What makes an SAT tool good

As of publishing, the November SAT is less than 24 hours away. So we decided to go through what makes SAT prep useful.

Good luck to everyone testing tomorrow. Get some sleep and charge your device tonight.

If you're testing in December or later, keep this list in mind when you pick where to practice.

The questions should feel like the real test

The digital SAT has its own style. Reading and Writing uses short passages with one question each. Math lets you use Desmos the whole time. Practice questions should match the real ones in length, wording, and difficulty. If they're easier or stranger than the real thing, your practice doesn't tell you much.

Every PrepArc question is our own. We study the official style closely and write to match it. Nothing is taken from the SAT question bank or recycled from old exams.

The answer key has to be right

A wrong answer key teaches you the wrong thing, and you won't know it happened. A good tool checks every answer before a student sees it. When a mistake slips through, it fixes it in the open.

We check the wording and the key before a question goes live. Every question has a report button. When a report is right, we fix the question and post the correction in public.

Every question needs an explanation

When you miss a question, you need to know why. A good explanation shows why the right answer works and why each wrong answer doesn't. Every PrepArc question has one.

You should practice what you need

If you're good at algebra and keep missing transitions, you shouldn't have to dig through 40 algebra questions to find them. On PrepArc you can pick a section, domain, skill, or difficulty, or practice everything. You can also pull up just the questions you missed.

Practice should feel like test day when you want it to

Untimed sets are good for learning a skill. You also need practice on the clock. PrepArc has timed modules with the same length as the real test: 27 questions in 32 minutes for Reading and Writing, and 22 questions in 35 minutes for Math. There are also five full-length practice tests that adapt the way the digital SAT does.

Nothing should get in your way

No ads. No pop-up asking you to upgrade halfway through a set.

Where a lot of prep goes wrong

Plenty of SAT tools do some of this well. The common catch is a paywall. You get a handful of free questions, and the rest of the bank is locked. Or the questions are free and the explanations cost money. Or you find out you got it wrong, and the reason why sits behind an upgrade button.

We get why sites do it. Good questions take a long time to write. But the question bank is the core of SAT practice, and everything else is built on top of it. Lock it, and how much a student gets to practice comes down to what their family can pay. We don't think money should decide that.

What we do instead

Every PrepArc question, explanation, and practice test is free. So are your progress dashboard and reviewing your misses. There's no trial that runs out and no limit on how many questions you can do. All free, forever.

We do sell one thing, and it's PrepArc Pro. Pro is a daily study plan. You tell it your current score, the score you want, and your test date. Each day it gives you a list of tasks, usually one to two hours of work, paced to the time you have left.

Your weakest skills come up more often, and no skill gets skipped. Timed modules and full practice tests are scheduled for you, more often as test day gets close. Questions you miss come back after 1, 3, and 7 days. Tasks check themselves off as you practice. The week of your test is lighter, and you get a checklist for the day before.

Every task in the plan opens practice that's free for everyone. Pro picks what to work on. It doesn't lock anything.

Pro is $9.99 a month, and you can cancel anytime. That's less than one hour with most SAT tutors. You can also get it free. Invite a friend, and once they've answered 25 questions and practiced on two different days, you get two weeks of Pro.

Why we built it this way

We took the digital SAT ourselves. One of the sites we used most was great at its core. You could practice almost anything you wanted. What it didn't give you was much guidance.

That's the whole reason students hire tutors. A tutor tells you what to work on and keeps you accountable. We've watched sites add that kind of structured prep, and slowly the practice itself got worse.

We think guidance is worth having, and it's the only thing we charge for. You should be free to practice however you want. If you want a plan on top of that, Pro is there, and it helps keep PrepArc running.

If you're testing in December, there's still time to start practicing.