<p>Hi guys, I haven't been on this forum for almost a 5 months but I need your help once more. </p>
<p>SAT history: </p>
<p>1st SAT: October 2007, beginning of Soph year: 1460, CR: 470, M:480, W:510
2nd: Dec 2008, mid Junior year: 1950, CR: 580, M: 690, W: 680
3rd: May 2009, Late Junior year: 2010, CR: 580, M: 730, W: 700</p>
<p>now I'm gonna be applying to UPenn Wharton Early decision. I live in Philly so I get a bit of a leeway but still, I need my reading score to be 700+ if I want to have a shot. The problem comes in with the fact that I've taken the SAT 3 times (because I was a stupid sophomore), and October will be my last try. I really need CR to go up to 700 so I want to make a study plan right now. </p>
<p>CR report from May 2009:</p>
<p>Sentence Completion: 13 correct, 4 incorrect, 2 skip
Easy - all right
Medium - 7 right, 1 wrong, 1 skip
Hard - 0 right, 3 wrong, 1 skip</p>
<p>well ur getting -6 from vocab (yes 2 are blank but still -6…) so one thing that will ABSOLUTELY help your score is to study vocab every SINGLE day. yes, 10 vocabs a day until october is well over 400ish. so get studying some vocab book. also, i recommend something called speed drills which is to limit ur time by 5-7 minutes from ur original time and to work backwards from HARDEST to easiest. why? 1. you get to work on the hard ones (since u missed all of them) 2. you improve your speed 3. if u keep getting all the easy and middle ones right but have no time to do the hard questions u wont improve… do this for all subjects. As for math, I would just go and do all the H questions since the easy/middles ones are… easy… and its the easiest section to get an 800 in. everything else is just practice</p>
<p>Yes, you MUST study vocab. What have you been doing for vocab already? The best resource I’ve found for vocab, which I really encourage my tutoring students to sign up for, is word-nerd.com, so check that out.</p>
<p>As for the reading, are you feeling time pressured at all? Are there certain types of questions you struggle with more than others? One recommendation I usually give is to not get too wrapped up the reading of the passage. You don’t have to understand every word of it to get the answer right. You might want to focus on the questions that have a line reference first - you’ll know exactly where to look for the answer (of course, remembering that you’ll probably need to read a few lines both before and after the line reference to understand it). I might have more suggestions if you can give a little more information.</p>
<p>OK, so if time is an issue, definitely try a few practice CR sections using the strategy I already mentioned to get the feel of it, and see if it makes a difference to you score. You’re probably spending too much time and energy understanding the passage, instead of just getting the gist of it in your first reading. It’s easy to get bogged down in the terminology…these passages are intentionally difficult. They’re supposedly representative of what you’ll read in college, and unfortunately, they really are pretty representative of the heavy stuff you’ve got to look forward to! I also recommend that you ALWAYS read the little italic blurb at the beginning of the passage. I always skipped this when I was in your position, and it’s too bad because it can give you good info about the main idea of the passage.</p>
<p>one way to improve ur time is to keep practicing. If you think u have absolutely no hope (after like 10 tries and ur time isnt improving) then u should do as swan said. do the specific questions first. I usually SKIM over the questions as fast as possible and if a majority of them are like 1. In lines10-11 what is… 2. In lines 50-60 what is… and such I simply READ the blurb READ the first paragraph to get a sense of the thesis (if its there) and what the tone/passage is gonna b like then just simply do the questions. </p>
<p>If the question asks “In line 10-11…” then I would START READING FROM LINE 7 OR 8 and read until LINE 14/15. this is extremely important since the questions ask in context and chronologically. The answers are usually in those lines (lines 8 or line 12). try it out. there is a limit in which strategies carry you… (for me its at 2000 right now)</p>