<p>My son took the SAT as a practice test last year as an 8th grader. His respective scores were, 600 math, 680 reading, and 680 writing. The first question I have is how much can he expect to improve naturally by the time he is a junior? Can anyone give me their thoughts and score progression and state if the increase was natural or via heavy prep etc? The second question I have is in regards to his lagging math score. He just finished Algebra II Trig accelerated in 9th grade and he recently took test #10 in the BB and he is now in the 660 range. I purchased Dr. Chung's guide and he is starting to look at it. My question, if he works through and understands all of the problems is it realistic for him to bypass the 700 plateau? As a parent, my wish is to have as many doors as possible open to him when he applies to college, therefore, shooting to be closer to 2400 than 2000. Thanks for your timely comments in advance.</p>
<p>Hello! Right now he’s a tenth grader? That means that he has a bit more than two years to nail that 2400, so that is a LOT of time. I mean, sure it’d be nice to have those scores in before the eleventh hour, but he can very realistically take the SAT fall senior year and have those scores count, because he would get them back in time for college apps. I’m not sure about early admission, though.</p>
<p>Naturally, he can probably bump everything up about 75 points simply by being older and gaining naturally enhanced focus, in my experience. Of course, that depends on how bright he is, but he seems quite intelligent to me. My personal experience (I’m a rising junior) was that my score rose from a 1930 to a 2070 by taking 2 practice tests within a couple weeks of each other because I had more familiarity the second time about how fast I should be going and so forth. </p>
<p>I did take a prep class, I took Kaplan, and that was really worth the time and money. They really drill in things that the average bright kid won’t think of doing, like that it might be faster in the math section to substitute in all the answer choices and solve instead of just doing the problem the traditional way.</p>
<p>About the math- Luckily, this section is the easiest to prep for in my experience. I am a definite verbal sort of person, so I was freaked out, but just by doing my kaplan homework and going through my practice SATs and working out every problem I missed with a parent helped enormously. It sounds like that’s not the case for your son, so what I would recommend is prepping with a test center- because your son certainly knows the math and algebra and whatever, but a lot of it is speed and tricks like knowing when to sub in answers and so forth. </p>
<p>Yes, he can probably bypass the 700 plateau if he’s already hit 660. A lot of it is simply luck- that’s about 50 points worth of luck per section in my experience. In order to control for that, it’s important to be deeply familiar with the materials. “Starting to look at it” is fine for now, but at some point he’s going to need to complete that book cover to cover, and do a few others possibly. Also, you should see the math scores rise exponentially quite soon with some prep but I have NO idea how to boost the writing and reading, haha. In fact, if you have any tips for that, I would appreciate them greatly. Feel free to PM me.</p>
<p>Finally, yes, I understand why you’re shooting for as high as you can go. I, too, just want as many options as possible two years down the road.</p>
<p>Also, most prep workbooks are the same so I would just head over to Ebay and buy as many of them as possible. Barron’s, Princeton Review, Kaplan, even Sparknotes. REA’s alright too. Good luck!</p>
<p>Definitely possible.</p>
<p>You son just needs to keep doing practice problems, closely reviewing any mistakes he made. Perfect 800 is the best book IMO for the math portion…</p>
<p>Grace nailed the good books for the test, and of course the blue book by Collegeboard is great practice.</p>
<p>For the 700 plateau, it does exist, but once he passes 750, it will just be a matter of time and hard work… He’ll get better just because he will continue to learn functions, combinations, and Algebra. Vocab builds slowly as he reads, as does comprehension. Things are looking great!</p>
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