<p>i'm a fairly weak studier. I just don't pay attention that great. My currect SAT score is 1880(no prep at all) and i want to raise it to 2100. my math score is 740, writing at 540 and CR at 600. What would be a great plan for me given that I only have till October for my last SAT retake.</p>
<p>Currently, I'm reading the Barron writing workbook and I have the Barron CR(amazingly hard stuff and little strategy taught). I also have the blue book and the online course. I read the writing workbook, but my SAT writing score for my blue book pretest hasn't changed.</p>
<p>Bottom line, if you, assuming you know how to study hard, only have 2 weeks of time, how would you try to raise your score from 1880 to 2100.</p>
<p>I heard barron 2400 was a good book. oh and btw, i spent the last one to two weeks reading the writing workbook and read the sections on the blue book, my score didn't even change at all... in fact it went down a bit on the online course pretest #1.</p>
<p>i heard xiggi's method was to just do lots of pretest and read explanations. That is extremely extremely time consuming :). any good quick tips for me to use first and then I could tackle xiggi's method?</p>
<p>It's not worth taking tests in the Blue Book over and over again if you're not going to review your answers to find out why you got certain questions wrong (and even why you got them right) when you're done. At this point I would not bother studying too much vocabulary (maybe learn 100 words or so, but after that you're not going to remember anything more). You might want to review certain writing concepts as well, but the best thing you can do right now is to figure out why you got certain questions wrong, not to continue taking practice test after practice test from the Blue Book.</p>
<p>lol.. i've only done one single practice test. i'm seeing what i did wrong as we speak. the question is would be a solid 2 week prep schedule.</p>
<p>oh and should i work on math at all? on the pretest i only scored a 620-660. When I took the math section of the SAT i rushed a lot of question and barely made it in time. I'm not sure I could do it again on my retake.</p>
<p>Most colleges take the highest score from each of your sections and combine them to give you what they believe is your "real" test score. So even if you do worse on the math, the 740 is still going to help you in the admissions process. I don't really think working on math is your highest priority right now; even if colleges only took the highest score in one sitting the math section is still your strongest.</p>
<p>First, go through the practice test you did and figure out why you got certain answers wrong. Hopefully you'll pick up on some things that can help you get a couple points here and there on the actual test. Then, since you only have two weeks, I would just focus on the writing section since it's your weakest point but also the easiest section to learn "tricks" on. When working on improving sentences or finding the error in a sentence, there are usually only a couple things to look for:</p>
<p>-shift in pronoun use (this one usually isn't too difficult to spot)
-subject-verb disagreement (this one can usually be a little trickier when you come across more convoluted sentences)
-redundancy
-"improper coordination" i.e. separating two independent clauses by a comma instead of by a semicolon, period, or "and"
-errors in parallelism
-any missing punctuation, such as a comma, period, etc.
-improper idiom or preposition
-incorrect adjective form - ex. "most" is needed instead of "more"</p>
<p>Learning even just one of these very well can earn you about 3 extra points on the writing section, and probably even more. Let me know if you would like me to post an example of one of these errors.</p>
<p>The oil sands in the Canadian province of Alberta, with huge recoverable oil reserves, is viewed by some United States government officials as a resource for the country to use to reduce its dependence on overseas oil.</p>
<p>A. is viewed
B. as
C. to reduce
D. its dependence
E. no error</p>
<p>And as for prep books, I don't really know of any that are particularly good for writing. Both the books I have (Barron's 2400 and Gruber's New SAT) do a rather skimpy job of covering the writing section, even though they are superb for math and critical reading. You might want to get a writing workbook or something that just covers the writing section in order to avoid buying a book with information that is going to be useless to you.</p>
<p>Definitly start with "Up Your Score" it will give you some solid strategies and it does so in a fairly entertaining manner. Then go to the tests in PRs "11 Practice Tests for SAT/PSAT" Although there are only 10 SATs, every test has explanations so you can review what you are doing wrong.</p>
<p>Also, focus on reading comprehension in CR (since it is 73% of CR) and focus on the Identifying Sentence Error questions in Writing Skills since they are the easiest to improve of the Writing Skills question types. </p>
<p>Barron's SAT 2400 nails the writing skills strategies as does Kaplan's SAT 2400 book. You can read the full review of both of these books on our site ceeae dot org.</p>
<p>If you dont want to purchase the book, go to a bookstore that has it in stock and copy and memorize the "Hierarchy of Grammar Glitches" on pp 126, look for these common errors and you will get far more Identfying Sentence Error questions correct.</p>
<p>Both of these books also do a great job on the Essay, and you should do well on the essay since it is 30% of the WS score.</p>
<p>ruella76: definitely A, it should be are and not "is"</p>
<p>hmm so maybe I should get barron 2400 and read the strat on CR and writing so i have an idea and than go back to doing practice test and rereading barron writing workbook?</p>
<p>If you are going to be a Senior this next year, schools will probably still be giving less weight to the WS section. Therefore, I think that you should spend a disproportionate time on the CR section. But it is easier to increase WS score (MC ques) than the CR score.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, we (CEEAE) have not reviewed the Barron's writing workbook, but Barrons 2400 should give you a good coverage of both sections, CR and WS. We are not big fans of Barron's general SAT book, so I am not sure what to say about the writing workbook. </p>
<p>Google says "oil sands" is plural so I agree with Ruella & chrisc on this point.</p>
<p>ruella: i also think i should work on writing. is there any writing workbook you would personally recommend? and when you say i should work on the workbook, should i just read through the strat and not do the practice test in the workbook? should i instead do the writing practice test from the blue book and online course?</p>
<p>chris: hmmm does the review site like princeton books more? which book would personally recommend me to read given my situation.</p>
<p>and yes i'll be a senior next year. I heard that the college i'm hoping to apply to gives equal weight to the writing section.</p>
<p>We like the Barrons 2400 book for Writing Skills Strategies, but the Kaplan SAT 2400 book is great also.</p>
<p>We like PR for their strategy/pratice test book "Cracking the SAT, 2007", b/c the strategies are pretty good, but dont get wrapped up in the "joe bloggs" stuff, and the tests have explanations. Kaplan in general has explanations that are more in depth, but the test questions are a tad off the mark.</p>