Everything the test can ask, in one map: 29 skills across eight official domains.
Reading & Writing
Information and Ideas
Central Ideas & Details — Find the sentence a passage is built around and dodge the too-broad and too-narrow answer traps.
Command of Evidence — Pick the quotation or data point that actually supports the claim — including reading tables and graphs precisely.
Inferences — Complete the text with the conclusion the evidence licenses — no more, no less, and never a restated premise.
Craft and Structure
Words in Context — Use the passage's own clue to pick the one word that fits — and reject the near-synonym that doesn't.
Text Structure & Purpose — Name what a sentence does in the passage: introduces a claim, qualifies it, gives a counterexample, or pivots.
Cross-Text Connections — Read two paired texts and pin down exactly how the second author would respond to the first.
Expression of Ideas
Rhetorical Synthesis — Use the student's notes to accomplish the stated goal — the goal, not the notes, is the criterion.
Transitions — Name the logical relationship between two ideas — cause, contrast, example, concession — and pick the one transition that expresses it.
Standard English Conventions
Boundaries — Join clauses legally: semicolons, comma + conjunction, colons, and the comma splices that trap everyone.
Form, Structure & Sense — Subject–verb agreement across interrupting phrases, pronoun number, verb tense, and dangling modifiers.
Math
Algebra
Linear Equations in One Variable — Solve ax + b = c fluently, handle parentheses and fractions, and translate word problems into a single equation.
Linear Functions — Interpret slope and intercept in context, evaluate f(k), and build a linear model from two points or a description.
Linear Equations in Two Variables — Move between slope-intercept and standard form, and decide which equation models a two-variable situation.
Systems of Linear Equations — Solve systems by substitution and elimination, and recognize when a system has zero, one, or infinitely many solutions.
Linear Inequalities — Flip the sign when multiplying by a negative, shade the right half-plane, and test points against a system of inequalities.
Advanced Math
Equivalent Expressions — Factor, expand, and rewrite polynomial and rational expressions — the manipulation skills the hardest questions assume.
Nonlinear Equations & Systems — Solve quadratics by every method, discard extraneous radical solutions, and intersect lines with parabolas and circles.
Nonlinear Functions — Read vertex, intercepts, and end behavior; interpret exponential growth and decay parameters in context.
Problem-Solving and Data Analysis
Ratios, Rates & Proportions — Set up proportions that don't invert, chain unit conversions, and work with combined rates.
Percentages — Percent change, successive discounts, and the classic reverse problem: finding the original value from the final one.
One-Variable Data — Mean vs. median, effects of outliers, spread, and reading histograms, dot plots, and box plots correctly.
Two-Variable Data & Scatterplots — Lines of best fit, predictions, residuals, and what a model's slope and intercept mean in the real-world context.
Probability — Two-way tables and the conditional-probability trap: choosing the denominator the condition actually restricts.
Sample Statistics & Margin of Error — What a margin of error does and doesn't allow you to conclude, and how sample size changes it.
Evaluating Statistical Claims — Correlation vs. causation, randomization, and which population a study's conclusion can honestly cover.
Geometry and Trigonometry
Area & Volume — Area, surface area, and volume formulas — plus how scaling one dimension scales the rest.
Lines, Angles & Triangles — Parallel lines and transversals, angle sums, similarity, and the exterior-angle theorem.
Right Triangles & Trigonometry — SOH-CAH-TOA, Pythagorean triples, special right triangles, and cofunction identities.
Circles — Circle equations, completing the square for center and radius, arc length, and sector area.