Hi,
I’m taking the SAT on the 24th of January (10 days left). I have so far memorized very little vocab and am scoring ~700 in CR. Which vocab list can I memorize in the next 10 days to help me with the test? I am pretty good at memorizing vocab. I was thinking of doing SparkNotes top 250, but should I do Direct Hits or another one instead?
I currently have the DH 2011 Volumes 1 and 2, which is about 450+ words. Is that possible in 10-ish days?
DH is definitely possible and should help a lot–if you have 700 already, you have strong reading skills. Good luck!
Do you think I can do 400 words for Volumes I&II in less than 10 days? What would be a good way to split that up and study effectively?
My advice when it comes to vocab (and most things in life actually) is to grab at the lowest hanging fruit first. So even if you attempt to study an additional 400 words, you don’t really need to learn every single one of those words. So I would go through the words and separate them into 3 groups (maybe making notecards for the words if you have time). Make a strong pile for words you pretty much already know, a weak pile for words you don’t really know but think you could learn, and a no pile for words that you don’t know and feel like will be difficult to learn because you can’t really make a strong association with the word (or any other reason really). Then just work on the weak pile and as you learn them move them to the strong pile (and look at the strong pile every once in a while to make sure you don’t forget any of those. Then, as the weak pile diminishes, move some of the words from the no pile over to the weak pile so that you can try to start learning those. And if you never get to some of those words its no big deal. At least you have learned as many words as you could.
400 words is pretty manageable in 10 days, especially if, as the OP says, he is “pretty good at memorizing vocab.”