<p>I recently took the SAT in March and I got a 2090 (730 CR, 660M, 700W, 10 Essay). I am somewhat satisfied with my score, but I want to get into colleges such as Brown University, Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Pennsylvania, Lehigh University, and New York University. I feel that my college app would be much stronger if I scored over 2200+, because I have "good" extracurriculars. </p>
<p>What can I do to improve, I've almost exhausted my blue book practice tests preparing for my first SAT. Right now I'm going through my Princeton Review SAT book. Should I buy Barron's SAT 2400? I've heard of people who have went from 1800-1900 to 2100's after going through Barrons. What should I do?</p>
<p>Don’t do Princeton Review CR. The math/writing sections are okay.</p>
<p>Read a lot for the writing section. You need a good sense of intuition about the English language to consistently be able to do well regardless of what specific questions are involved.</p>
<p>The Barron’s book is awful for math (it’s ridiculously hard and you’ll be wasting your time). However, the vocab lists that the Barron’s book includes are useful.</p>
<p>Thanks. My friends in college that have used Barron’s SAT 2400 have improved their scores about 200 points. I have one friend that said Barron’s SAT 2400 got him 150 points on the math section! I guess it differs for everyone.</p>
<p>CR is very difficult to mimic, and therefore most, if not all, non-official courses offered by companies are far from the real SAT in their style and content, and may actually be harmful (just to name a few, I found PR, Barron’s and Kaplan all useless for CR). If you need to improve on this section and you have already finished the BB, I suggest the official online course.
Apart from that, most companies offer reliable M an W practice tests (Barron’s may be a bit more difficult for Math than the actual exam, but is still helpful if you are aiming for a high score).</p>
<p>CR is my best section, and most of my incorrect answers were definitely from sentence completions, so I know I need to work on vocab. I just ordered Barron’s, and I plan to study over the summer and take the SAT once again my senior year in the fall (most likely September/October SAT) . I feel like I can get a 700+ in math easily with some practice.</p>
<p>If you want a few free chapters of my SAT Math strategy book send me a pm. It might be just what you need to boost your math score another 100 points. With some extra effort you can probably get your math score close to an 800 as long as you prepare the right way.</p>
<p>Here are a couple of suggestions I have for you (note that I’m using the fact that you have 6 months):</p>
<p>(1) Practice SAT Math problems for 10 to 20 minutes EVERY day.
(2) Try to solve each problem as many ways as you can.
(3) Make an effort to really UNDERSTAND why each method you use works.
(4) Any time you get a problem wrong, mark it off and keep retrying it at least once a week until you can get it right ON YOUR OWN.
(5) Don’t worry about taking practice tests until about 3 months before the test - then do one about every other week.
(6) Make sure you learn all the important SAT specific strategies, and apply them regularly. Practice using them on problems even if you would use a different method on the actual test.
(7) DO NOT OVERWORK - stick to 10 to 20 minutes of math prep a day - otherwise you may burn out and your studying might become ineffective.
(8) Focus on Level 4 and 5 problems, but do easier problems as well and try to figure out ways to get answers to easy problems quicker (knowing certain strategies might be important here).</p>
<p>The students that I tutor do math problems for 15 to 20 minutes per day over a 3 month period, and their math score generally goes up 80 to 150 points (there are of course anomalies - sometimes a student will go up 250 points, and once in a while a student will only improve 40 or 50 points, but these students usually aren’t completing their homework). My point is that over a 6 month period 20 minutes a day is MORE than enough as long as you are studying effectively.</p>
<p>There are no guarantees Renegade - everyone is different, but statistically speaking 100 points should be easy to attain in 6 months if you follow my advise.</p>
<p>Well, I focused on Math and Critical Reading mostly…</p>
<p>I didn’t study for Writing…I’m a grammar freak…like, if you’re a grammar Nazi, I’m a grammar Satan. So I just naturally worked harder the second time and was more alert and punctilious. </p>
<p>As for Math, I bought an amazing review book by a Chinese mathematician about getting a perfect score on the math portion of the SAT.</p>
<p>For Critical Reading, I read through the entire Kaplan review book dedicated to Critical reading (not the general SAT Kaplan book), and then I took the 3 practice tests at the end. I did this over the course of 4 weekends. </p>
<p>I ate breakfast + slept…things I did not do the first time I took it in January.</p>
<p>Oh, and honestly, sometimes it really just depends on when you take it. The test in January was RIDICULOUSLY DIFFICULT compared to the one in March, yet the curves were the same (I ordered the exams). So 1/4 is luck (when you take it, if you had a good breakfast, if you were able to sleep, if you’re comfortable in the room/school you take it in, if there isn’t an annoying person who won’t stop fidgeting next to you), 1/4 is preparation (how much effort + studying you do…perfect practice makes perfect), 1/4 passage of time and personal motivation + retention of what you learned (if you are eager to do well and if you remember what you studied). </p>
<p>Oh, and then there’s the 1/4 ingenuity…the occasional intelligence threshold…sometimes you can’t really improve because you’ve reached your maximum capacity. I do believe the SAT is designed to measure aptitude and college performance. However, it does say something about personal ability too. Certain things like seeing an author’s perspective or seeing that a 45-45-90 triangle exists in a rectangle circumscribed within a circle is stuff that you don’t learn. Ingenuity is a part of it. Some people just aren’t innately capable of seeing relationships and therefore have reached their maximum potential and accept their score. </p>
<p>I went from a 2120 (770 M, 670 CR, 680 W) to a 2340 (770 M, 770 CR, 800 W) in the 6 months between my SAT sittings. My advice for math: review math concepts and make sure you have the basics down. Check your work. For the reading: read A LOT over the summer. That’s how I learned all my grammar, punctuation, etc. when I was little: I read like a fiend. For the writing: I feel like the essay is a crapshoot. The first time I took the SAT, I tried on the essay, and I only got an 8. The second time, I thought, “Screw this, I’ll never improve my score” and just kind of “winged” it, and got a 12. As far as the MC goes, reading will also help a lot. If you’ve got extra time, don’t doze off, but check your work. I caught a few mistakes the second time around.</p>