• SAT
• MCAT
• GRE
• LSAT
• IELTS
• GMAT
• TOEFL

Acronym for Scholastic Assessment Test, SAT is a mandatory exam to get undergraduate admission into any college of USA. The SAT is developed and administered by the USA-based 'College Entrance Examination Board'. This implies that College board sets the questions, conducts the test, and sends each examinee the score report. SAT is similar to ACT (America College Test). SAT and ACT exams are different exams but the intention of the test is same. High school juniors and seniors take the SAT exam. SAT exam is updated in March 2005. The new test is a measure of the critical thinking skills of each student for the academic success in their under graduation program. SAT exam is conducted seven times a year.

MCAT is a mandatory exam to get admissions in undergraduate courses in the U.S medical schools. Along with the other additional admission factors, Medical school admission team considers MCAT score as a primary factor in admitting the aspirants. Abbreviated for Medical College Admission Test, MCAT is based on MCQs (Multiple choice Questions) to test the problem solving, critical thinking, writing and science knowledge skills of the medical aspirants. Many of the medical schools do not consider the MCAT score, if the medical aspirants took the exam more than three years back. Read further to know some useful aspects of MCAT exam.

Start preparing for your MCAT well in advance (at least 3 months before the test date). Make a time-table of your MCAT preparation schedule and try to stick to it. This will make your MCAT preparation more organized and planned. Start your preparation with introductory biology, chemistry, physics and organic courses step by step. Simultaneously prepare short notes of whatever you understood. This will help you when you revise the course outline before the MCAT test. Try to understand the basic concepts rather than memorizing them. Here are some useful MCAT preparation tips.

A good MCAT score certainly would pave way for admission into a good Medical school, but it is not the one and only decisive factor for securing admission in best of the medical schools in USA. Most of the medical school admission committees take your MCAT scores and GPA together to determine a point total for you. Read further on MCAT score.

LSAT (Law School Admission Test) exam is mandatory for getting admission in those Law Schools of USA, which are approved by ABA (American Bar Association). LSAT is also compulsory for getting admission in Law courses in most of the Canadian Law Schools and many of the non-ABA approved Law Schools too. LSAT is conducted four times a year at selected centers all over the world. LSAT helps Law Schools make sound admission decisions by providing standard measure of verbal and reasoning skills of the students. The Law schools can use LSAT score as one among the few other features in evaluating the candidates for admission.

A prospective law student may be from any of academic backgrounds, ethnic cluster and cultures. The LSAT precisely comprise of five sections namely,

The Experimental section will be games, arguments, or reading section. You will not know which is the real section and which is the experimental one, so you must just try your best on every single section. The good news is that if at some point you have a strangely difficult section that makes no sense, there's a strong chance that it was the experimental section. There is also a writing sample or essay section. The writing sample does not count towards your score, but the law schools to which you apply will receive a copy of your essay to evaluate. The duration of the test is about 3.5 hours. There is no negative marking as such, but you are expected to attend all the questions. After your test is graded, your score will be converted into an LSAT score ranging from a low of 120 to a high of 180. Your score and hence your percentile will roughly follow along a bell curve pattern, a score of 150 is an average one, and 170 is the 99th percentile.

Practice is the key to getting a good score in LSAT. As games or puzzle section is the 'scoring section', start your preparation for solving puzzles by purchasing good magazines or books. Generally, these games or puzzles are intended to assess the logical, analytical and reading comprehension skills of the candidates. Many of the questions have diagrams also, and hence practice more to solve different types of puzzle questions to increase your speed.

IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is a test of English language proficiency. IELTS is mandatory exam for admission into universities, secondary, vocational and training programs in the countries of England, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. IELTS is jointly managed by University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations, British Council, and IDP: IELTS Australia. It has become a mandatory test for students of many nationalities to get student visas to Australia. IELTS is however not accepted by most universities in USA. TOEFL is required for study there..

The test has different sections:

All Aspirants are supposed to take the Listening and Speaking modules and the choice of Reading and Writing modules of IELTS is determined by the purpose of taking IELTS.

The Academic reading and writing modules are suitable for those seeking admission to undergraduate and postgraduate courses. General training reading and writing modules are suitable for candidates who are going to English-speaking countries to complete their secondary education or to undertake work experience or training programmes not at degree level. The General training modules are also used for immigration purposes.

IELTS assesses a candidate on a band scale of one to nine. Band one indicates that you have virtually no knowledge of English. Band nine indicates that your English proficiency is as good as that of a native English speaker. Universities in Australia, England etc, typically require a band score of 6 and more.

Start preparing for IELTS test well in advance before the test date. The IELTS test comprises of four Band Modules namely Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking. All these four modules carry the same weightage. Hence give equal importance to all the modules of IELTS in your preparation.

Those who are opting for classroom course for GMAT preparation must check whether the institute has provision for GMAT-CAT (GMAT Computer Adaptive Test) version of training. GMAT requires "good speed" of solving the questions and hence whenever you are taking the Mock-GMAT test during your preparations, make your first 'objective' to complete it in given time-slot.

Here are some useful tips for cracking the GMAT exams.

Analytical Writing Assessment: The analytical writing section consists of two short essays to be written in thirty minutes each. The first is the Analysis of an Issue, in which you need to analyze the issue presented and explain your views on it. The second essay is Analysis of an Argument, in which a given argument has to be critically analyzed and evaluated. For both the essays, the emphasis is on the "Analytical" part, and not on the "Writing" part.

Quantitative Section: The 37 questions in this section comprise two kinds of questions : Problem Solving (PS) and Data Sufficiency (DS). This section contains questions on Mathematics. The difficulty level of the questions is comparable to Class X.

Verbal Section: The verbal section in GMAT test requires the basic skills of English coupled with reasoning and analysis. The 41 questions, to be attempted in 75 minutes, consist of three types : Sentence Correction (SC), Critical Reasoning (CR), and Reading Comprehension (RC). The three types are intermingled, with no fixed number for each type.

TOEFL Exam can be given in three different formats

In the Computer Based TOEFL Testing, the computer itself selects questions of some sections, from a pool of questions that are classified by difficulty and content. The computer, based on how well the candidate answers his previous questions, selects the questions. The Internet Based TOEFL Testing will be delivered through Internet. The Paper Based TOEFL Exam is a conventional paper based type, which measures, Listening Comprehension, Structure, Written Expression and Reading Comprehension of the candidate.

Primarily, TOEFL-CBT test has four sections, all of which are mandatory. Listening section measures the ability to understand English as it is spoken in North America. This section tests comprehension of main ideas, supporting ideas, important details, and inferences. The candidate will both see and hear the questions before the answer choices appear. Structure section measures the ability to recognize language that is appropriate for standard written English. The language tested is formal, rather than conversational. When topics have a national context, they refer to United States or Canadian history, culture, art, or literature. However, knowledge of these contexts is not required to answer the questions. Reading section measures the ability to understand short passage similar in topic and style to academic texts used in North American colleges and universities. The candidate will have to read a variety of short passages on academic subjects and answer several questions about each passage. Writing section measures the ability to write in English on an assigned topic. The candidate must compose an essay.