<p>Ok heres the deal about Kaplan/Princeton Review VS. Collegeboard. The prep company questions arent neccessarily easier... in fact they are often harder. The thing is, ETS, the company that makes the SAT, has some weird special secret formula about what kind of passages they pick and stuff and also what kind of questions they have. Go look at any reading passage questions in the CB Book and then one in the 11 Practice Tests book by Princeton Review. You will see that the CB book has a lot more "life-ref" questions that the 11 PT. In fact PR is very bad at mimicing CB because all they do is ask the same types of questions, the passages are often completely retarded (something you won't find in any of the CB Tests (although it is possible).</p>
<p>As of now, my routine is increasing my vocab through Word Smart and taking a practice test every now and then.</p>
<p>Hopefully I'll achieve a 700+ by the next examination.</p>
<p>Word Smart is a very useful book for increasing your vocabulary. I got my first official 800 on a practice test for CR today. I had 2 wrong but neither was a sentence-completion. It was the March '05 test. Woohoo!</p>
<p>Good job Flipsta_G!
BTW, what kind of methods does Word Smart employ that differs from memorizing vocabulary the conventional way?</p>
<p>It is pretty conventional, I guess. It does give at least 2 to 4 examples of sentences with the different uses of the word. These examples are often pretty ridiculous so they can help you memorize the words. The pronuniation guide actually makes sense, unlike a dictionary's one. After every 10 or so words there is a Quick Quiz to review the words. All of the words in the book are important to know, and it includes many words that are often missued. The words appear on the SAT quite frequently. It has a SAT Hit Parade at the end of the book if you don't have time for the whole book also, and it contains about 250 words.</p>
<p>Alright, thanks Flipsta_G!</p>
<p>There is just one week left for me to prepare for the October test.Could you critical reading geniuses please give me some helpful hints?How do you read the passage,the questions and the answers choices?</p>
<p>passage:</p>
<p>1) read the first sentence of every paragraph and the last sentence of the last paragraph. ignore the rest. for now.
2) read the questions, and know what they want.
3) do questions that tell you where to find the answers (something like "in lines 13-26")
4) do questions that ask you the meaning of a certain word.
5) save the "what is the passage mainly about?" for the last. Reason? By the time you do all the other questions, you would have read enough of the passage to know what are they talking about.</p>
<p>so basically, only read what you need. not the whole passage.</p>
<p>Are you sure it would work? :confused:</p>
<p>my verbal score went up from 550 to 700. so i'm not quite sure whether it will work.</p>
<p>Are you kidding me?700 is definitely what I need.</p>
<p>my point is, it worked for me, so i'm just sharing it with someone who might need it. it's really up to you to see which works best for you. just thought you might want to try my method.</p>
<p>I knew all that and thank you for your sharing :)</p>
<p>Now that a lot more of people have scored 800 on the CR component,how did you club-800's new members prepare for the CR?</p>
<p>Uh my friend got an 800 and he didn't study at all. He also got 790 W and 770 M. What a dumbass.</p>
<p>CR: Increase your vocab is the best prep. I really didn't do anything to increase my reading comprehension...just read the passages like you would a book or an article and luck out on the SC and you'll be dialing toll free!</p>
<p>dam i cant get over 700!</p>
<p>I've found that those who scores really high tend to be "life-long readers." Or, they attend schools where you have to read a lot for English class. So, if you're not a person who reads for like an hour each day for the fun of it and don't go to a good high school, then I suggest you start reading college level material for at least an hour each day. Memorizing vocab DOES help. Just use the words off of the college boards practice tests that you don't know. Good luck. I'm sure with practice tests and increased reading you all will do well.</p>
<p>hey i got 3 ap so i hardly get time to read how could i improve my verbal</p>
<p>OK, I am working on Verbal right now, specifically sentence completions, and this is something that keeps getting me: Make absolutely sure that the answer you're choosing makes sense. If you can't do that, then look at each answer and decide why each one doesn't make sense. At this point, I'm only missing 0-2 sentence completions per practice test, but this is almost always the reason I am missing them. You don't need to be able to find the right answer directly if you can prove to yourself why 4 out of the 5 are wrong. Also remember that the test will often try to trick you with answers that could easily fit in but *are not logically supported by the sentence<img src="the%20same%20goes%20for%20the%20reading%20selections" alt="/i">. This is an important point: You cannot make assumptions; everything you need is within the sentence. Do not assume that a person has a certain personality trait or can be expected to do one thing or another without the sentence confirming it. Make sure that the answer you decide on goes with the sentence, or if you can't do that, use the method I described above (prove 4 out of the 5 wrong, logically relating them to the sentence).</p>
<p>I'm writing this just so that I can get this idea in my head :) Here's an example of one I just missed:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Considering that many women had little control over their own lives in medieval England, Margery Kempe's fifteenth-century autobiography demonstrates a remarkable degree of -------.
(A) consecration (B) rationalism (C) autonomy (D) effacement (E) simplicity
[/quote]
Autonomy was the one word with which I was unfamiliar. Kempe didn't show remarkable consecration or "the declaration of something sacred." Simplicity doesn't contrast with "control over one's life." Effacement, or an erasing of self wouldn't make sense. I associated autonomy with war and military affairs and decided against it. I chose rationalism, since it seemed like a "positive trait" that the College Board might use. This was poor reasoning. Aside from my "likeliness" rationale, I had no other reason to choose it. There is nothing in the sentence to suggest that being rational contrasts with having control. It is possible to reason out "rationalism." This leaves "autonomy," which is the correct answer. Again, it is not necessary to be able to reason out the right answer, if you can disprove the other answers. For the record, autonomy is independence, or self-governance.</p>
<p>If I were to summarize all of this in one sentence, it would be this: Be overbearingly logical; don't choose something just because it seems right.</p>