Today we welcome Elizabeth King as our guest blogger. Elizabeth is the author of Outsmarting the SAT. Be sure to visit her site for more tips!

Of course you don’t want your SAT scores to tank — who would? But just for fun, let’s pretend you do. Here are five ways to make it happen!

1. Take Practice Tests and Never Look at Them Again

You may like to think you’re “prepping” when you’re sitting around pecking through SAT practice tests, talking on the phone, updating your Facebook status, and watching Jimmy Fallon. In fact, you may also think you’re prepping if you sit down every couple of nights or so and do a timed section in The College Board book and score it. However, if you’re not continually reviewing mistakes you made, tracking them in a notebook, describing what you got wrong (Was it something you didn’t know? Was it the way the question was presented?), you’re not really studying.

You should have a running list of all the vocab words you’ve missed, all the grammatical constructions that have eluded you, and all the math facts and question styles that have given you trouble. Review it, love it, learn it.

2. Plan to Cram

Cramming is a not-too-distant cousin of the classic prep strategy “cutting corners.” Both involve finding as many ways as possible to alleviate the amount of effort you put into your SAT prep. No effort = lousy score. Here’s how you may be cutting the corners that will surely cut your score:

• You rely on calculator programs that claim to help you solve math problems on the test by plugging in variables. They will ultimately slow you down and they’ll be worthless on the most difficult problems, which actually challenge your critical and creative thinking skills.
• You’re ignoring the SAT all summer and planning to squeeze prep in during pre-season/back-to-school/last-minute summer reading.
• You’re pretending the flashcards can wait, thinking that you’re going to learn 2,000 new vocabulary words a week before the test.

3. Become a Sugar Addict

OK, this one is painful, but your sugar addiction is killing your ability to be in tip-top test-taking shape. You’re up! You’re down! You’re solving a math problem! Ohhhhh, you can’t remember the formula! You’re yawning! Annnnnnnnd… you bubbled the wrong answer. Test: 1. You: 0.

Seriously, though, you really need to think about your diet and your daily reliance on refined sugar. Being on a perpetual sugar high/low cycle effects your ability to sleep, your ability to stay awake, you energy levels, and your focus. And during a four-hour test? Forget it: you need real food that packs a punch, including complex carbs and protein. Your brain needs calories to work. Please feed it.

Moreover, the New York Times recently published an article saying that binging on fat (think that huge burger and fries you had last night) can have equally disastrous effects on your ability to focus. Considering a donut and a sausage muffin for breakfast before the test? Bad call.

4. Swear Off Reading Like the Plague

You swear off reading because you think it’s boring, you struggle to pay attention, or you’d prefer to be playing video games. But let’s face it: if you don’t learn to read and focus, you’re going to find yourself struggling on a test that is primarily 4 hours of reading. Plus, once you get to college, you’ll be required to do enormous amounts of reading on a weekly basis from which your profs will actually want you to learn. If you don’t read, you’ll either find yourself with a score that keeps you from getting into a school that’s worthy of your intelligence, or you’ll eek in and find yourself drowning in a college curriculum that’s caught you completely off guard.

So, start reading now for an SAT score, a college experience, heck—a life—worthy of your brilliant brain.

5. Freak Out on Test Day

Want do to poorly on any test, any time? Stress out from start to finish. Some classic freak-out inducers for SAT day:

• Go to the wrong test center.
• Lose your admissions ticket/ID.
• Forget your #2 pencils.
• Pass on breakfast and don’t bring a snack.
• Show up under the influence of some sort of illicit substance.
• Take the test for the first time on the very last test date before you apply to college to really enhance that “it’s now or never” panic.
• Be seen with your cell phone and have it confiscated.

… or worst of all…

• Open your test booklet and realize you didn’t prepare. (See Tip #1)

-Elizabeth King