<p>I’ve been in a similar situation, and don’t worry it’s totally manageable. Good news, is that math and writing can go up dramatically in a short period of time with the right preparation. For CR, it takes a longer time. As mentioned before, you need a longer term strategy that includes more reading, etc. However, having said that, I personally bumped up my score around 70 to 80 points on the CR from memorizing vocab. But for me, memorizing vocab was the last step. I was scoring right around 700 before painfully memorizing like 3000 words. (in hindsight, this was overkill. you don’t need to memorize that many)</p>
<p>I also did it myself without tutors or classes, but I spent a couple of hundred on books. (yes, I literally tried almost all of them). Here was my plan of action that worked best.</p>
<p>Math: Go through each question missed (from the blue book, since you said you already took a few of those tests) and figure out exactly what type of question it was, i.e. geometry, probability, etc. Buy a workbook that has subsections of each type of question, rather than another book that just boasts having full practice tests. You want to do a bunch of drills first before doing more practice tests. Trust me, doing practice test after practice without proper preparation can make you feel like you are running in circles. I used Barron’s but it is bit harder than the real test, as most people will agree. I also used PR, but only after Barron’s and it just for extra practice since I tend to need more repetition than others.</p>
<p>Writing: Same as math, a workbook approach for preparation, followed by practice tests in the blue book works best. If you are in the 510 range with a 7 for the essay, you would probably benefit more from tutoring because they would be able to help work through the problems with you and help you figure out how to plan things out. But, I know you said no classes or tutors would be preferable, so go with a workbook like Bellbright. It’s what I liked best because it had online videos of every single drill (it has literally over a 1000 drills) being worked out from scratch, so it’s almost like a tutor. Even the essays, they show you exactly how to write it, not just general suggestions. The only downside is that it’s much more expensive than the other books, but ended up being totally worth it for me.</p>
<p>CR: This is the most difficult because the reading passages need to feel as close to the real exam as possible. That’s why I don’t recommend a specific book per se. I ended up creating my own strategy using the CB blue book. I didn’t time myself and worked all the questions slowly, and without looking at the multiple choice because I didn’t want to fall into the trap of trying to use little tricks on how to narrow down choices. I made sure of making it a habit of going back and underlining the portion of the passage that I thought contained the actual answer because another tendency we have is inferring things without knowing, but most of the questions don’t involve any inference and we need to be able to find the answer in the passage. I did this for like 5 or 6 of the tests and and then with the remaining tests, I took it timed under normal conditions. And then I finally memorized vocab… it was painful but definitely helped me a LOT. You can go with direct hits, which is what a lot of people here recommend, but you can also go with the Barron’s list like me. </p>
<p>Finally, your question about taking the ACT, I would still go for SAT. It sounds like you haven’t even prepared anywhere close to your fullest, so don’t give up yet! Good luck!</p>