<p>Right now I have 800M 630 CR 720 W</p>
<p>Obviously, i need to improve my CR
I have the Barron's SAT book(not 2400) and PR's 11 Practice tests</p>
<p>Recommend any more books? And how else can I better prepare to improve CR by about 100 points by October? Memorize vocab?</p>
<p>What's this obsession with prep books? They don't teach you anything new.</p>
<p>Read a lot of books to practice your critical reading. Read something from the newspaper every day, too.</p>
<p>Study vocab a lot. Just get a list of SAT vocab from off the internet, and make flashcards. On one side of the flashcard, write the word. On the other side, the definition, whether it's a noun adjective verb and whatnot, and then also the use of the word in a sentence. Try to incorporate these new words into your daily life.</p>
<p>That should put you at about a 700, hopefully. Obviously though, you want to keep doing practice tests, to see how you're improving.</p>
<p>I teach SAT prep. I also improved a 600 CR to an 800 last year. Here's my advice...</p>
<p>Doing anything other than practice tests isn't necessarily a waste of time, but it's not an efficient use of time. So, only do practice tests. This means the official CB tests (i.e. the Blue Book). If you've used up the Blue Book, get the Red Book; doing a few analogies isnt' going to kill you.</p>
<p>As far as actual test prep tips:
*See if it's to your advantage to read the passage. Many people find that you don't really need it, as the questions point out the most important parts. Find what works best for you.
*Make sure all of your answers have DIRECT EVIDENCE from the passage. Words like infer, believe, etc. are essentially lies - you still need to say "I chose B b/c in line 27 it says this..."</p>
<p>I feel helpless in CR also. It isn't that I can't finish the reading in the time limit, or that it's hard, it's just that I see like 2-3 answer choices that seem EXACTLY the same to me. I know they aren't...I have trouble finding evidence too.</p>
<p>Tips?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>You already have pretty good techniques internalized with the scores you have, what I'd recommend is getting the official SAT practice book from CB, and finish it's and all other practice tests you have. All you really have to do is take a practice test and identify your errors, practice truly makes perfect (and taking full tests or at least sections 5 more times will definately make a difference).</p>
<p>As for CR, read a lot every day, first of all, and develop a technique for the passages. Memorizing vocab does a little bit (I did it, it helped me with a couple of words). I reccomend reading good books, circling every word you don't know, and looking it up in addition to finding a database online, I recommend this:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.number2.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.number2.com/</a></p>
<p>This provides tons of vocab that you can test on every day, and it quizes you the next day. It also keeps all 'learned' words (words you've answered correctly twice) in a database for your convenience.</p>
<p>Furthermore, when you read, try my strategy. Answer all questions that ask for a specific line or set of lines, read between each of the line reference areas as you answer the line reference questions, and by the time you've answered all the line ref. questions, you should have a decent idea of the passage. Then, answer the rest of the questions, referring back when necessary. If this doesn't work, just keep doing whatever you do best but improve it. Hope this helped.</p>
<p>I agree with confused_student's tips about vocab flashcards. Doing that has helped me a lot. But also what you should do is look at what part of CR you're having the most trouble with-- is it the sentence completions, or passages? Make sure you're practicing the part that's hardest for you.</p>