<p>I started "prepping" for the SAT last thursday. Coming from a UK education, I haven't seen tests like this before but expected to start better than I did.</p>
<p>I'm afraid of looking at the essay part, despite being a pretty good writer. I'm mainly concerned about not being able to think of any examples. I guess this is researchable, any advice on where to start?</p>
<p>According to "Cracking the SAT" my practice tests have been the following ranges (in the order I took them):</p>
<p>Obviously, there is an upward trend, but it's probably not realistic to expect it to keep the same momentum.
I need to get (nearer) perfect, but should I, reasonably, be expecting to get there before the October SAT?</p>
<p>My prep currently consists of just a practice test a day. I think I know all the theory, I just need to "learn" the test.</p>
<p>Doing practice tests is unlikely to change your score very much. You might want to read my article “the correct way to prepare for SAT math.” It’s posted on this forum - just do a search.</p>
<p>One thing though - since you have less than a month you may want to increase my recommended study time a bit. But try to split up your studying throughout the day. Studying in 10 to 20 minute blocks is most efficient.</p>
<p>I don’t mean that you should never do a practice test - I recommend doing about 1 per month. </p>
<p>But doing practice test after practice test is not a very efficient way to prepare. For example, let’s say you always get every Level 1 and Level 2 question correct on every practice test. The amount of time you are wasting doing these problems over and over again is tremendous. You should be focusing on the level and types of problems that you are having trouble with. At the opposite end, if you are getting lots of level 4 questions wrong, and all level 5 questions wrong, then you are wasting a lot of time working on level 5 questions. You should master level 4 questions before worrying about level 5.</p>
<p>Also, when you do over 50 math problems in one sitting it is unlikely that you are going to review all of your mistakes carefully and learn from them (and even if you do, you will not retain most of it). Why not just do about 8 problems in each sitting that are at or slightly above your current ability level. Then some real learning can take place. In one week you will have gone through 7*8=56 math problems, and the key is that you will RETAIN the information you have learned from your mistakes.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. Maths isn’t really what I struggle with, I tend to get 2-3 wrong, but all of them silly mistakes, rather than theoretical ones (my worst one so far: looking for the one answer it cannot be, finding D to be the answer it can’t be (thus the answer to the question), checking E to make sure, seeing E can be the answer (thus wrong), and then putting E as my answer…)</p>
<p>I don’t seem to have a trend in questions I get incorrect. Possibly on CR I seem to make more mistakes on the last 5 questions of a section, but those seem to be me falling for the, in retrospect, obvious trap questions, so I think practice tests should help with that.</p>
<p>Probably on the vocab. questions, I need to study outside of the tests to improve, although I haven’t found a useful way of studying vocab.</p>