Good at math, but suck at SAT Math (the hard questions)?

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>I'm pretty good at math--straight A's,etc. at school--but I'm really bad on the questions labeled as"hard" on the SAT </p>

<p>on my 10th grade PSAT I got something like this on the math section:
easy; 10 out of 10
medium: 18 out of 18
Hard: 3 out of 18</p>

<p>I ALWAYS miss the hard questions--and I think to correct that I need to find a good way to prep</p>

<p>I tried Grubers b/c it has been heavily recommended on these boards, but Grubers did not help at all</p>

<p>Any suggestions on how to prep for the hard math questions?</p>

2

<p>Hard math questions are either:</p>

<p>You have good IQ and can think logically or,</p>

<p>you prep like crazy and remember every strategy.</p>

3

<p>Have you taken Precalc or Algebra 2 yet?</p>

4

<p>yes I have</p>

5

<p>yes I have</p>

<p>What are your suggestions for the “prep like crazy” method?</p>

6

<p>wow, that posted twice…weird…</p>

7

<p>Same issue… and let me tell you this. To the poster that said IQ equates to high SAT… you are wrong. While it is the case with most other people in my highly gifted program (145+ IQ), some like me just plain suck at tests like this. I’ll be lucky to reach 2000 by the end of my junior year.</p>

8

<p>Try looking for patterns: Are you falling for their traps, then you might want to try Princeton Review? Try to analyze what you are doing wrong. Are there certain types of questions, like inequalities that you are getting wrong? If so Gruber’s might help. Could you possibly post a type of problem that you got wrong?</p>

9

<p>Here’s one of the last problems I got wrong (it’s classified as “hard”):
In a mixture of peanuts and cashews, the ratio by weight of peanuts to cashews is 5 to 2. How many pounds of cashews will there by in four pounds of the mixture?</p>

<p>(it was a grid-in question)</p>

10

<p>What was the answer?</p>

11

<p>I believe it’s 1.14 lbs of cashews, although i could be wrong. The way I did it was</p>

<p>2/7 of the mixture is cashews. If there are 4 lbs… multiply 2/7 by 4 and voila. I’m probably wrong though :)</p>

12

<p>^ That’s what I did..I think we might be right? :O</p>

13

<p>You’re right, the answer is 1.14</p>

14

<p>problem is..I can’t figure out how to do problems like that one…or any other kind of “hard” questions</p>

<p>I tried grubers, but it didn’t help me at all…any suggestions?</p>

15

<p>It can be done by assuming weight of peanuts and cashews be 5x and 2x pounds respectively.
since total weight of mixture is 4 pounds,
5x + 2x = 4 Or x = 4/7 pounds</p>

<p>Since cashews is 2x = 2*4/7 = 8/7 = 1.14 pounds</p>

16

<p>I read a tip that for ratio questions assuming with a variable as assumed above makes it easy to solve.</p>

17

<p>I actually consider that to be a very simple algebra question. I think it might have something to do with being at a school that uses a completely different syllabus to American schools, but we had a lot of training with questions like that; i.e. do as much practice as possible! I can’t recommend any books or anything, but try to isolate the questions you’re missing on practice tests and do tons and tons of practice on that type of question (e.g. Google “inequalities” if that’s what you’re having trouble with and you should come up with worksheets for it). If it’s something like the ratio question, try searching for “ratio word problems”…you get the point.</p>

<p>Hope this helped!</p>

18

<p>does anyone realize how old this is?</p>