Is chemistry your favorite subject in school, and are you searching for a way to give your college applications some defining feature that will let allow them to stand out from the crowd? If so, you should really think about taking the SAT Subject Test in Chemistry in order to quantify your chemistry knowledge in a way that colleges might find impressive. While many features of college applications, such as volunteering, extracurricular academic activities like Science Olympiad, Model U.N., Debate Team, and sports participation often take years of participation before appearing particularly impressive on an application, the one-time event of taking a single focused exam can also do wonders for your app.

Why can SAT Subject Tests appear so impressive? Well, for one, they only test a single subject each, in a very detailed manner. This means that even if a student successfully passed high school chemistry, they’re not guaranteed to do well on the SAT Subject Test in Chemistry. No, the SAT Subject Test in Chemistry is taken by many students to whom chemistry is their favorite subject, and it’s the test’s job to stack up their performances against each other. The SAT Subject Test in Chemistry consists of eighty-five multiple-choice questions and lasts for one hour. As you can see by the following ratio of topics that appear on the exam, a great majority of these questions are about chemical principles, but laboratory practices are also fair game:

• Structure of Matter (Atomic Structure, Molecular Structure, Bonding): 25%
• States of Matter (Gases, Liquids and Solids, and Solutions): 16%
• Reaction Types (Acids and Bases, Oxidation-Reduction, Precipitation): 14%
• Stoichiometry (Mole Concept and Chemical Equations): 14%
• Equilibrium System and Rates of Reaction: 5%
• Thermochemistry: 6%
• Descriptive Chemistry: 12%
• Laboratory: 8%

Since there are always eighty-five questions on the SAT Subject Test in Chemistry, you can multiply this total number of questions by the percentage as a decimal to figure out approximately how many questions you can expect to face in a given topic on test day. For example, you should be prepared to answer about a dozen questions about stoichiometry (0.14 * 85 = 11.9).

The test is graded on a scale from 200 to 800; 800 is a perfect score, while 200 is the worst possible score. Ready to aim for that 800? You’re going to need some high-quality resources to study efficiently while also making sure that you adequately cover each topic, focusing on the ones that you personally find to be the most challenging. You can accomplish this by working the problems found on free SAT Subject Test in Chemistry Practice Tests, provided by Varsity Tutors on its Learning Tools website. Problems are arranged in groups of about twelve in Practice Tests, so each test functions like a short quiz and tests a variety of Chemistry topics and skills. Each question includes a complete answer explanation that, in the case of quantitative problems, explains each mathematical step you need to take to come up with the correct answer. For problems that are not based on calculations, the answer fully explains the answer choice and how you can eliminate the wrong answers. By taking Practice Tests, you can begin to recognize patterns of problems that you miss consistently. When you’ve identified those topics as the ones on which you need to focus, try taking SAT Subject Test in Chemistry problems organized by topic instead of in Practice Tests. This will give you the material you need to patch the gaps in your knowledge. By reviewing your class material and bolstering your knowledge with Varsity Tutors’ free Learning Tools, you can prepare yourself for the SAT Subject Test in Chemistry and take it confidently. Good luck!