<p>After taking the Nov. PSAT as a soph I obtained a 162.
There are no excuses for my lackluster score other than I took the test blindly to see my capability. My score is as follows: 53 CR, 56 in M, and 53 in W
I have been using the blue book as a means of practice, however have seen little no improvement. I'm hoping to raise it to a 2200-2300 range by jr. year. I do know it is possible. Except I'm not sure what exactly to study. </p>
<p>I only have the current tools and am open to suggestions for books:
Blue Book
Gruber's
Direct Hits Vol. 1</p>
<p>For CR I have an extremely hard time understanding what the long passages say at times and I typically "fall out" of focus. I've heard of reading in chunks, however doesn't this slow you down? The vocabulary part of CR will be taken care of once I start Direct Hits, so I'm confident in that. I just need help tackling the long passages for I typically get all the questions correct on the short passages and sometimes on compare and contrast. My friend has also suggested reading classical works to expand vocabulary? I don't read incredibly often to the extent where I read fast to understand so should I try to alleviate that weakness?</p>
<p>For M the word problems are my aggressors. For example, I missed two easy questions, because I did not understand the a word problem whatsoever. I think I'm just going to read more indepth in Gruber's and see what happens.</p>
<p>For W I know to review all the rules for subject-verb agreement, however I have trouble with the "what is the best way to say this...." "what is the best sentence..." and I also have trouble with the passage questions that ask for "how to rewrite this", and identifying the author's tone? </p>
<p>Wow! That was a lot, but I really do want to improve before junior year. Thanks for reading and please feel free to give some suggestions.</p>