<p>Just curious about how long each of you spent studying (or not) for the SATs and what your results were. For those of you who were most successful, what study methods would you recommend? </p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Take a practice test to see how you do so you can work from somewhere instead of blindly reading a book.</p>
<p>Not focusing on Writing because Writing won't be as deciding in college admissions as CR and Math(I got a 670 though on it).</p>
<p>Learning almost 2000 words to ensure that I would not get any vocab questions wrong to give me a chance on passage questions.</p>
<p>Taking 15+ practice tests to make yourself familiar with the questions. </p>
<p>Listen to Mozart the night before and the morning of the test to get your brain cells going(not kidding).</p>
<p>Read a lot of magazines like Newsweek, National Geographic, etc, and look up unfamiliar vocab words.</p>
<p>I would NOT recommend my method but the way I studied for the SATs was going out Friday night, coming back at midnight, watching TV and going to sleep around 1. Wake up, drive to the SATs and run to my class cause I was like a minute late. Take them, get an 1890. I know it's not a great score but I was okay with it, I got a 710 in math so that was cool.</p>
<p>Really though, no prep at all for me. But for the June test, I bought the blue book and took a couple practice tests for CR only and we'll see how I did, but I feel like I did really well on CR. </p>
<p>Hmm, be like Rahoul, not me :)</p>
<p>You don't need a billion SAT books. Pick one or two stategy books such as Rocket Review, PR, Barrons, etc. and learn some of their stategys. I found RR to be helpful and it's the only stategy book I used. In the end strategies can only do so much for you, practice is what will get you your biggest gains.</p>
<p>For practice you need two books, the blue book and testmasters answers book. You can take all the practice tests you want but if you don't have answer explanations then it's pretty useless. I've seen people pour through all 8 practice tests and do a bunch of PR tests which is unnecessary and IMO a poor method. You need to time yourself on all the tests (except for maybe the first one you take), grade it, and then go over basically every question and read every testmasters explanation. If you have gone through all 8 practice tests and are not seeing any gains then you either have maxed out your score or did a lousy job going over them and basically just wasted your greatest resource. </p>
<p>So anyway for studying I started in Mid-Feb to take the test in May. I had around a 180 PSAT so that needed to go up a lot. Some days I'd have a solid 1-2 hour study session and other days I'd do nothing depending on how much HW I had. I did 4 practice tests out of the blue book and went over them completely. I only memorized the first 150 words in RR and a couple showed up on the real test which was nice (I got 18 of 19 completing the sentence). Overall I ended up going up around +350 from my PSAT to a 2200 so I think it turned out pretty well and I have another 4 practice tests to try and get into the 2250-2300 range.</p>
<p>EDIT: I almost forgot, another extremely important resource is sparknotes. It's free, I didn't really use the math section since math is my strong point but it gives a pretty decent overview of all the math concepts you need (though RR is awesome for this also). But the single biggest strength can be found right here: SAT:</a> Improve SAT Score with SparkNotes: The Seven Deadly Screw-Ups. Slowly read that (IE don't cram it into one session) and you'll do well on the finding sentence errors for writing. Also give the whole writing section a read through there since it's quite helpful.</p>
<p>I think the biggest hurdle of the SAT is the vocab questions. I decided to take the June SAT (my first) without studying at all. I don't know how I did yet, hopefully above 2000, but in retrospect I found everything to be pretty simple except the vocab questions. The writing, reading, and math can, for the most part, be worked out from what you've learned in school, but unless you study some vocab you'll miss those questions.</p>
<p>ugh...I barely prepared at all. I only tried to cram in a practice test the night before the exam.</p>
<p>Stupid me for being too confident just b/c I scored well on my PSAT...but I still think I did pretty good, just not as well as I could of...but I guess I'll see on the 26th.</p>
<p>Well I got my PSAT results and was very disappointed (I decreased from soph to junior year) so I hit the blue book pretty hard. First took a preliminary practice test just to see where I stood (note: I did not prepare at all for writing because I figured it didn't matter...but I ended up getting an 800 on writing so now I wish it did ... I also figured it'd be impossibly to prepare for an essay) I got a 1380/1600 first try, and ended up taking 5 practice tests total until I was very comfortable with the types of questions asked -- particularly in the math section. The only real reviewing I did was if I just completely lacked an understanding of a math concept...but just practice, practice, practice seemed to work for me.</p>
<p>I went from 690 CR and 690 M ----> 730 CR and 780 M</p>
<p>I didn't prepare much because of time crunches with my schoolwork, but I did take a couple of practice tests and reviewed math concepts. I didn't prepare at all for critical reading, just math and writing. I used the blue book for math and Kaplan's SAT 2400 for writing... I took the June SAT and am hoping for 700+ in CR and Writing and... well, I don't know what I'm hoping for in math... :</p>
<p>Basically, I have 4-5 hours of sleep everyday, go figure.</p>
<p>i just didn't prepare. at all. unless drinking a lot of coffee right before the test counts :-P</p>
<p>I took two practice tests; since the result was satisfactory, it seemed pointless to study further. Had I performed more poorly, however, I would have taken more practice tests and examined my errors thoroughly; there's nothing that can prepare you better than learning from your mistakes. Also, although I didn't get much sleep the night before the exam, drinking substantial amounts of caffeine (in the form of tea, not coffee, mind you) helped offset that.</p>
<p>Your mind functions less effectively on caffeine than on a good night sleep.</p>
<p>That being said, I took three practice tests and the math from a fourth. Results weren't changing, but also were good enough to satisfy me. I realized I would probably improve more from not stressing out on the test and burning out on practice questions than I would from drilling more. Additionally, I recognized most of my errors were caused by a lack of concentration during the practice tests, not an inability to answer; it seemed there was little studying could do to rectify mistakes caused by flippancy.</p>
<p>It worked, though. Really well. As in 120 point improvement from practice tests well.</p>
<p>full throttle right before i went in, and i did the SAT email question of the day for 3 months... (for a 2400)</p>
<p>Lawl. Yeah, I did the SAT question of the day for a few months and got a 2390. I lose. </p>
<p>I also took two PSAT practices, one the night before each year I took it, the junior year test date being a few weeks before my SAT. Oh, and I guess the PSATs themselves were practice. So it's kinda like four abridged practice tests, and if you add up the Questions of the Day, that probably equals about one of each section. </p>
<p>I dunno if that counts as taking it cold. Usually I just mention the SAT QotD so people think I'm a badass. Maybe I am. Sorry, this is a really unhelpful reply and if I'm not just an arrogant jerk, I won't push the 'Submit' bu</p>
<p>2390? You got to be crapping me? Are you serious Poseur?</p>
<p>I didn't study at all and got 2160.</p>
<p>If I could do it again I wouldn't stay up past midnight eating pizza and drinking pepsi. I probably wouldn't have been sick to my stomach in the morning.</p>