SAT Math: Passport to Advanced Math
What is it?
Per the College Board’s Official Guide, Passport to Advanced Math questions focus on the ability to work with and analyze more complex equations. The questions may require you to demonstrate procedural skill in adding, subtracting, and multiplying polynomials and in factoring polynomials. You may be required to work with expressions involving exponentials, integer and rational exponents, radicals, or fractions with a variable in the denominator. The questions may ask you to solve quadratic, radical, rational, polynomial, or absolute value equations. They may also ask you to solve a system consisting of a linear equation and a nonlinear equation. You may be required to manipulate an equation in several variables to isolate a quantity of interest.
The College Board further categorizes Passport to Advanced Math into three different segments:
Identifying and creating equivalent algebraic expressions
Creating, analyzing, and fluently solving quadratic and other nonlinear equations
Creating, using, and graphing exponential, quadratic, and other nonlinear functions
Out of 58 total questions on the exam, there will be 16 Passport to Advanced Math questions. This means approximately 28% of the SAT math question will come from this category. This is the third largest category on the SAT Math exam after Heart of Algebra and Data Analysis / Problem Solving.
On the SAT, Passport to Advanced Math questions show up in both the calculator and non-calculator sections. For this category, you can also expect both multiple-choice and grid-in questions.
Worthington Prep’s Passport to Advanced Math Breakdown
Passport to Advanced Math is a massive portion of the exam. I went through over 700 Old SAT exam questions and categorized every single one of them. From there, I created categories for every single question. Passport to Advanced Math breaks down into the following teachable categories:
Completing the Square
Exponents
Factoring and FOIL
Functions
Functions and Graphs
Parabolas
Polynomials
Quadratic Equation
Radicals
Worthington Prep Approach
There are a lot of categories and a lot of questions to cover. Getting a high score on the exam requires mastering Data Analysis. It requires reviewing each of these topics in detail and, of course, a lot of repetition. We will cover each one of these concepts in our meet ups. Homework will be assigned for each of these topics before / after the concept is covered in our meet up. And then we’ll reinforce it through our daily WhatsApp questions. And each answer attempt will be recorded. This way I can track your weaknesses and strengths. We won’t focus as much on your strengths. We’ll hit the weaknesses hard to turn them into strengths.
Passport to Advanced Math is typically covered in your 9th / 10th grade math class. But the way it’s tested on the exam can be very different than how it comes up in class.
The Worthington Prep Mantra: Whatever it Takes. Yes, whatever it takes to master this topic. It’s critical for the really high exam score you’re looking for on the exam.