<p>Sanguine007, I know exactly how you feel. </p>
<p>I went through the exact same thing... I worked for tons of hours on the SAT, and my scores didn't change one bit. I felt cursed.</p>
<p>But you know what I realized? The SAT is not a worthless test. It really does measure something. Not intelligence, but your ability to solve problems - and I came to realize that it is hard to learn how to solve problems overnight.</p>
<p>Out of all the hours you've spent studying the SAT, you've learned FACTS: ideas, concepts, formulas etc. But have you learned to THINK and REASON differently? Has your problem-solving thought process changed? If you're presented with an SAT problem, will you immediatly jump for the right answer or begin working out the solution correctly, arriving at the answer in seconds? Or will you attempt to recall something you read in a prep book like "Oh yeah, I've seen this kind of problem before... I think you do this, then this, then that..." and stumble around for a while till you figure out the right answer, sometimes only half-sure you were correct?</p>
<p>People who do really well on the SAT (2200+, the kind of score you want) are the former kind of test-taker. They immediatly know what to do. Hundreds of hours of test prep has taught you things about the SAT. But it has not changed your problem solving ability.</p>
<p>That does not mean your time was wasted - infact, that SAT prep was the best investment you could've made, and WILL make you into that type of test-taker who excels at the SAT.</p>
<p>But it will take TIME for your studying to achieve that result. That is the time that it takes time for knowledge to become understanding. </p>
<p>In my opinion, the best thing you can do right now is take a break from the SAT. Spend a semester or longer focusing on nothing but school-related academics. Study hard - do more homework than you have to and bring outside problems to class, and most of all, take the hardest classes you can. In your free time, read for pleasure, or seek out math problems that are NOT from SAT prep books. You will be amazed that as you work these problems your thought process will be different than it was before, because of all your SAT prep. Then when you go to take the SAT, you will find that you immediatly know how to solve most of the questions that were probably totally enigmatic to you before.</p>
<p>In my SAT prep books, I marked with a star the problems that I did not understand. then I took an SAT "hiatus" like I described. Months later, I came back to the books, and found that I was getting every problem I had marked with the star right. It was not a case of remembering the answers. I was solving them all the way through, correctly (my main focus was on math). Believe me, this really works. </p>
<p>My SAT score went up over 350 points with this approach, to well over 2000. The daily 24 hour test cramming brought my score up nil. I learned that doing great on the SAT is about more than prep - it's about learning how to think and reason better - that only happens if you apply your knowledge in school and in life (reading, math problems, etc).</p>
<p>Best of luck to you. Don't give up - you will get the SAT score you want.</p>