<p>Heh, a question I can answer with confidence! I used to tutor the SAT critical reading and writing portions for Kaplan test prep.</p>
<p>The best way to raise your scores on the SAT is to know the test. Very, very well. The SAT I is less about content (actually knowing the vocabulary, writing skills, etc.) and more about knowing how to take the test.</p>
<p>The first strategy is not to answer every single question. SATs are scored differently from other tests – you lose .25 points for every wrong answer you give, but you do NOT lose any points for not answering a question. And every single question, easy or hard, earns you the same amount of points in your raw score (1!) Because of that, it is in your best interests to answer questions that are easier for you first, then go back and answer the more difficult questions. If you cannot eliminate any answer choices, or can only eliminate one answer choice and have no guesses about the other four, leave the question blank and just don’t answer it. (It is usually recommended that if you can eliminate at least 2 choices, you should guess, as the chances of you getting it right are higher than the guessing penalty.)</p>
<p>for SENTENCE COMPLETIONS - do some real vocabulary work. Flash cards help some students, but the downside to them is that you learn stiff definitions and not the words in context. The BEST way to build vocabulary is to read. A lot. Get college-level and professional publications like The Economist, U.S. News & World Report (they publish a LOT more than just college rankings :D), your local newspaper and the like. Read a lot. Read a little every day. When you come across a word that you do not know, write it down and perhaps the sentence it occurred in and look it up later. Or better yet, get a pocket dictionary and look it up on the spot. Then think of another sentence it would work in. Barron’s has an excellent list of high-frequency SAT words, highlighting the ones that appear the most. They are very accurate!</p>
<p>Also, study Latin and Greek roots. These are often nearly as helpful as knowing what the word itself means. You can use roots to construct a word or deduce what it means. This can be very helpful under time constraints or to eliminate answers. (But be careful – some words are ‘false cognates’.)</p>
<p>On the actual test, when you are doing questions, fill in the blank mentally with your own word first before looking at the answer choices. It doesn’t have to be an SAT word or even a word that gives an exact meaning; get as close as you can. For example, the answer may be ‘malevolent’ but the best you can come up with is ‘bad.’ If there are only two answers that mean close to ‘bad,’ you’ve narrowed down your choices significantly.</p>
<p>For some reason this tip is really hard for students to follow – they’re so used to looking at the answer choices. But selecting an answer without coming up with your own first takes much longer and has a much higher failure rate than predicting an answer first. Think of the sentence completions as a short answer test rather than a multiple-choice one. Trust yourself!</p>
<p>for READING COMPREHENSION, reading a lot helps here too, especially the works I referenced before (college-level works and professional magazines, and newspapers). While you are reading, take a break after every 2-3 paragraphs and sum up what you just read mentally. Think about the main themes, the details, inferences you can make, counter-arguments, anything! This becomes second nature after a while (and will be very useful in college, trust me).</p>
<p>Read the questions before you read the passage. Seriously. That way, you know what to look for. In two-passage questions, read the questions that pertain to the first passage first, then read the first passage (quickly, looking for main ideas – don’t worry about the details yet), then answer those questions. Then read the questions about the second passage, read the second passage, and then answer those questions. Then answer questions that relate to both passages. No need to confuse yourself with too much information, as the most common sidetracker answer on SAT RC questions is an answer that has to do with the second paragraph while you are answering questions concerning the first.</p>
<p>Don’t use ANY outside information when answering the questions. ANY. This will just trip you up; all the information you need is right there in the passage. It’s like an open-book test – always refer back to the passage when answering these questions, especially detail questions.</p>
<p>for the MULTIPLE CHOICE WRITING questions, well, strategies for these are always a little more vague. But these questions are usually about grammar and sentence structure. I suggest getting an SAT workbook (Barron’s is pretty good, as well as the College Board blue book) and learning basic grammar rules that pop up often on the writing section questions. You just have to look for those. Reading in this case also helps because the more you read, the more likely you are to recognize wonky grammar and sentence structure.</p>
<p>for the ESSAY, make sure you use your 25 minutes wisely. You don’t need to write a magnum opus. Take 4 minutes of time to brainstorm first. Jot down whatever comes to mind. Take a side (don’t be wishy-washy, it doesn’t matter what side as long as you take one) and think of every single example you can to support your beliefs/statement. You don’t have to be factually accurate. You can make up statistics if you like even if you don’t remember them, or use anecdotal stories that never really happened or are greatly exaggerated, they don’t care. They just want to see that you can support an argument. When you are finished coming up with examples, pick your three strongest examples.</p>
<p>Take approximately 18 minutes to write your essay, which should be at least 5 paragraphs. Don’t spend too much time writing the introduction; just tell the reader what you are about to write about and hint towards your examples. Intro should be a short summary telling the reader what you think (your thesis statement) and illustrating how you are going to support your thesis. Start with your weakest example and write your way up to your strongest one, spending at least one paragraph on each example. Develop your ideas concisely but adequately. If you mess up, just cross out the word with a single line and keep writing. Give hard examples.</p>
<p>I know the College Board people say that you don’t necessarily have to be all the way finished with your essay to get a good score. Don’t believe them. I was an essay scorer (for test prep, not the actual test) and statistically finished essays get MUCH better scores than unfinished ones. Unless it is an exceptional essay in every way and is only missing one or two sentences to wrap it up, it’s going to get a lower scores for being unfinished.</p>
<p>Other things that CB says don’t matter that really do – handwriting style, and length. An English professor recently did a research study and found out that longer essays consistently get higher scores than shorter ones. Although the difference between 5 and 6 paragraphs will be minimal, you can’t get a top score with a 2-paragraph essay. Remember, machines are not grading your essay, people are, people with biases and feelings who have about 3 minutes to go over your essay and assign it a score (and that’s a generous figure. I generally had less than that to score the essay). As much as they say they are not biased against bad handwriting, I and other scorers admit to being frustrated by certain illegible parts of an essay and giving it a lower score partially based on that, unless the actual legible parts were really good.</p>
<p>Spelling and grammar really don’t matter, though. That should be the last thing on your mind. A few spelling errors won’t lower your score, although many will detract from your message.</p>
<p>The last 3 minutes you have left should be spent proofreading. Look over your sentence structure and placement first. It is okay to circle sentences and draw arrows indicating that they should be somewhere else, cross out words and write other ones on top of them, or just cross out whole sentences all together. Your essay should look like a good rough draft. Don’t worry about spelling and grammar errors unless you notice a lot.</p>