How can I improve by Dec. 4th SAT

<p>I am doing horribly on verbal and my sister who is in 7th grade just whooped me on verbal.</p>

<p>I have 10 Real's and Barron's and Word Smart for Vocab.</p>

<p>I've been prepping for a week and just took a practice test from 10 Real's.
Got a 700 Math (missed 2, and left 5 blank) I do really well on the math part all the time, but need help with speed.
Any tips to get faster? Such as those sequence problems, etc. that take a long time if you work it out step by step.</p>

<p>Verbal - 530
I NEED MAJOR HELP on this. Seeing that there is only about 1.5 weeks left I can't really memorize more than 100-300 while still doing other stuff?</p>

<p>While my sister took this test and got a 600 verbal and 450 math (her first time taking a practice SAT) She's an avid reader, I guess that helped. And she forgot to use a calculator on math.</p>

<p>Please Help, I'm willing to practice. And how close does a 10 Real SAT get to a real SAT? I took the June one earlier this year and got a 1220. Math - 660, Verbal 560</p>

<p>This is the most common and BEST advice: READ!!! Read the classics and read the introductions too. You'll get into them, eventually. Try to read a 400-600 page book every one or two days (assuming you have a couple of days of vacation). Just doing that increased my verbal score by 160 points, 600 --> 760.</p>

<p>I didn't use any flashcards for vocab or any of those books to prepare (except maybe 10 Real SAT's for practice). </p>

<p>Just read and make sure you look up and understand unfamiliar words.</p>

<p>Got this tip off these boards =). Good luck! Cheers!</p>

<p>Thanks... What classic books do you recommend?
I have David Copperfield, Tom Sawyer, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, To Kill A Mockingbird, etc. at home.</p>

<p>I'm on Thanksgiving Break for 5 days.</p>

<p>Do you think that is efficient to improve SAT vocab? Would those books use lots of SAT words?</p>

<p>I also have the SAT Tooth and Nail which I'm halfway through with and SAT Frankenstein.</p>

<p>tough man, very tough to increase your verbal score !!! You have to read a lot along with memorizing flashcards. If you practice real hard but still think you cannot improve much, cancel the test scores and retake in December. </p>

<p>How many years hav u been in the US ?</p>

<p>Don't memorize flashcards, they'll prove to be a waste of time because even if you know the meaning, during the test, you'll know the definition, but will waste time trying to find links. When you read, your brain practices "making links," like what analogies test you on.</p>

<p>Well, some interesting books are</p>

<p>1) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Bronte <--- make SURE you read that one first, it'll improve your vocab. Be sure to look up the words you don't know, every single time. Eventually, you'll find that the words get repetitive and you'll remember them</p>

<p>2) Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky
3) Da Vinci Code Dan Brown
4) Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
5) The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky
6) Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser
7) Life of Pi Yann Martel</p>

<p>With the time you have, I suggest the books in that order. The first two should help with vocab (assuming you look stuff up), the second set of two are fun reads (page-turners) and the last few are just worth reading. Read the intros too, if you have time =P. 7 books for 9 days. Go for it. Good luck!</p>

<p>K, so you have like 2 weeks. Reading a ton is NOT the answer! It's better to get acquainted with the test and get used to it by taking practice tests. Doing this will help a ton. After you're done with each practice test, go over the answer and see which ones you missed, and why. Learn to think like how ETS thinks...you can cross off wrong answers. etc this way. This is assuming you're a senior. If you're not, you've got plenty of time to read these books.</p>

<p>Reading is the long-term answer, vocabulary is the middle-term answer. You need a short-term answer. Study roots/suffixes/prefixes and take A LOT of practice verbal tests. If you don't have a Verbal prep book and only an SAT prep book, then only do the verbal sections. Mark all questions you were not sure of and make sure you pore through the answer explanations to these questions when you're checking your answers, even if you got them right.</p>

<p>If you take a lot of practices, you'll be more adept at guessing at what words mean, eliminating bad answers, figuring out the analogy without knowing what the words mean and more in-tune with what answers they are looking for in critical reading questions.</p>

<p>Doing 3 Verbal sections (as on the real test) will only take you slightly over an hour (30min, 30min, 15min). Do as many as you can.</p>

<p>do tons of RC problems. if you ran out of workbooks, buy 11 new SAT by PR and go through all the RC</p>

<p>what is your weak point?</p>

<p>try to hammer the critical reading. i've been doing CR daily and am doing very well at them. to date, i think they are super easy now. I usually leave one blank but get all of them right.</p>

<p>on my oct one, i got 19 points out of 40 points. right now, i'm getting about 30-32 out of 40. a 20 point jump makes my 580 go to a verbal around ~650-700.</p>

<p>Thanks for all the help.
No I'm not a senior, I'm trying to apply to NCSSM for junior year of high school and my area has lots of competitive students.
I have Jan. SAT if December one goes bad too. </p>

<p>Well I think my weakness is Critical Reading.
The sections containing analogies and sentence completion, I usually miss 3-4 analogies from both, 1 sentence completion and maybe 1-2 CR.
But the last verbal section with just CR, I usually miss 6-7 or leave a ton blank.</p>

<p>my friend, what i'm about to say may shock you..lol sorry i just had the urge to say that, but here's my advice, frankly i am having the SAME EXACT problem as you are having, i am a junior and i really want to take the sat i because it will atleast give me a basis for the college to look at me in case the new sats are surprising, and also i just feel like finishing up the sat i ' s this winter if possible, but anyways just listen, i think you should screw taking this test on dec 4th, any college that you apply to will see every score that is on that collegeboard website chart, and i really think its a bad choice sending them a 1300< score if you were aiming for 1400+ as i am, and also say you take the new sats and u get like a 2200+ after all that practice, it will be tremendously awkward to the college that you would have scored so low in dec., but so high in march...as of now im scoring 740+ consistently on my math, but im barely scoring 600 on my verbal...i did 300 flash cards in 2 weeks and they really did help, and that's why i brought 1000 more flash cards, i also have a 5 day break but i am not confident in myself, and you do not look confident yourself, in taking these sats in almost a weeks time. So my opinion is to take them on jan 22nd, therefore you will have a month and a half to take as many practice tests and flash cards as you possbile can, and you can read 2 books every weekend which will keep your increase with vocabulary flash cards in use...that's my 2 cents and i really hope you the best of luck!</p>