I’ll get right to the point: I took the SAT this June, I did miserably (1190/1600, 540 Math, 650 Reading/Writing), and I need to improve my score by at least 110 ideally. I’m not gonna make any excuses for myself, I know that I slacked off when I should have been studying, and even when I was studying my study discipline was essentially non-existent.
So, this time around I’ve set up a schedule for studying: get out of school at 1:35, go to starbucks/dunkin donuts/wherever and do practice problems on khan/out of my practice books for 2 hours (1 math, 1 hour writing), and then go home and do HW. With all that said and done though, is there any particular advice you guys would like to give me as far as study material goes? If you’re curious, here are my subscores from my SAT:
Command of evidence - 12/15
Words in context - 13/15
Expression of ideas - 12/15
Standard English Conventions - 13/15
Heart of Algebra - 9/15
Problem Solving & Data Analysis - 10/15
Passport to Advanced Math - 9/15
As you can see, my math score seems to be much lower than my Reading/Writing score. However, does that mean that I should be spending that proportional amount of time studying for each subject? I understand that for a 110 point increase, I could gain 50 points in English and 60 points in math, or vice versa. However, do you guys feel like I should focus one subject more than another? Should I give more attention to math than English, since I scored lower?
Another question I had was about review vs. practice tests. I’ve googled this at least 2 dozen times, and I always seem to receive conflicting results. Some sites say I should train solely through practice problems, others say I should do some review and some practice, and others yet say that I should solely review. What’s your take on that? Is doing one particular method detrimental to my score increase?
Finally, are there any particular books/sites you recommend? Currently I’m just doing Khan and the SAT course books I got from Sylvan, though I do have a fair amount of money to spend on books.