<p>I have three questions:</p>
<p>What practice tests did you take, ie Blue Book, Princeton Review?
How many practice full SATs did you take before you took the test for real?
And how often, if ever, did you score 2400s on these practice tests?</p>
<p>Apologies if this is a redundant thread, also not just for 2400 people, just people that did really well on the SAT, how did you practice, and how did the scores you saw on your practice tests correlate to your actual score?</p>
<p>A couple from Barron’s, none (well, the PSAT, but that’s not full), and 240 on the PSAT and very high scores on the Barron’s (I don’t know what they were).</p>
<p>A lot of people recommend Blue Book, so I’d go with that.</p>
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<p>Blue Book and some QAS’s that I got from CC users.</p>
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<p>About 10-12. I also took the PSAT as a freshman, sophomore, and junior.</p>
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<p>Nope. Got real lucky on test day, I suppose.</p>
<p>^What did you score on practice tests? I want to know if I’m in the ballpark with my practice test scores :).</p>
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<p>You got a 2400 on 0/12 and you still got it on the real test?</p>
<p>Yes, that is pretty lucky; but nice job.</p>
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<p>I was very confused by this, are you saying you got a 2400 and didn’t take any practice tests? Just ones for the PSAT? If so, damn.</p>
<p>I used the Blue Book; My highest practice test score was 2370 before I took the actual thing. I didn’t do very many full length ones. Probably around 3-4 total.</p>
<p>I think the adrenaline on test day made my mind less prone to stupid mistakes :)</p>
<p>I got mediocre 2380 (780 Math: My strongest subject and I got one wrong.)
I used the Bulebook and Collegeboard online course.
Usually got over 2300 on practice tests.</p>
<p>ACT: 35 (34 Math: Damn!) during my sophomore year. Official ACT prep book only.</p>
<p>PSAT: National merit Finalist with no prep.</p>
<p>How did you high-scorers feel after taking the SAT? Did you have a certain feeling after test - like a feeling of confidence - “I know I got a 2400!!!”?</p>
<p>I was almost certain that I got 2400.</p>
<p>(Then, I found out I got one easy math problem wrong.)</p>
<p>Well, after I took the test I went on Collegeconfidential (obviously) and found that the majority of posters got different answers than I did. I made the mistake of assuming that they were correct, and I was a little worried about my Critical Reading score.</p>
<p>I actually ended up getting 2 wrong (which was much fewer than I had expected) on CR, but there was a lenient curve so I still received an 800. I was pretty confident about Math and Writing though. I got 80 on CR on the PSAT so I guess it wasn’t too unexpected.</p>
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<p>Well, I was hitting mid-to-high 2300’s on those last few tests, but the 800’s didn’t all line up until the real thing.</p>
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<p>I felt pretty good about it. After spending the rest of the day on CC, I felt really good about it.</p>
<p>Hahaha</p>
<p>After leaving the SAT I felt good. After spending the rest of the day on CC I felt not so good.</p>
<p>I took one full SAT from the blue book, plus a small handful of individual sections from the book, but it didn’t help much. Very little prep, honestly. In terms of scores, my practice test/ section scores were usually fairly low - I consistently missed 1 or 2 per section, but on the real SAT I only missed 2 on the whole test. </p>
<p>In 6th grade I also took the SAT, where I scored a 2050.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, though I only scored a 210 on the PSAT. I must have just had a bad day.</p>
<p>o…mmmm…GOSH ^</p>
<p>in 6th grade you score 99% better than most seniors in HIGH SCHOOL</p>
<p>^Eh, 94-95%. But it’s still extremely impressive.</p>
<p>To my great surprise, yesterday I learned that I got a 2400 on the June 2 SAT, without having done any prep.</p>
<p>Personally, I believe being comfortable with pacing yourself and keeping alert and focused are key to success, and in this area, I suppose practice tests can help. I didn’t take any practice tests (nor any other type of prep), but I have taken quite a few standardized tests (two PSAT’s, ITBS in middle school) in the past, so I felt familiar enough with the format.</p>
<p>I am not sure how many of the skills that are tested can be learned through SAT prep, but I suppose brushing up on numerical skills and going over geometry helps with math, studying vocab and practicing reading comprehension helps with critical reading etc. </p>
<p>I went to a fantastic school as a kid (school for missionary children that had a lot of individual attention and a great couple who taught), and I think the foundations of grammar knowledge/critical thinking/math skills really helped me a lot – I am, therefore, perhaps not in the best position to trace my success to specific tactics I pursued.</p>
<p>Nonetheless (and some of this advice is just plain rational, I might not have tried it myself), I would suggest a lot of reading (memory of vocab is much better when learned in the context of a book, and reading also helps with quicker/better comprehension). I would also suggest really trying to nail down/internalize basic grammar, algebra, geometry etc. Focus on being comfortable with quick analysis of sentence structure/working with numbers/angles, rather than relearning every math or english lesson you may have learned in the past. That will help prepare you for whatever they send your way. Trying to simply memorize rules often leads to test-day forgetfulness, and frustration if you focused on the wrong material.</p>
<p>Getting a feel for how to make educated guesses helps as well. These are the kinds of things I’m sure test prep classes teach (roots of words, looking for wrong answers first etc). I’m afraid these tactics might backfire, though, if they are not used in a holistic, comprehensive, analytic way, but rather are used blindly (without understanding the logic of the method) and without realization of when they are appropriate/how to use them effectively.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what other advice I can offer. Without having used any prep material, I can’t really recommend one over the other. Just always keep optimistic and, above all, remember that standardized tests seem much more important now than they really are in the long run.</p>
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<p>Kaplan PSAT practice tests worked fine for me. I don’t think practicing the essay is particularly effective for the time invested into it.</p>