<p>I always get a raw score of 63/67 on my practice tests for CR (3 wrong, 1 penalty point), and I feel like an 800 is in my reach, but I always get:</p>
<p>-1 sentence completion wrong (don't know a meaning of a word, or second guess myself
-2 passage questions wrong (the wording of a sentence makes me assume it is the right choice, going back I see it was not exact)</p>
<p>Giving me a score of 750-770, depending on which conversion chart I'm looking at. </p>
<p>Any tips for an 800?</p>
<p>ehh theres not much to do except keep practicing, with a little luck you may get an 800.</p>
<p>Getting one or two passage questions wrong is really out of most people’s control. You can, however, control your knowledge of vocab. Make sure you know those words.</p>
<p>I missed 2 passage questions on the March SAT. If I had missed just one vocab question, my score would have dropped 40 points and I would have ended up with a 2270 instead of a 2310. The difference between -2 and -3 is huge when you factor in the guessing penalty.</p>
<p>So what you are suggesting is memorizing vocabulary? That is absolutely ridiculous. Firstly, memorizing is never a good way to learn anything. Secondly, who has the time to memorize thousands of words, when only a handful of them might appear on the test. Therefore, you are preparing for the SAT hoping that words you know will appear. You got lucky that you got all the vocab questions. Stop advocating bad practices to people who may not be able to use them. You might have a high SAT score, but you do not have any common sense.</p>
<p>^Wrong - I raised my score from 720 to 800, and sometimes just a handful of questions -those that rely chiefly on knowing exactly what all the answer choices mean - can make all the difference. Learning vocabulary is definitely worth it. What do you mean by “memorizing is never a good way to learn anything,” anyway? How are you supposed to learn something if you don’t memorize it?</p>
<p>I used to make 25+ errors on Passages before I memorized the 3500 Barron`s words.Now,I make about 14-15 mistakes and i am absolutely capable of reducing these mistakes to 6 or 7 .Vocabulary MATTERS !</p>
<p>yeah, vocabulary matters because you get lucky when you see words that you know. But would you be able to figure out a sentence completion if you did not know any of the words? That is the flaw with memorizing vocabulary. And python38, if you cannot honestly tell me how you would learn something without memorizing it, you have problems. Your 800 does not mean anything if you do not know how to learn new material. You actually show why the SAT is a horrible test because people like you score well on it. You need to know how to learn new material to succeed in college and in life, and scoring well on the SAT through vocab memorization shows that you only know how to take the test and get lucky on it when words you know appear.</p>
<p>LilacTree, all you need is some more practice and some luck. You have to realize that the difference between a 750-770 and a 800 is minuscule. So if you are bent on reaching that 800, by all means go for it, but do not stress out about it too much.</p>
<p>Memorizing vocabulary helped me improve my score too.I used to make around 4-5 errors in SC before I memorized words from lists like DH. But now I only get around 1-2 mistakes in SC.</p>
<p>doctor92, stop flaming. Guys like python and 112358 have scores you’ll die for. Don’t be jealous because they have some common sense and get accepted to some of the best colleges in the country. Colleges don’t care if the SAT or ACT “is a horrible test,” all they care about is your score, so shut up.</p>
<p>Please stop turning this into a flame thread.</p>
<p>But to answer the question, I believe that memorizing vocabulary is a waste of time. It is much more worth it to memorize Latin and Greek prefixes, roots, and suffixes. You won’t believe how many words you can know just from part of the word.</p>
<p>This isn’t really even flaming, just a good old heated debate. That being said, vocabulary DOES matter. doctor92, your opinion is obviously pure speculation because learning a good 300-400 words from GOOD (direct hits, etc) vocab books makes a HUGE difference. It’s an understandable that one might think you have to get lucky to see any of the new words you learned on the test, but that’s actually completely false. On the march 2009 SAT, I probably saw 10-15+ words that I didn’t know before I had started studying vocabulary.</p>
<p>Knowing your vocab isn’t even just for sentence completions. Every now and then there are some advanced words in the passage section, and you would be surprised how much knowing the meaning of ONE word can increase your comprehension of the WHOLE passage. And, when you’re reading those advanced college texts in your AP english class, knowing the vocab used can increase your comprehension 10 fold.</p>
<p>I find trying to learn the lesser known latin/greek roots to be extremely difficult. I’m sure it’s useful, but some of those unknown roots don’t really stick in my mind very well. Learning words through a SAT vocab book, on the other hand, is quite easy. Trying to memorize the meaning of a word through dictionary.com or something doesn’t work too well, but learning out of a book with example sentences and exercises makes learning the words quite easy. I can learn a good 20 new words in 3 days and retain them indefinitely as long as I review them every couple weeks. Roots can also be misleading. And, if you don’t know the word but you recognize a root, it can still take a lot of effort to figure out the meaning of the word. A lot of roots are very loosely connected with the actual meaning of the word. This is precious time wasted that could be better spent on the passage based reading. And, obviously, you’ve got to know your prefixes.</p>
<p>In a nutshell, if you’re vocabulary isn’t too hot, I believe learning new words is BY FAR the fastest way to improve your CR score.</p>
<p>Memorizing roots is very helpful, because then if you do not know the meaning of the word, you can piece it together if you know the root. Belligerent has the root belli and consequently means hostile or engaged in war. Also looking at context is very important; for example does the word of the blank have a cause and effect relation to the complete sentence? or is it defined by what comes after? I have found this is the best method for sentence completions. For passages, you have to identify what the question is asking, and find support in the passage. If your answer seems to go too far out of the passage, it is probably not correct. This seems simple, but it really helps. Good luck!</p>
<p>rcchen is absolutely right about learning word prefixes and suffixes. zaboda42, you assumed that my score is lower than theirs. I would not die for a test score, because I actually want to accomplish something with my life rather than just get a good test score. And if you are misinformed for thinking that they got into the “best colleges in the country”. Most undergraduate education is the same in terms of educational quality(with the exception of location). All universities have high quality faculty as these jobs are lucrative and they will take any job. The thought that ivy league and other “top colleges” are so much better than state/public universities is so outdated and wrong. Do some research before you attack me.</p>
<p>Vocab IS important, but how you go about recognizing words is what’s important. I personally believe studying prefixes/suffixes/roots and just picking up words from texts is a better method than opening up a book with 3500 words… But depending on the person, the latter might be more effective.</p>
<p>
Different people, different opinions, different preferences, etc. doctor92’s just expressing his opinions. I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Want to catch me up? Your post is probably the only post that could actually be considered somewhat of a flame… He’s allowed to state his opinions on the test. I did not see any rules prohibiting that. Obviously some college do care that they’re horrible tests seeing how they’ve converted to being test optional.</p>
<p>Like I said before, it usually should come down to personal preference.
Vocab lists vs Prefixes/Suffixes/Roots list and Readings</p>
<p>It’s fine if you don’t want to bother memorizing vocab - but don’t flame me for offering advice when you asked for it. You wanted to know how to get those last 30 or 40 points on CR, and I told you what I think got me those final 30 or 40 points. Sentence Completions are not entirely luck. I never miss more than one, and that’s because I’ve memorized vocabulary and read lots of advanced literature. You’re entitled to think that that’s not an efficient way of studying or that doing well on the SAT isn’t worth that amount of work, but that doesn’t mean you need to flame those who are trying to offer you the very advice you asked for. I’m not sure what answer you’re looking for - it seems like you want an easy solution, but if getting the last 30 or 40 points was that easy, everyone would be strutting around with 800s in CR.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’d call that a bit of a flame myself…</p>
<p>I don’t think OP has replied yet.</p>
<p>
Seems like I missed parts of the conversation.</p>
<p>“yeah, vocabulary matters because you get lucky when you see words that you know. But would you be able to figure out a sentence completion if you did not know any of the words? That is the flaw with memorizing vocabulary. And python38, if you cannot honestly tell me how you would learn something without memorizing it, you have problems.”</p>
<p>If you can recall something without memorizing it, I would be very, very interested to know how you do that. I bet all the other students on here would, too. What method of learning new vocabulary do you propose? </p>
<p>“Your 800 does not mean anything if you do not know how to learn new material. You actually show why the SAT is a horrible test because people like you score well on it. You need to know how to learn new material to succeed in college and in life, and scoring well on the SAT through vocab memorization shows that you only know how to take the test and get lucky on it when words you know appear…I would not die for a test score, because I actually want to accomplish something with my life rather than just get a good test score.”</p>
<p>If you don’t like the SAT, don’t do it. Or send a letter to CollegeBoard, instead of posting about it on forums. Don’t learn new words if you don’t want to, but don’t go flaming people just because they actually try to get a good grade, and advise others as to how to do the same. FYI, a large vocabulary is useful for far more things than the SAT. </p>
<p>You can sit and complain about luck, luck, luck all day, but to be frank, this is coming off as very sour-grapes. This reminds me of a quote I heard a while back - “Success is all about luck - just ask any failure.”</p>
<p>@driscol: My apologies, I confused that poster with the OP.</p>
<p>But I wouldn’t exactly consider saying someone’s score was luck and claiming they have no common sense a compliment.</p>
<p>Haha, I had not replied until now.</p>
<p>Memorizing words sounds like a good strategy.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, in the passages, sometimes I agree with a wrong answer, or a miss a tiny detail.</p>