<p>This is my first post on CC!!! Just like 90% of the other kids that take the SAT, i need help on the Critical Reading Section. My scores in math and writing are in the high 600s and low 700s but my critical reading is in the low 500s (520 to be exact). However, im taking the critical reading tests in the BB and i have increased 60 points (I have done 4 full reading sections). What else do I need to do to raise my score in the mid 600s? I am taking the March SAT so... ya. Suggestions please!!! thanks</p>
<p>I improved from a 60 CR on the PSAT to an 800 CR on the Oct. 9 SAT this year. I’ve written a guide about strategies to raise your CR score and the link is below. Enjoy!</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1024138-how-i-got-800-sat-critical-reading-story-guide.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1024138-how-i-got-800-sat-critical-reading-story-guide.html</a></p>
<p>Considering the time you have left, I’d suggest going over the Direct Hits books( only 400 words, so smaller than other lists) in addition to doing the BB tests. I’m taking the March SAT, and that’s what I’m doing. I looked online and found some flashcards with the Direct Hits vocab to study from. Good luck!</p>
<p>are the BB tests an accurate representation of how one is to do on the real SAT? B/c the SCs seem to be a bit harder?</p>
<p>The BB tests should be about the same as the real SAT considering that the first 3 have been previously administered and that College Board writes the questions for the remaining 7 tests in the BB.</p>
<p>if i study DH, and know all of the words, will it help me a lot??? How much would my score increase?</p>
<p>Memorizing the words from DH will definitely help.</p>
<p>any suggestions on how to do better on the passage based questions? I have done 7 practice tests in the blue book and i am seeing improvements. i am now missing about 3-6 passaged based questions (6 is extreme) in each section and about 0-2 skips on the sentence completion in each section.</p>
<p>These are a few steps from my Critical Reading guide for the reading comprehension that may help you better.</p>
<p>4) For the Reading Comprehension, I read the passage first if it was short and then looked at the questions, and I read the questions first for line numbers if the passage was long. I always read the short summary in the beginning of the passage to get some background information about the topic and what I should be reading about.
5) For short passages, I just sped through the text and answered the questions with the text, choosing the answer directly supported by the text.
6) For longer passages, I looked forward to the questions to see if line numbers were mentioned. For the questions that did mention lines, I made sure to go back in the passage to bracket the line numbers. Doing this let me read the passage up to that certain part and look to the question to see if I could answer the question with the information I had just read.
7) For the main idea and big picture questions, I answered those after reading the whole passage or paragraph, depending on if the question was asking about the overall passage or a paragraph.
8) I made sure to predict an answer for the question by using the information solely in the passage. Please keep out your personal biases when answering the questions. Even if you don’t agree with the viewpoint of the author, just accept it as if it is the given truth.
9) Lastly, I played devil’s advocate a lot on these questions. When I narrowed the question answers down to 2, I would ask myself, “Why is this answer choice clearly WRONG?” I looked directly into the passage and if there was no support at all for the answer choice, I would eliminate it. Doing this helped me improve from the low 700s to the high 700s. Earlier on, I had been stuck between two answer choices and had chosen the one that I had “felt” was better. This is wrong. If the answer choice is not directly supported in the passage, it is incorrect.</p>
<p>i just bought both DH books. gonna memorize the simple one on sunday and the hard ones on monday/tuesday.</p>
<p>i actually feel a bit nervous…</p>