<p>OKay, so I am taking Chem Honors in school right now, and I get very good grades. I think I am good at it. I like it. Then, I took a practice test, and I have no idea what is going on. I feel like I have taken a whole year of chemistry for no reason. I got 35/85 right and 20 wrong=550. I need to be answering at least 30 more right. And for a lot of the questions, I feel like I do know what to do, but CB takes easy things and twists them into something I do not recognize. Can someone give me advice on how to raise my score by June 6th?</p>
<p>It’s really kinda hard to score well on the Chem Subject Test (or any for that matter), unless you’re taking an AP course. Although the collegeboard says subject tests can be taken after honors classes, the subject tests really emulate an AP course. I didn’t study much for it because I’m in AP Chem but you should probably get some prep books. I recommend princeton review. Or you could even get the AP Chem Princeton Review book–it’ll help you a lot</p>
<p>for me, LOADS of practice tests helped the most. i learn more from doing tests & practice questions than from just reading the material. this is especially true for chemistry. i probably went through around 3 books (PR, Barrons, Kaplan) and did 1 test every Saturday morning and got a 780 last May. since you don’t have that luxury, i suggest you take at least 2 practice tests a week, and just try to really focus on areas where you made mistakes. and always ask questions to your teacher! good luck on your june exam.</p>
<p>I disagree that you need to have an AP course. We homeschool (so no honors course here) and my daughter scored high after taking lots of practice tests and writing down ALL her wrong answers on a notecard, which we reviewed several times a week. She started studying about a month before the May SATs and then studied several hours a day the week prior to the test.</p>
<p>If you’re scoring so low, you clearly haven’t learned enough material in your class to do well on the SAT. For this reason, I suggest you get a textbook and focus on targeting the gaps in your knowledge. Have you learned any stoichiometry or equilibrium (with LeChatelier’s principle)? Because if you have, you’re guaranteed to do well on around half of the exam…</p>
<p>I too disagree that ap chem is necesarry to get a respectable score on this test. Also, if you got a 550 without any review at all, then I don’t think you’re in an enormous amount of trouble because for me, I know review was absolutely essential. My school doesn’t give finals, and I had completely forgotten a lot of concepts. It might be tough with little time remaining (though with good time management it doesn’t have to be), but I would carefully go through the review section of a prep book (you could use sparknotes’ free, online one), and then about 4 days before the test, do one practice test a day for the next 3 days, so you can brush up on things you might not have absorbed well from the book. You may hear this a lot, but it’s important when reviewing your practice tests to try and fully understand why you missed a question so you’ll never make the same mistake again, because with the consistency of subject tests, chances are you will run into that concept on the test day. Good luck.</p>
<p>Flashcards - they help SO MUCH! This thread has great advice: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-subject-tests-preparation/512788-some-advice-those-taking-chem-physics-june.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-subject-tests-preparation/512788-some-advice-those-taking-chem-physics-june.html</a></p>
<p>i took this half blind sophmore year after a year of honors chem and managed a 720
after a year of ap chem i got an 800 in may
soo. i realized that the hardest topics are pretty much kinetics/acid base pH stuff and shapes. stoichiometry, properties, nuclear chem, all the rest is pretty much memorization
the best way to improve is to track down your hs’s ap chem teacher or your own honors one and learn that stuff because nothing in the review books will explain faster and clearer than an actual teacher or tutor.
dont stress on the math stuff. its only basic stoichiometry on it. and maybe pv=nrt and mv=mv. that basic stuff
work on the ttce questions cuz those can be tricky, and you just gotta know your laws/properties
oh and crash coursing in formation of compounds, descriptive chem stuff will be a major help too
and then review the lab stuff, sometimes random weird names of apparatus pop up</p>
<p>You definitely don’t need AP chem I took practice tests with only honors chem knowledge and scored in the area of 770 - 780.</p>
<p>You clearly don’t understand many of the critical and basic parts of chemistry, this isn’t your fault, it’s your teachers fault. After a year of honors chem you should be able to get more than 35/85 considering that more than half of the test is stoichiometry, equilibrium, and other basic chemistry topics. Before attempting to study advanced topics in order to get a high score study the basic topics until you understand them fully. Until you understand basic chemistry you will not score any better.</p>