<p>Hi,
Could anyone who scored 800 on CR can post your books you used, novels/magazines you have read, and your experience ?
I really appreciate your responses !
Post like this :
Ex :
Books : RocketReview.....
Novels : Frankenstein.....
Magazine : The Economist
Experience : Strictly follow the Grammatix rule !</p>
<p>Books: Blue Book
Novels/Literature: Tons. Alexandre Dumas to Ludlum to Rowling to Steinbeck
Magazine: The Economist a bit
Experience: Do what works best for you.</p>
<p>Books: None.
Novels: I generally don’t read novels recreationally; however, I did read the required material for my AP English class, which included several texts.
Magazine: I occasionally read The New Yorker and oftentimes read The Economist.
Experience: Don’t follow any specific guidelines or rules; examine each problem in a fluid manner given your past exposure to the English language (unless you only recently learned English).</p>
<p>Having a large vocabulary helps in understanding the passages and, just as importantly, the answer choices. That’s the thing – you need to really scrutinize the choices; look for subtleties that absolutely make the answers correct. </p>
<p>It becomes instinctual after a bit of practice.</p>
<p>I scored over 700, but I didn’t read anything in particular (I’m not really into standardized test prep). I more or less just read books in my down-time; typically I read “sappy teen love stories”, anything R.L. Stine, books on controversial topics (race, politics, etc.), books that center on linguistics, Seventeen magazine, the free “Metro” newspaper, etc. As far as “experience” goes, I agree with lolcats-“do what works best for you.”</p>
<p>Books: Blue book.
Novels: Tons. Make sure you enjoy the books you’re reading.
Magazines/newspapers: Time and a little of the Wall Street Journal
Experience: Look up all the words you see and don’t know what they mean from now until the test. Including wrong answers on practice tests.</p>
<p>Books : RocketReview, The Blue Book
Novels : Usual teen novels, science fiction/fantasy, short stories.
Magazine : None really, I like Time when I can get my hands on one.
Experience : Had a vocab book but was too lazy to pursue it. I like reading in general. Always have. I read the entire passage before solving any questions on the CR. It’s important to be able to read fast.</p>
<p>Read Sherlock Holmes to practice thinking logically :D</p>
<p>I got an 800. My view is that really any kind of reading at all is good. Yet, by reading I mean throughout your life not just in the year leading up to the SATS, because in that case simple tests would probably be the bests.
Books: Everything, Politics, Fiction (thrillers) Vince Flynn, Kenn Follet, James Patterson, James Clarevell, some fantasy like Harry Potter
Magazines: Newsweek weekly, Economist once in awhile and newspapers like NYT every so often
Internet: MSNBC a lot</p>
<p>I got an 800.
Book: Blue book.
Novels: Anything and everything by Oscar Wilde.
Seriously. Not just Dorian Gray. Look into his critical prose. It’s beautiful and thought-provoking.</p>
<p>I got an 800 as well
Novels: none. what a waste of time…
I used the blue book and took every single practice test. You don’t need anything else.</p>
<p>I got 800.</p>
<p>Books : Blue Book. I didn’t like any of the other ‘strategies’
Novels : YA stuff, and the popular, world-famous stuff (like The Kite Runner)
Magazine : I’m not big on magazines. Time and Newsweek, occasionally
Experience : I’ve been reading since I was very young, so I have a good vocabulary and I’m very, very fast. It’s mainly my speed that gave me ample time to zero in on answers. And oh, as a side note, I didn’t cross 750 in CR in a single practice test :D.</p>
<p>I got 800.</p>
<p>Books: Kaplan 2400, plus a very good tutor
Novels: Various
Magazines: Discover, but not for CR
Newspapers: Local/WSJ
Experience: Reading</p>
<p>I actually don’t read constantly. I did not do anything special literature-wise for the SAT. In fact, I think that it is absurd and useless that people start reading publications in order to prep for the SAT. Just page through a vocab book if you really want to brush up on it.</p>
<p>True. You don’t need to read to get a good SAT score. YOu just need to examine the questions and understand what it’s asking you. I Don’t remember where but in some publication it said that reading ONLY helps your CR in the long term; this can take almost 1 year. All reading will really do is help your vocabulary, but generally, you won’t even need to read an entire SAT passage to get the answers correct- just the main idea, gist, and tone.</p>
<p>Sometimes, I stuck on some questions that refer to line preferences using some difficult words. I actually isn’t possible to answer these ! Does someone have an effective solution to deal with ?
Also, I am really confused by the way to improve Sentence Completion score ? I believe it certainly requires us to memorize a ton of words !!!???</p>
<p>I used the Blue Book for practice tests, but didn’t really study. </p>
<p>In my AP Lang class, we learned ~120 SAT words progressively and I recall that knowing some of them helped me on the exam. </p>
<p>Literature that we read in class included Hamlet, Macbeth, The Scarlett Letter, and As I Lay Dying.</p>
<p>I used to read a lot in middle school, but less so in high school. Books that I read on my own time included novels by Thomas Hardy, John Grisham, and J.K. Rowling. </p>
<p>Unlike everyone else in this thread, I scored a measly 740. ;)</p>
<p>Right, sentence completions obviously require vocab. I didn’t have any problem with them because LONG-TERM reading (as Jex pointed out) really strengthens your vocabulary. It’s very inefficient for short-term improvements. I would just memorize the most frequently-appearing words, and just have your family quiz you on them all the time.</p>
<p>hmm i just did all the old Kaplan and Princeton Review books (espcicially the ones only focusing on CR), and then i just memorized all the vocab words in the back of those books…sentence completiton is also alot of logic…sometimes you dont have to know wht the words mean, just if they are negative/postive, small/large and all that…memorize roots.</p>
<p>but then again i got like 650s on practice tests and somehow got 700…</p>
<p>I used Kaplan books critical reading is too easy. I just have to read line preference and infer from it. However, the sentence completion is full of words that are rare in blue book ???</p>
<p>Reading newspaper, magazine…isn’t a long-term strategy for everybody to boost CR score, especially 71 days to Oct SAT.</p>