My son will take the PSAT this fall and it would be wonderful if he could test high enough to receive a scholarship. Any study tips or materials that you thought were helpful would be appreciated. He will be studying over the summer.
Sign him up for the May or June SAT. If the score report with the Q & A’s is available, order that as well.
Use the official SAT study material from the College Board --books or online. Practice, practice, practice. Spend a lot of time analyzing any questions missed. The only way to increase your score from test to test is to understand why you got something wrong, and figure out how to get that type of question right the next time. Good luck!
Thank you for the tips. I will sign him up for the SAT. Does taking it too many times look bad for your application to college?
I did some more research and found a math and grammar study book for him to go through. He already started the math book. He took the grammar book today to school. (Hopefully he opens it. He prefers math.) He is motivated to get a good scholarship so I am pleasantly surprised that he is voluntarily starting to study. Getting test results hopefully will encourage him to study more and getting a higher score.
Oh can get the question and answer service but only in May and his sister graduates that day from college so that won’t be happening. Dang.
For PSAT, SAT, ACT, and SAT Subject tests, my sons have used the study books available at the bookstore (Kaplan, Barron’s, etc.) as well as the official College Board and ACT study books to do practice tests and learn about strategies for certain types of problems. Some people believe that the unofficial practice tests are harder and might help students to prepare better for more difficult questions. Don’t really know if this is true, though. Generally my sons picked just one book to study from for each test and did most of their studying and practice tests in the six weeks before the test.
I have also heard that taking the SAT test multiple times might look bad, but, again, don’t really know if this is true. With my sons, I timed the SAT and ACT to be near or at the end of their precalculus class. They only took them once.