<p>How do you get 800s on SAT IIs? Any tips? I'm taking Phys, Match II and US Hist. And I find all of them to be extremely difficult, yet I have one of hte highest grades in my class in each of those subjects. </p>
<p>What's the deal?</p>
<p>There's really no advice to give, except find a book and study...</p>
<p>US History...there really is no excuse for not getting an 800 on this exam if you have enough time...you just need to STUDY.</p>
<p>are you kidding me jimbo? I have a 100 % in that class, yet I take a practice test and I get 50%. Why???? how does it work out like that/ I use a barrons book. maybe the tests are simply not realistic?</p>
<p>US History is a piece of cake you should really excel in that test if you know your material. If your getting 100s and only a 500 on the US History SAT II then your school / that class has some serious grade inflation</p>
<p>barron's is known to be too hard.</p>
<p>I'm definitely in the same situation as thebillsfan.
taking it next week, what do you recommend?</p>
<p>haha, thanks juniorinhs. DEFINITELY need some support here. I would hope Barron's is too hard. I mean DAMN, if i miss 50% of the questions! And no, my high school does not have an inflationary curve, in fact, it is the largest high school in my state, and one of the best public schools in the country (so they tell me). I'm not going to lie, my teacher is really really easy, but he's also been teaching for forty years, and knows what he's talking about. So...maybe I should just not fret about it and wait till Test Day? Because there is a serious discrepancy between my class and this Barrons' Practice Test.</p>
<p>if it makes you feel better, I'm taking the Calc BC AP on Wednesday.... but I still do horribly (~50%) on the Barrons' Math IIC tests...lol, it practically doesn't make sense</p>
<p>some parts of the coutnry are known for mediocre competition. I can't say my school is very competitive either though.</p>
<p>It depends whether you're in AP history or regular? My school's regular history starts at around the civil war while ap starts in the 1600s--big difference. I think if you were successful in apush, you should be fine taking the sat ii.</p>
<p>As for math, if you were okay in trig and maybe precalc, that should be enough. A lower sat ii might just be that you're too advanced in math. Geometry was many years ago for me, so I had to do some major review, but that was about it.</p>
<p>^^^That's what happened for me in math. I mean, I can do calculus, but not basic math. How sad. And I got about 50% on Sat II US Barrons' practice and I got a 780--it's not an 800, but pretty darn close. I'd say you're fine.</p>
<p>yay, aviatrix10, thanks for the encouragement!</p>
<p>It isn't a matter necessarily of grade inflation. Some schools manage a curriculum in a subject that is better tuned to the specific test, by design or by luck.</p>
<p>I homeschooled my daughter, so I hung out at some lists for teachers of AP subjects. They spent a large amount of time figuring out the best texts to use, which portions to stress and which to omit, test prep, what was "due" to be on the test this year, and so on.</p>
<p>I've heard the same thing about the SAT IIs. Students do well in a course but don't necessarily do well in the test because the subject matter isn't aligned. Yes, there are SAT II descriptions (as there are AP descriptions) but they are somewhat vague and indeterminant. I know doing some test prep with my daughter I found that SAT II prep books disagreed with each other as to what would be covered.</p>
<p>We decided not to play the guessing game and my daughter just took some college courses and relied on the ACT (all the places she was interested in took it in lieu of both the SAT I and IIs).</p>
<p>I guess the best prep is to take an actual SAT II practice test and see how you do on that. Then ask around and find which particular test prep book folks who did well on a test happened to use.</p>
<p>to thebillsfan, go here:</p>
<p>these are the collegeboard's official sample questions for the US history sat 2. so, see how many of THESE you get right and then plan accordingly.</p>
<p>hmm, I did those practice questions on CB website a month ago and I got 14/16. that's encouraging, I guess. But there's only like 15 questions. how much judging can you do with that?</p>
<p>better than what you can do with something not written by collegeboard.</p>
<p>Try to memorize as many sat vocab words as possible, as well as geometric and algebraic formulas. Also take a lot of practice tests.</p>
<p>Practice tests are really the way to go, you get a better idea about what kinds of questions to expect and how to answer them.</p>