<p>As you can tell from the title, the CR section is my worst nightmare. I have tried everything: the blue book, Barron's, Princeton Review, and McGraw's. Yet, I average around 650... I do fine with the vocabulary (I have 500 flash cards I memorized), but the passage-based questions just TEAR ME UP. I've pretty much guaranteed an 800 in math (considering I don't screw up by simple mistake), and I feel my grammar is pretty solid (still weak at parts). Now coming back to the issue of Critical Reading, people, and the books, told me that the answers are all within the text, but I can never seem to identify them. I'm in AP English, but the class isn't helping much with SAT reading because it focuses on the abstract and not the concrete. The type of analysis we do in class is different than in the SAT, so I have no idea how to study for the passage-based questions. My parents are hoping I get a 2200+, but the Critical Reading clouds that hope for me. Any advice on how to quickly identify the major hints within the passages (as ambiguous as this question is)?</p>
<p>practice like crazy, get your own way of appraoching.</p>
<p>Direct Hits, Practice
I was at 650 range once. Sadly, there is no holy grail. Just practice. I got an 800 for CR on the PSAT (Personally I think that was a fluke) But still, it is a lot better than the 650s that I was normally getting. Just practice and don’t stop.</p>
<p>^^^ I LOVE YOUR SCREEN NAME!! ah it gave me a good laugh.</p>
<p>and luciDream, I know how you feel. I’m stuck at a 650-700 and It. will. not. go. up. /: are you taking it in January?</p>
<p>Try and find a method that works for you. I took an SAT prep course last summer, where I was encouraged to read the passage first, then go and complete the questions. It wasn’t required (obviously), but since it had been recommended to me by most of my classmates and my instructor as well, that’s what I did. But for someone like me, who can’t seem to engage herself in an SAT passage for more than a short bit of time, this didn’t work. I’d get distracted and start skim reading and just glancing over the words, only to come back and try to reread more carefully when I actually started answering questions. </p>
<p>I finally decided to mix it up, and I found a strategy that worked for me.
First, I go straight to the questions and mark up the passage whenever I see line reference numbers. Then, I start reading, but after the end of each paragraph, I’ll go and answer the questions about that paragraph. If I was reading and saw a line reference marking, I’d finish reading that sentence and go directly to the question. When I had finished reading the passage, I’d have most of the questions answered, except for one or two that ask about the purpose of the overall passage or something of that sort. And this helped me find the answers that are “hidden in the passage”. College Board puts its questions chronologically, and unless it says to make an inference, you shouldn’t have to. By answering questions directly after reading that specific passage, I found that I stopped making unnecessary inferences, which dramatically helped my score. </p>
<p>This is just what works for me. I’m also in AP, and I also used to be much better at the AP questions than the SAT questions until I found the right method for me. You just have to experiment and try out what works best for you, since it differs from person to person. Hope this helped, and good luck!</p>