easy and not particularly effective. I consider it passive learning—you’re not actively confronting the mistakes you made.

Simply skimming the answer explanations and letting the information go in one ear and out the other is not enough. You won’t truly learn from your mistakes, and you’ll continue to make the same errors repeatedly.

Instead, try a different approach. First, identify the correct answer choice (A or D), but don’t look at the explanation just yet. Instead, attempt to re-solve the question and find the correct answer on your own.

This can be challenging. If you struggled to answer it the first time, what makes you think you can solve it now?

However, this time, you’ll be under less time pressure. You may discover new reasons for eliminating incorrect answer options, or you might uncover something that suddenly illuminates the correct path for you.

When these moments happen, the understanding you gain is far more valuable than if you had merely read the answer explanation passively. I know this from personal experience. Because you put in the effort and achieved a breakthrough, you’ll remember this information much better than if you simply absorbed it passively.

This technique is particularly effective for SAT reading, where you often miss questions due to misinterpreting the text. By forcing yourself to find the right answers, you’ll practice accurately interpreting the text. Even better, you’ll learn to look for clues within the passage that explain why a particular answer is correct, which is exactly the skill you need in your passage analysis.

Treat each missed question like a puzzle. Spend no more than 10 minutes contemplating each incorrect answer. Only read the answer explanation if you truly cannot solve it.

Strategy 3: Identify and Leverage Your Weaknesses

If you're like most students, there are certain areas of reading and writing where you excel more than others. For example, you might be better at grasping the overall content of passages rather than remembering the placement of commas. Alternatively, you might have a strong vocabulary but struggle with understanding the function of sentences within a passage.

Also, like most students, you likely do not have unlimited time to study. This means that for every hour you dedicate to SAT preparation, you need to maximize your efficiency as much as possible.

Specifically, it's crucial to pinpoint the areas where you need the most improvement and focus your efforts there.

Many students approach their studies incorrectly. They simply buy a book and read it from cover to cover, and when they see no progress, they are shocked—but I’m not surprised at all.

Preparing effectively for the SAT is not like painting a house; you cannot simply layer a thin understanding over all the subjects. Those students waste time on topics they already understand while not dedicating sufficient time to addressing their weaknesses.

Instead, think of effective SAT preparation as stopping leaks in a sinking ship. You need to identify the largest leaks and fix them first. Then, find the next largest leak and address that. Before long, you'll realize that your ship is no longer in danger of sinking.

How does this relate to SAT reading and writing? You need to identify your weakest sub-skills and practice them until you no longer struggle. Start by fixing the most significant leaks.

In reading, determine whether there are patterns in the types of mistakes you're making. Are you struggling with inference questions? Or do you have difficulty interpreting details? Perhaps subject-verb agreement is where you falter? For every question you miss, classify the type of issue involved.

Once you recognize the patterns in your mistakes, you should engage in targeted practice for those specific skills. For instance, if you find that you miss many inference questions (which are typically the hardest type for students to grasp), you need to seek out practice questions focused on that skill so you can work on improving those errors.

Strategy 4: Learn to Eliminate Three Incorrect Answer Choices

This strategy is one of the most effective ways to improve your SAT reading and writing scores.

Earlier, we discussed how the SAT always presents one clear answer. Only one option is 100% correct, which means that three out of the four answer choices must be incorrect. This gives you a significant advantage. If you can eliminate those incorrect options, you increase your chances of selecting the right one.

Do you ever find yourself attempting to eliminate answer choices, only to be left with two options that both seem equally correct? You might think, “Well, this one seems valid... but then again, this one might work too…”

Stop doing that. Your elimination process isn’t thorough enough. Remember—each incorrect choice can be dismissed for specific reasons.

You need to completely overhaul your approach to reading questions. Instead of looking for reasons to justify an answer, actively seek reasons to eliminate three of the options. Ask yourself, “Can I find a reason to eliminate this answer choice? How about this one?”

You might wonder, “That’s great, but how do I eliminate the answer choices?”

Here’s the key point: even a single word can render an answer choice incorrect. The SAT uses every word in each answer choice purposefully. If any word in an answer choice isn’t supported by the text, that option should be eliminated, even if the rest of the answer sounds reasonable.

SAT frequently employs classic examples of wrong answer choices. For illustration, suppose you just read a passage about how human evolution has shaped the environment. It discusses the transition from early species like Homo habilis to Neanderthals, emphasizing how their use of tools and fire led to increased wildfires, which in turn influenced ecology. Subsequently, it addresses how overhunting by Homo sapiens 40,000 years ago contributed to the extinction of species like the woolly mammoth.

Now, consider the question: “Which of the following most accurately describes the main theme of the passage?” Here are the answer choices:

A: The transition between Homo habilis and Neanderthals

B: The theory of evolution

C: How the environment affects human evolution

D: The rationale behind evolution

E: The impact of human development on ecosystems
(Note: For illustration purposes, we have used five options. The SAT only presents four.)

As you read these options, some might initially seem plausible. However, surprise! Each of the options A and D contains significant errors. Each represents a common type of incorrect answer used by the SAT.

Incorrect Answer 1: Too Specific
A: The transition between Homo habilis and Neanderthals
This answer focuses on a minor detail from the passage. It's designed to mislead you, as you might think, “Well, I see this mentioned in the passage, so it must be a reasonable choice.” Wrong! Think about it: does this answer truly encapsulate the entire passage? Can it serve as an appropriate title? You’ll find it’s too specific to convey the passage's main idea.

Incorrect Answer 2: Too Broad
B: The theory of evolution
This answer suffers from the opposite issue—it’s too broad. Yes, the passage technically addresses aspects of evolution, but it only does so in relation to environmental impact. Consider this analogy: if you were talking to a friend about your phone, and they claimed your main point was about the universe, they might technically be correct since your phone is part of the universe. However, that’s a minuscule aspect of it, making the description overly broad.

Incorrect Answer 3: Reversed Relationship
C: How the environment affects human evolution
This incorrect option can be tricky because it utilizes all the right words. However, the relationship between those words must also be accurate. In this case, the relationship is reversed. Students who read too quickly might make this careless error!

Incorrect Answer 4: Irrelevant Concept
D: The rationale behind evolution
Lastly, this type of incorrect answer capitalizes on students’ tendency to overthink the question. If you’re passionate about discussing evolution, you might be tempted to choose this option, thinking it connects to the concept of reasoning in evolution. However, you won’t find any discussion about this concept in the passage, yet some students can’t resist selecting it.

Do you see how each answer option may appear correct at first glance? Underprepared students often believe all these options are viable answers. But plausibility is not enough. The correct answer must be 100% completely correct. Incorrect options might only differ by a single word—and that’s enough reason for elimination.

Apply this method to every SAT reading question, and I guarantee your scores will begin to rise.

Strategy 5: Predict Your Answers Before Reading the Answer Choices

As we have discussed, the SAT is designed to lead you into traps by presenting very similar answer choices. In Strategy 3, we introduced the relentless approach of eliminating answer choices. Another effective strategy to help avoid these traps is to come up with your own answer before looking at the provided options.

If you don’t implement this strategy, your thought process may become aimless. You might find yourself thinking, “Well, I just read the question. Answer A definitely isn’t it. B could work. C... doesn’t quite fit, but it seems plausible…”

This leads you right into the College Board's trap of confusing answer choices.

Instead, adopt the opposite approach. As you read the question, think of your ideal answer before examining the answer options. This prevents bias towards the SAT’s choices, especially when considering incorrect ones.

Even if you can’t immediately answer the question, try to formulate a response before viewing the answer choices. The key here is that you must be able to support your chosen answer. Every correct answer in SAT reading and writing requires textual evidence to back it up. Otherwise, the answer becomes ambiguous, leading to the issue of eliminating answer choices that was mentioned earlier.

Strategy 6: Justify Each Answer Choice

Many high-performing students approach SAT writing with a “soft method,” selecting answers they feel are correct without necessarily understanding why. While this method can benefit those who are very familiar with the test, most students do not reach that level of understanding.

What’s the strategy to address this? For every question, you need to justify your chosen answer for yourself. What grammar rules or elements of the passage support this answer? If you can’t pinpoint specific reasons, then that answer might not be correct.

This is particularly important in rhetorical questions, where answer options can be vague, and subtle differences exist. You must comprehend why one answer is definitively correct while the other three are clearly incorrect. Remember, this is a standardized test.

Strategy 7: Take Your Time and Review Again

After completing all your preparation, your goal is to achieve excellent scores in SAT reading and writing so that you can answer every question and still have extra time at the end to review your work.

Top students can finish the reading section within about 60% of the allocated time. For the SAT reading and writing exam, this means completing 27 questions in about 20 minutes.

That gives me an additional 12 minutes to re-check my answers...twice.

How do you become that efficient?

Through extensive practice. Continuous exposure to test questions can sharpen your instincts. Eventually, you should be able to predict the answer within seconds of reading a question.

But not everyone has read through countless SAT questions. So what’s the best way to review your answers? Here are some reliable methods:

- Reread the question. Challenge your assumptions about the question's content. Explicitly think about the grammar rules being tested or analyzing the concepts at play.

- Attempt to answer the question using a different approach than you did originally. If you use elimination, try to phrase your answer in your own words as a cross-check.

- If I'm not 100% sure about an answer, even if I have a lingering doubt, I’ll mark it for review and come back to it later.

If you find yourself struggling with a question for more than 30 seconds without a clear path to an answer, skip it and move on to the next question. Even though you need a near-perfect raw score to achieve 800, don’t hesitate to skip a question. You can return to it later; the priority is to score as many points as possible.

Strategy 8: Learn Grammar Rules Thoroughly

There’s no way around it: you need to understand all the grammar rules that may appear on the exam and how they function.

Some grammar rules (like punctuation usage) show up much more frequently than others. However, striving for perfection requires familiarizing yourself with even the less common rules as well.

We can categorize the following grammar rules from most important to least:

-- Punctuation

-- Syntax

-- Verb tense

-- Modifiers

-- Possessives

-- Agreement

-- Pronouns

-- Standard expressions

Of course, these are broad categories. You need to be aware of more specific "sub-rules," and their frequency and difficulty will vary across the test.

For example, punctuation is the most common grammar rule in SAT writing, but it primarily involves a few individual concepts. You’ll encounter many questions about comma usage and the distinctions between periods and semicolons, with far fewer inquiries regarding question marks or exclamation points.

Therefore, you should concentrate your study time on the grammar rules that have the greatest impact.

Strategy 9: Avoid the Vocabulary Trap

Students often place too much focus on vocabulary. Learning vocabulary lists can feel rewarding because it seems like you’re making progress. “I’ve learned 1,000 vocabulary words—this surely means my score will go up!”

This feeling of accomplishment explains why many test prep programs emphasize vocabulary—because it seems like they’re teaching you something valuable, even if it actually has minimal impact on your score.

The digital SAT includes many context-based vocabulary questions, but the words you need to analyze in context are often quite common.

Here are examples of words you might need to understand in context on the digital SAT:

-- Contradictory

-- Conflict

-- Convey

-- Plastic

-- Assume

These are relatively advanced words, but they pale in comparison to the more obscure vocabulary you might have been expected to know previously, like “baroque,” “diatribes,” “platitudes,” and “progenitor.”

While studying vocabulary isn’t without merit, it’s crucial to learn efficiently and ensure it comprises only a small portion of your overall preparation. Here are some of my top recommendations:

-- First, check out this comprehensive guide on the most effective ways to study SAT vocabulary. Following this approach will help you learn more efficiently, retain words longer, and frequently review the hardest vocabulary.

-- Second, make note of any unfamiliar words you encounter in practice questions. Don’t just focus on the correct answers—be sure to understand the meanings of wrong answer choices as well.

Recap: How to Achieve a Perfect Score in SAT Reading and Writing

These are the key strategies we’ve outlined for improving your SAT reading score to 800. If your current score is above 600, with dedicated and smart study, you can elevate it to a perfect SAT reading score. To truly achieve that 800, you need to:

-- Understand your weaknesses

-- Identify your mistakes

-- Know why you missed questions

-- Eliminate incorrect answers

-- Justify your answer choices

-- Manage your time effectively

-- Attempt to predict correct answers

-- Avoid getting bogged down in learning unimportant skills

While we’ve covered numerous strategies, the bottom line is: you need to be aware of your deficiencies, continuously work on them, and reflect deeply on your mistakes without neglecting any errors.