The honest answer about timing
Sophomore year is too early to run a full SAT study plan, and the main reason is content. A large share of the Math section sits in Algebra 2 territory, and most students are still working through it. Drilling questions on material you have not been taught is slow and discouraging.
It is also too early in a practical sense. A score you earn now has no advantage over a score you earn in junior spring, and the preparation you do now will have faded by the time it counts.
What sophomore year is good for is removing future obstacles and building habits that pay off later. That is a short list, and it does not take much time.
If 2/3 x = 8, what is x?
Take a real test for free
If your school offers the PSAT 10 in the spring or the PSAT/NMSQT in the fall, take it. Neither qualifies a sophomore for National Merit, and colleges never see the score, so there is genuinely no downside.
Take it cold. Studying for it defeats the purpose, which is an honest baseline and a first exposure to Bluebook, the module timing, the break, and adaptive routing.
Afterward, read the domain breakdown rather than the total. If Standard English Conventions is weak, that is a finite set of grammar rules you can start chipping at any time. If Advanced Math is weak, that is mostly a content gap your coursework will close on its own.
If you use extended time, a separate room, extra breaks, or assistive technology at school, start the College Board accommodations request in sophomore year.
Handle accommodations now if you need them
If you use extended time, a separate room, extra breaks, or assistive technology at school, start the College Board accommodations request in sophomore year. Requests go through your school, approval is not automatic, and College Board can ask for more documentation, which resets your timeline.
Approved accommodations carry forward to the PSAT/NMSQT and the SAT, so doing it once now covers everything after. Deadlines and the current process are on collegeboard.org.
Students who leave this until a few weeks before a junior year test date routinely end up sitting standard timing.
Build the two habits that transfer
Reading things that are harder than you would pick for fun. Not for vocabulary lists, but because the Reading and Writing section is built on short dense passages of 25 to 150 words across science, history, literature, and social science. Comfort with that kind of prose is built over years, not weeks, and it is the one part of the SAT that genuinely rewards long term reading.
Paying attention in math class rather than to the SAT. The test stays inside algebra, functions, basic statistics, geometry, and right triangle trigonometry. Learning that material properly the first time is the most efficient SAT preparation available to a sophomore.
What not to do
Do not buy a prep course now. You will use it up before it matters and you will have to repeat the work in junior year.
Do not take the real SAT as a sophomore just to see. It costs money, it goes on your record, and a practice test in Bluebook gives you the same information for free.
Do not memorize vocabulary lists. The SAT tests words in context, which means picking the meaning a sentence supports rather than recalling a definition. Predicting the word yourself before reading the choices is the skill, and no list teaches it.