What a text message can and can't carry
Accurate as of
We keep changing how we deliver SAT questions so a daily text looks more like the real thing. But SMS is a medium, and mediums have limits. This page is the specific, current list of what your daily SAT question covers and what it doesn't.
Not every gap is the same kind of gap
Some of what SMS couldn't carry, we fixed by writing more questions. Some we're still working on. And some we've decided against for now, for reasons we'll give you. They're not interchangeable, so we don't describe them the same way.
Closed by writing more questions
About a quarter of real SAT Math questions aren't multiple choice at all. You type a number instead of picking a letter. A text message handles that perfectly well, and we had none of them. We've now written 100 and they went into the daily rotation today, which makes them 100 of the 675 SAT Math questions we send. Not yet the share the real test gives them, and a long way from none. That's the honest version of "we keep evolving how we deliver questions": a gap we named, then closed.
Open, and we're working on it
Four Reading & Writing skills are still out: text structure, rhetorical synthesis, cross-text connections, and the evidence questions built on a chart. Length was the problem we solved this month, and these aren't length problems — they need two passages compared, a block of notes, or a chart in front of you. We're working on it. We're not going to tell you when, or how, or that it's certain to land.
Long-passage questions send now — at a fraction of the test's share
The Reading & Writing questions built on a real passage are live: main idea, inference, and evidence. Ten of them, against 210 Reading & Writing questions we send — 4.8% of the section. On the real test those skills are about 27% of it. Live, and a long way from proportionate. One thing to be straight about: they don't appear in the three free questions. The trial draws only from the questions that fit inside a text message; the passage-based ones start once you've paid.
Pictures are sent now, but nothing like the share the test gives them
Questions built on a picture — a scatterplot, a histogram, a labelled angle diagram — now come to you as a picture, attached to the text. That is new, and it was the part we were least sure would work on a phone. Be clear on the scale though: about one in fifty of our Math questions carries a figure, against roughly one in five on the real test. So you will meet them, and nothing like as often as the SAT will show them to you. Closing that gap is authoring work, not a technical limit.
The SAT, question by question
885 original SAT questions, written and reviewed by us: 675 Math and 210 Reading & Writing.
What your daily SAT question covers
SAT Math: every one of the 19 official skills
Algebra, functions, percentages, rates, statistics, geometry and trigonometry all have questions you will actually get, including the ones built on a graph or a diagram — those arrive as a picture with the question. Scatterplot reading is the thinnest at 8 questions, so it's the one you're least likely to see.
SAT Reading & Writing: grammar, punctuation, transitions and vocabulary in context
Four of the eleven Reading & Writing skills, and about half the section. They work in a text because the passage is short and the answer choices are a word or a comma.
SAT Reading & Writing: main idea, inference, and evidence questions built on a real passage
Three more of the eleven skills — seven in total, about two-thirds of the section. The passage is too long to fit in a text, so it arrives as a link you open; the question and the four choices stay in the message.
SAT Math questions that ask you to type a number, not pick a letter
About a quarter of the real test's Math questions work this way. You reply with the number and we grade it the same way.
A worked explanation after every SAT question you answer
Right or wrong, the reply shows the method, not just the letter.
What it doesn't
SAT Reading & Writing: text structure, rhetorical synthesis, cross-text connections, and evidence questions built on a chart
Length was the problem we solved. These are different: two passages to compare, a block of research notes, or a chart to read while you weigh four answers. A link to one passage doesn't carry any of them.
SAT Math at the share of picture-based questions the real test uses
Roughly one in five real SAT Math questions is built on something drawn. Ours is about one in fifty, so the figure-based questions you get here are a taste of that part of the test rather than a match for it.
More about the test itself on the SAT page.
So what is this, exactly?
TextPrep is daily SAT practice on the parts of the test that suit a phone. It is not a replacement for full-length practice tests, and it isn't meant to be: most students run it alongside Bluebook, not instead of it.