Updated September 8, 2026

What’s on the SAT in 2026 (with real example questions!)

Bonus Material: PrepMaven DSAT Full Diagnostic

Expert guidance provided by Mike Kleynman (10+ years’ experience in test prep, PhD in English) and reviewed by Kevin Wong (co-founder PrepMaven, 20+ years’ experience in test prep).

Taking the SAT in 2026? Looking for a good, great, or even perfect score to boost your odds of college admissions? Then this post is for you: we’ll cover exactly what content you need to understand to ace the SAT.

At PrepMaven, we’ve helped thousands of students earn their dream SAT scores, with many of them scoring 1500+ on the SAT. We’ve also spent countless hours researching the SAT so that we can offer you the best advice on how to prepare for it.

This post will cover the specific content tested on the SAT, breaking it down into clearly defined concepts that you can then study on your own or with one of our top-scoring tutors. While the College Board offers a broad overview of what’s tested, our guide will go further, using our research to give you more specific (and more helpful) direction on what you need to study.

One key factor in SAT Prep is your goal score, which depends on what colleges you plan to apply to. Below, we’ve compiled the median SAT score ranges for the top 500 US universities–download it for free and start planning!

Jump to section:
SAT Reading and Writing: what’s tested on Reading?
SAT Reading and Writing: what’s tested on Writing?
SAT Math: what’s tested?
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SAT Reading and Writing: what’s tested on Reading?

This post will give a broad overview of all content tested on the SAT, including real sample questions! For a more granular breakdown of how each of the two sections is organized, you can check out our post here. And if you’re looking for SAT test strategy, we’ve put together a guide to the strategy for every single question type on SAT Reading and Writing, as well as general SAT strategies that will work for any Reading & Writing question.

In the meantime, let’s dive into the kinds of questions you’ll see on SAT Reading and Writing! According to the College Board, the questions on the SAT Reading and Writing fall into four broad categories:

Information and Ideas
Craft and Structure
Expression of Ideas
Standard English Conventions

But to tell you the truth, these categories are not the most helpful way to understand the test. (I mean, what doesn’t count as “information and ideas?)

Instead, we recommend thinking about the SAT Reading and Writing section as being half-Reading, half-Writing, each of which has two broad question categories.

When it comes to the Reading questions, it’s much easier to think of them as testing two key skills:

Literal comprehension
Evaluating logical/scientific reasoning

For the “Writing” questions, the College Board categories are a bit more useful, and you can really think of the Writing questions as testing:

Expression of Ideas
Grammar

Although Reading and Writing are combined into one section, there’s quite a clear divide between how the SAT tests each of these concepts. Understanding how the College Board has designed the format of the SAT’s sections is crucial for succeeding on the test, and you can read a full breakdown of the SAT Sections here.

Roughly the first half of each Reading and Writing module tests the Reading skills, and the second half focuses on the two main Writing skills.

When it comes to the Literal Comprehension questions, you’ll be presented with a series of short passages, each of which comes with one question. How long are the SAT Reading passages? Fortunately, only between 25-150 words! In other words, each reading passage is approximately one paragraph long.

Some questions you see will specifically test Literal Comprehension, which means the following skills:

Fill in words in context
Summarize the main points of poems and short passages
Understand the structure of a text
Identify the meaning of specific phrases within a paragraph

Here are a couple real examples of literal comprehension questions:

The process of mechanically recycling plastics is often considered ______ because of the environmental impact and the loss of material quality that often occurs. But chemist Takunda Chazovachii has helped develop a cleaner process of chemical recycling that converts superabsorbent polymers from diapers into a desirable reusable adhesive.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

A. resilient
B. inadequate
C. dynamic
D. satisfactory

Source: SAT Educator Question Bank

Biologists have predicted that birds’ feather structures vary with habitat temperature, but this hasn’t been tested in mountain environments. Ornithologist Sahas Barve studied feathers from 249 songbird species inhabiting different elevations—and thus experiencing different temperatures—in the Himalaya Mountains. He found that feathers of high-elevation birds not only have a greater proportion of warming-downy sections to flat and smooth sections than do feathers of low-elevation species, but high-elevation species’ feathers also tend to be longer, providing a thicker layer of insulation.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

A. Barve’s investigation shows that some species of Himalayan songbirds have evolved feathers that better regulate body temperature than do the feathers of other species, contradicting previous predictions.

B. Barve found an association between habitat temperature and feather structure among Himalayan songbirds, lending new support to a general prediction.

C. Barve discovered that songbirds have adapted to their environment by growing feathers without flat and smooth sections, complicating an earlier hypothesis.

D. The results of Barve’s study suggest that the ability of birds to withstand cold temperatures is determined more strongly by feather fluff than feather thickness, challenging an established belief.

Source: SAT Educator Question Bank

Other Reading passages test your ability to analyze logical and scientific reasoning. These questions might ask you to:

Interpret charts and graphs
Understand how evidence supports or undermines an argument
Support, undermine, and complete logical arguments
Identify the function of specific lines within short passages
Compare and contrast the arguments made in two short passages

Here’s what that might look like:

Roasted green chiles are a popular ingredient in Southwestern cuisine, but the traditional roasting method of burning propane is not environmentally friendly. To see if solar power could provide a better alternative, engineer Kenneth Armijo and his team roasted batches of green chiles using between 38 and 42 heliostats, which are devices that concentrate sunlight. The team was successful in reaching the same roasting temperature used in traditional propane roasting, but they found that propane yielded faster results. While the fastest solar-roasted green chiles took six minutes, batches using propane took only four. Armijo hypothesizes that they can reduce the roasting time for solar-roasted green chiles by using more heliostats.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Armijo’s hypothesis?

A. The temperature inside the roasting drum is distributed more evenly when roasting green chiles with solar power than with propane.

B. Attempts to roast green chiles using 50 heliostats yields results in fewer than six minutes.

C. Green chile connoisseurs prefer the flavor of solar-roasted green chiles over the flavor of propane-roasted green chiles.

D. The skins of solar-roasted green chiles are easier to peel than the skins of propane-roasted green chiles.

Source: SAT Educator Question Bank

Those are effectively all the question types you’ll see when it comes to SAT Reading! For a deep dive on how to recognize, approach, and answer each question type, you should check out our comprehensive SAT Reading guide here.

Wondering how your SAT score stacks up against other applicants to your dream school? Check out the median SAT scores of admitted students with our free resource, PrepMaven’s DSAT Full Diagnostic .

SAT Reading and Writing: What’s tested on SAT Writing?

When it comes to SAT Writing, you’ll be tested on English Grammar and Expression of Ideas. Just like with SAT Reading, these break down into several predictable question types that you can learn to anticipate!

For our comprehensive guide to every type of grammar question on the SAT Writing, click here. In the meantime, you should know that you’ll be tested on the following specific concepts and skills:

Subject-Verb Agreement
Punctuation
Pronoun Antecedent Agreement
Verb tense
Dangling modifiers
Logical comparisons
Transitions
Redundancy
Sentence construction
Synthesizing information provided in bullet points as a statement serving a specific purpose

Although there are more question types here, most of these are specific grammatical concepts. All you really need to do is learn the concepts (which you can do with one of our top-scoring tutors) and then learn how to recognize when the SAT is testing them.

Here’s what a typical SAT Writing question looks like:

In the canon of North African literature, Moroccan author Driss Chraïbi’s 1954 novel The Simple Past (Le Passé simple) looms large. A coming-of-age story, a social meditation, and a sober gaze into the dark maw of French colonialism, ______blank interrogates systemic power with memorable intensity.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. Morocco gained its independence two years before the publication of Chraïbi’s debut novel, which

B. Chraïbi’s debut novel, published two years before Morocco gained its independence,

C. Chraïbi wrote a debut novel that, published two years before Morocco gained its independence,

D. published two years before Morocco gained its independence, Chraïbi wrote a debut novel that

Source: SAT Educator Question Bank

If you carefully read through our guides on each question type and put in the work to study, there’s really no reason you should ever miss a grammar question on SAT writing. They test objective rules, and they test them in the same way just about every time.

SAT Math: What’s tested?

The College Board offers a broad breakdown of what skills are tested and how often, and we have a more content-focused guide on the SAT Math here. Later in this section, we’ll dig into more specifics about question types and content: what exactly do you need to know for the SAT Math?

Here’s the breakdown of what concepts are tested and how often on the SAT:

Category	Skills tested	Questions per test	Percentage
Algebra	Linear equations Systems of linear equations Linear word problems Linear inequalities	13-15	~35%
Advanced Math	Quadratic expressions Nonlinear functions Equivalent expressions	13-15	~35%
Problem-Solving and Data	Ratios and proportions Percentages Data distribution and measures of center and spread Probability Evaluating statistical claims and experimental design	5-7	~15%
Geometry	Area and volume Lines, angles, triangles Right triangles, trigonometry Circles	5-7	~15%

When you’re ready, practice on our 25 hardest SAT Math questions!

SAT Algebra: what’s tested?

Algebra concepts make up a major portion of the SAT Math section: 35%, or over one-third, of your questions will test fundamental algebra skills. So what does the College Board mean when they talk about testing “Algebra?”

Fundamentally, the Algebra questions on the SAT test your knowledge of:

linear equations
linear inequalities
systems of linear equations

Basically, any math question that involves two variables in a linear relationship to one another falls into the Algebra category.

These SAT Algebra questions can take many forms! You’ll see graphs, word problems, equations, and input/output tables, all of which test the same fundamental equation: y=mx+b. Take a look at some real sample SAT Algebra questions below:

Source: SAT Suite Question Bank

Source: SAT Suite Question Bank

If you’re less than 100% confident on any of these concepts (especially on y=mx+b!), we’d really recommend working with a tutor to bring your math skills up to where they need to be.

You can think of the Algebra section as your foundation for the SAT Math: if you’re struggling with any of these concepts, you probably will not be able to answer most of the questions on the SAT Math section correctly.

Fortunately, this is a problem that’s easy to fix–if you get a head start! Building up the foundational SAT Algebra skills takes time, and you don’t want to be rushing to cram in a whole year’s worth of algebra knowledge before your test!

Our expert SAT tutors can help you identify exactly what Algebra concepts you need to work on to prepare for the SAT, ensuring that you don’t waste time learning concepts that aren’t tested. If Algebra is where you struggle, we strongly recommend starting professional math tutoring more than 3 months before your test date.

SAT Advanced Math: what’s tested?

If you’re looking at what’s on the SAT Math, you may be confused by what counts as “Advanced Math.” It’s especially important to know exactly what College Board means by this category, since “Advanced Math” SAT questions make up 35% of your total score!

Fortunately, there’s an easier way to think of what College Board calls “Advanced Math!” This section really just covers non-linear equations. What do we mean by that? It’s actually quite straightforward. The SAT “Advanced Math” questions cover the following concepts:

quadratics
exponential functions
equations of circles

Here are a couple real SAT Advanced Math example questions:

Source: College Board

Source: College Board

Fuzzy on any of these? You’re not the only one. Fortunately, our team of expert tutors at PrepMaven has put together a targeted guide for each of these concepts. Check out our guide to the SAT Math section here: it focuses specifically on teaching you what you need to ace the SAT Math section, as opposed to just math skills in general.

SAT Problem-Solving and Data: what’s tested?

This category is a lot smaller than the first two but presents serious problems for many students. Many students don’t have much experience with statistics or probability, so these questions can be tricky.

The key concepts you need to understand to succeed on this section are:

Ratios, proportions, percentages
Probability
Measures of center (like mean, median, mode, range, and standard deviation)
Interpreting charts and graphs (like stem and leaf plots, box and whisker plots, and histograms)
Experiment/survey design

Take a look at the below sample questions: do you know how to do each of them?

Source: College Board

Source: College Board

These concepts can be very unintuitive, and this is one of the key areas where a good tutor can make all the difference–try a session with one of our SAT Math experts and see how helpful they can be!

Wondering how your SAT Math score stacks up against other applicants’? Our free spreadsheet breaks down median SAT scores at top US schools by Math and Reading & Writing subscores so that you can better plan your test prep strategy.

SAT Geometry: what’s tested?

This section is pretty predictable, and tests your knowledge of the properties of a few basic shapes. The most important concepts tested on the SAT Math when it comes to Geometry are:

Circles (area, circumference, arcs)
Triangles (special right triangles, similar triangles, Sin, Cos, and Tan)
Regular polygons (these are your squares, rectangles, parallelograms, hexagons, etc.)

Many students struggle most with these questions, often because they don’t know where to start! Take a look at the questions below: all of these are from the mock tests provided by College Board for the SAT, and you can bet the real SAT you take will have similar questions.

Source: College Board

Source: College Board

While the SAT Geometry questions only make up 15% of the test, you still need to master the content to have a shot at a high or perfect SAT Math score. And because there are relatively few Geometry questions despite there being many possible Geometry concepts, these questions can be harder to predict than the questions on other sections!

Next Steps

Whether you’re just starting out SAT Prep or are aiming for a retest to lock in that 1600, your path to a great score depends on you knowing not just what’s on the SAT, but how it’s tested.

This guide has been intended as a breakdown of what you need to know. If you’re ready to actually start learning it, we’ve developed comprehensive strategy and content guides for SAT Reading, Grammar, and Math questions. There, you’ll find lists of all possible question types, real SAT example problems, and step-by-step guides for each type of question.

Of course, there’s no substitute for an expert to actually guide you through real questions and push your thinking further. Our team matches every student with their tutor through a personalized, hands-on process, ensuring that your tutor will be an expert in the specific areas you need support in.

As you start your test prep journey, be sure to keep your end goal in mind: what’s a good SAT score for your target schools? There’s no easier way to find out than by downloading the free resource below, which contains the median SAT scores for 500 top US universities!

What’s on the SAT in 2026?

What’s on the SAT in 2026 (with real example questions!)

SAT Reading and Writing: what’s tested on Reading?

SAT Reading and Writing: What’s tested on SAT Writing?

SAT Math: What’s tested?

SAT Algebra: what’s tested?

SAT Advanced Math: what’s tested?

SAT Problem-Solving and Data: what’s tested?

SAT Geometry: what’s tested?

Next Steps

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