<p>Hi everyone,</p>
<p>First I'd like to say College Confidential is a really good site. Keep up the good work :-).</p>
<p>I've taken the SAT I once, in December 2006.</p>
<p>I got 670 in Math (with 8 wrong),700 in Writing (because the experimental section was writing; Essay 11, 7 MCQ wrong) and 550 (!!) in Critical Reading (with 24 wrong). Total Score : 1920.</p>
<p>A little background info on my scores:
I took a Princeton Review course and basically got ripped off with a crap (seriously crap) Math instructor but an okay-ish Verbal Instructor (she was the main reason my essay and MCQ's were good). I have 4 main books : The Blue Book (Official Study Guide), Princeton Review's Cracking the SAT, PR's 11 Practice Tests for the SAT and a manual for SAT which they gave with their course.
I finished the course in mid-November and took the last week of November for practicing tests. In that week, I didn't do any of the PR tests, just the Blue Book ones. All my Blue Book tests have marks on them everywhere and unfortunately I don't think it can be re-used. :-(</p>
<p>Basic Report on my condition:
I had ended up doing the Math myself and knew I had messed up 2-3 Questions while doing the SAT.
My Critical Reading has always pretty much sucked. My problems with the Sentence Completions were lack of good vocab and I had quite a lot of problems in the Reading PAssages. However, fortunately, I got the hang of Reading Passages as of late and am now getting stuck with the two 'close' answers, out of them one is right and the other is wrong.
My Writing is okay right now as I'm out of practice since the SAT in December. But I didn't expect an 11 in Essay so I'm pretty okay (I used the PR Method of doing Essays, but used really generalistic examples to explain my viewpoint. Anyone interested in seeing it, I'll post it) with the essay.
The MCQ's are kinda easy for me as I got the hang of them but sometimes get stuck with Improving Sentences. I might've done well in Writing also because the fact the experimental section in my paper was Writing.</p>
<p>So the Questions I really wanna ask are:
1) Critical Reading seems to be the main problem : Vocab and RP (Reading Passages) advice sorely needed!
2) Math can be curbed with Practice of more tests I believe. Any advice?
3) Writing MCQs, IMO, can also be curbed with more Practice. Any advice will be appreciated!</p>
<p>Thanks a lot!</p>
<p>Rohit</p>
<p>The math and Writing are the easiest to improve. For math, the thing that helped me get from a 61 on the PSAT to a 750 on the SAT was the math team. If you have a math team in your high school, I strongly recommend you join. As for the Writing, it looks like you just need help on the MC. I recommend Barron's 2400, it helped me get from a 60 to a 66 in the MC. Then simply practice on the Blue Book.</p>
<p>CR is by far the hardest to improve. I got from a 550 to 600, so you should be able to also. One of my main problems is running out of time on the tests. I strongly recommend you use a stopwatch when practicing on the Blue Book. In the end, I've found out that you CAN finish each CR section with 4 minutes on the clock. The sentence completions should take you 2-3 minutes to complete (I mean, you either know it or you don't). You need to leave the bulk of the time to do the reading questions.</p>
<p>Keep a vocab notebook. Look up any of the words on the practice tests that you don't know, but make sure you memorize them too. It'll be hard to memorize 500+ words, so do them in small intervals, AND come back to the earlier words too.</p>
<p>Reading works. Don't read stuff like Harry Potter, read critical material. I've heard that the "New Yorker" works.</p>
<p>Luck also plays a factor. I could've sworn that I got higher than a 600 since I was getting 650's on the Blue Book practice exams. Depending on the words the exam tests and the topics of the reading material, your score can vary dramatically on each exam. This is especially true on the CR section.</p>
<p>I used the strategy in Barron's 2400, which tells you to read in groups. When I got to a long passage, I would look at the line references and mark up the passage. After reading every paragraph, I went immediately to the questions that pertained to what I just read. I left the "global" questions for the end. I found this method helpful, but since CR methods differ from people to people, you might want to try this method and see if it works for you.</p>
<p>Good luck and don't give up.</p>
<p>Another thing I want to add, I'm not an avid reader like many people (I watch more TV than I read). So avid readers will definitely have an advantage in the CR section. But non-avid readers can still score high on the CR; they just have to work harder.</p>
<p>I have never taken a PR course or a Kaplan course, and I got a 2000 just from self studying. I really can't say if these courses help or not since I haven't taken them, but I think that anyone with enough self motivation can score high just from self studying. I've heard that PR and Kaplan simply regurgitate the material that can be found on their $20 books. I've also heard that PR and Kaplan have outstanding tutors that have performed miracles for students.</p>
<p>But for the CR section, there are no tricks or secrets, so I highly doubt that if I took one of these $1000 course my CR score would improve. I have a friend who took Kaplan and his highest CR score was a 550 (I got that without taking these courses).</p>
<p>Barron's 2400 seemed pretty useful to mel-- I'm a book nerd, so the CR wasn't too difficult for me, but I tried their method a couple times and it worked well. DEFINITELY read a lot, that will help you with vocab, but also with memorizing it, you only need to be able to use it in a sentence, not define it. That's easier/quicker for me to learn than specific definitions, I don't know about you. I hear ya on the '2 close answers' thing-- just go back to the passage and look for specific evidence of either answer...often, one is related or could be inferred, but isn't actually there, while one is.</p>
<p>Math is my weak point, what I did to work on it-- I would do ONE math section of a practice test (timed) one night, and then I'd go back through it, correcting it and working through EVERY problem I got wrong or felt unsure about. What are your issues (a specific subject area like functions or fractions? careless mistakes from rushing? panicking about running out of time?)? My big thing was that I'd worry about not having enough time, but after I did enough of these practices I gained confidence for doing the 'easy' section quickly and not second-guessing myself, and saving the big part of my time for the 'hard' section. My strategy: I take a few seconds to read the question and study the figure/graph/numbers...if I don't see how to solve it in the next 15 sec or so, I circle it and move on-- better to get more questions done, and often when I return to it I feel more ready to tackle it.</p>
<p>Improving Sentences are frustrating-- I wish I had more advice for you, but that was the most aggravating section for me and the one where I felt like I was second-guessing myself the most. I'd suggest maybe going to your English teacher and asking for a list of the most common grammar mistakes and learning them cold. If you can read a sentence and say "oh, that's a dangling participle, so the error is C." like <em>that</em>, you'll be set.</p>