<p>I'll post this in the International forum too.</p>
<p>I'm an IB senior student and have only been attending an international, all-English school for 1 year. I am predicted 39/45 and applied to Oxford and other top UK schools this month. Overall I'm just a normal student that works hard for good grades. I have a social life, a job and extra-curriculars so its's not that I just get good grades because all I do is study.</p>
<p>Here's the problem: I CANNOT GET MY SAT SCORES UP OR AT A HIGH LEVEL. I don't know why but it's extremely frustrating. I just did it for the second time in October and did WORSE than the one I did in June. At this point I'm just so lost, I cannot seem to do the test right, whereas I have a nice score when I take (timed) practice tests from the Blue Book. Btw, with low I mean LOW: 1710 and now I had 1640.. I know this is above the national average so I am happy with that, but I am applying to top schools in the US so I can't have this score! (Plus it just gets me frustrated that I can get top grades in HL IB courses but cannot do the SAT -___-)</p>
<p>So if you have any tips, tricks or have the same problem, please tell me.</p>
<p>I just got a tip saying that the ACT might be an option. Any comments on that? People who did better on the ACT instead of the SAT?</p>
<p>Usually people are a lot better than one test than the other. Try taking an ACT practice test and see how you do. I’ve never taken the ACT, but from what I’ve heard, it is more info-based. If you want to continue trying with the SAT though I would suggest going back through old exams and writing down any vocab words from the Critical Reading Section that you don’t know. (You’ll probably notice that a lot of the words are re-used or similar like ambivalent, munificent, circumvent, maudlin, etc) You should also try to read difficult books on your own like classics or college-level textbooks to pick up vocabulary through context. For grammar, you should become familiar with differences in diction and parallelism. For the essay (which was the biggest trouble for me) you should come up with broad examples that you can plug in easily to many different essay prompts. Math is learning the tricks and, like the other sections, lots of practice. I think the Blue Book practice exams are the only really accurate ones, but if you really want more practice, you could try Princeton Review. (I strongly recommend NOT getting Barron’s though!)</p>
<p>What is your SAT score breakdown?</p>
<p>Moderators please delete my comment I didn’t notice that this is from 2011</p>