Hey guys, I’m new here. Overall, you guys seem helpful and knowledgeable, so I hope you guys will answer this.
So I’m in a bit of a mess. I have had this ugly sleeping schedule since a very long time, which I thought I had fix before my SAT (which was today, Oct 1, 2016). However, I stayed up all night and clearly realized that I hadn’t. Therefore, accepting I wouldn’t give the SAT without proper rest, I changed my SAT registration to November.
Here comes the tricky part. I exhausted the 6 official tests from the College Board website. So now, how should I practice till my test date? Prep books seem to be nefariously off the mark, but I heard some people say that the new PR is kinda okay. Plus, there’s this new book, Kallis SAT Pattern Strategy, which the blogger at Magoosh proclaims to be almost identical to the real tests.
Anyways, can anyone please offer any advice of what to do? I will give the two PSAT tests on the college board website as I have heard they are basically SATs but just a little easier. Once again, thank you.
I found the Kallis book to be pretty terrible for R, fwiw. In fact, for R, the best one I’ve seen is the Ivy Global 2nd edition, but even that’s far from perfect. @SATHATER6969
Thanks for the advice folks, I will definitely try to use a combination of IvyGlobal, PSAT and repeat the 6 tests come November. Anybody else have any experience with 3rd party practice tests?
Also, what is a good way to finalize revision for the SAT? I usually scored around the 1500 for my last two tests, and although that is good, I really want a perfect score and am ready to work hard for it. Please let me know
P.S Is 1500---->1600 possible in a month with the 3 practice test resources I mentioned?
100 points is definitely possible depending on how much work you’re willing to put into the next few weeks. I second the IvyGlobal book, that one’s pretty good. KhanAcademy has a lot of practice questions divided by skill set. Honestly, I’d just ignore most other 3rd party books (like PR or Barrons), they’ve all been terrible. Make sure to keep track of which type of questions you’re missing! That will help you pinpoint exactly where you should focus on and drill those skills specifically.
Thanks for the replies guys! It really means a lot.
To sum it all up, I’ve made a small plan:
Give the PSAT test from CollegeBoard, score and find weaknesses, drill them on Khan Academy.
Then, give the 3 practice tests from IvyGlobal (basically 2 because I already gave on) and eliminate weaknesses again.
As PrimeMeridian suggested above, I will give the 6 official SAT practice tests from College Board once again to really get used to the test.
Any other things that I should add to that list? Any books you guys found particularly useful, especially for practice tests or drilling?
This might actually turn out to be a good thread for students like me who have run out of practice materials but want to continue practicing. Please, if anyone has anything to input, let me know
What other sections are common for the SAT and ACT? I forgot to mention that I am an international student(from Bangladesh) so I’m very unfamiliar with these sorts of tests.
The Critical Reader sounds good, I’ll check it out
Any other books+realist practice tests information will be highly appreciated
Alright guys, it’s been a couple of days and I’ve been busy with my school work. I think I’ve finally scheduled enough time to resume studying for the SAT.
Any other 3rd party books or practice test suggestions are highly appreciated.
Review those 6 college board practice tests! Get to know the patterns of the questions, the underlying content, what things are consistently tested and how. Try the questions again and go through mistakes again. When I redid practice tests I often still made mistakes and found there was a lot still to learn.
I would repeat the official ones as much as you can ^ like stated above. I have the PR book and it is difficult, to the point where sometimes I gave up in the middle of the test. Practice old tests until you know all the q’s front to back and make only 1-2 mistakes.
Okay, I’m definitely going to follow the advice of using the 6 tests again, but should I skip the reading sections? Cause I feel like the score won’t accurately reflect my capabilities, especially reading, since reading something twice makes it much easier to understand and I won’t have time for that during the actual test. Repeating the tests for math and writing sounds nice though.
About the analogy questions being infrequent on the SAT reading, When I was taking the October SAT this past weekend, i noticed an analogy question on the test. It was a little bit different from normal analogy question because it asked the students to draw analogies from a data set.
Having the score accurately reflect your capabilities is not always the point. Sometimes the point is just to practice and build familiarity with the test. In other words, yes, your score will be higher the 2nd time around, but repeat the Reading tests for practice purposes anyway.
@YoLolololol – that is very odd. If you’re correct, it’s the first analogy question on a real new SAT (the Khan Academy fake tests have tons of them, clear evidence that they’re outsourced and not made/vetted by the CB). Very odd indeed.
