<p>Hi! I would like to share my story about mastering the SAT Critical Reading section to help others achieve a great score on the CR. There are many great guides on College Confidential and I have learned much from them, so not all of this information will be new. However, there is much I have to say that I feel others can benefit from so I will begin. The story begins with the second paragraph and continues to the end of the third; the guide begins at the beginning of the fourth paragraph.
It started with the PSAT in my sophomore year of high school. I had eagerly taken it to see how much I would have to study for the junior PSAT to earn National Merit Semifinalist recognition. Scores arrived back in December and I opened the paper to find out that I had scored a 203 composite with a 60 CR. I was worried over this score and if I would be able to even improve it at all. Thankfully, I was allowed to focus more on my schoolwork throughout sophomore year and the topic of SAT did not come up until summer
My parents forced me to take an SAT prep class but my Critical Reading section remained in the low 600s, not improving at all. It was when I first entered the realm of College Confidential that I realized the vast abundance of SAT preparation materials I had available. I quickly ordered a copy of the Official SAT Study Guide and prepared to use the methods online to score 700+ on the CR.
Once I had received the famed Blue Book, I took timed sections of the Critical Reading to gauge my score. I was ecstatic to find that I was already starting to improve after taking a few practice sections of critical reading. I utilized strategies from CC such as underlining sentences from the passages as shown in the questions asked. I tried to complete the questions as quickly and accurately as I could so I would have more time on the real SAT. I was improving, but I was stuck in the high 600s to low 700s range, becoming more and more frustrated with my score. I was sometimes extremely knowledgeable about all of the vocabulary words on the practice SAT, while at other times I was clueless with 5 or more vocabulary words on another practice SAT. Time flew by
I had been studying for 2 months and the October 9 SAT was just a few weeks away. I panicked; I had not been able to raise my CR score much since getting it to the low 700s range. I was wondering why the famed Critical Reading strategies on College Confidential were not helping me as much as I thought they should. In the end, however, I realized that the best strategy would not be a specific one-size-fits-all strategy, but a blend of favorite strategies to merge into a personal strategy. At the end of this practice with my new, personal strategy, I was more confident going into the real SAT and I finished off my SAT preparation with an 800 on the Critical Reading section.
Now for the technical matters of how I improved my SAT score. I bought the Official SAT Study Guide and did about 7 of the practice tests from there. The number of practice tests taken will vary from person to person, but one will usually have to do a good number of practice tests to achieve a high score on Critical Reading and other sections. Also, just a reminder, but remember that no one strategy will work for everyone! If this strategy doesnt work for you, try another one until you develop your own personal strategy that is the best for you.</p>
<p>1) I took one or two practice sections of CR from the Blue Book daily. I timed these to simulate the real testing situation since one may get nervous on the real day and use up more time on the questions.
2) I looked over my correct and wrong answers and tried to rationalize why the correct answer is correct for my wrong answers. After I did this I would then check the official explanations provided by College Board on their website.
3) For the Sentence Completions, I did NOT memorize a lot of vocabulary from Direct Hits or any other book, but I did learn the vocabulary that I did not know on the practice SATs from the Blue Book. I also learned strategies to determine the correct answer for the sentence completions. For example, I would look to see if the definition of a word was in the sentence, or if the sentence wanted words that were similar or contrasting by watching out for key words such as although, however, like, etc. However, if you are missing several words on the sentence completions, it would be beneficial to learn more words than just those available on the Official SAT Study Guide. This depends on how much time you have to study for the SAT.
4) For the Reading Comprehension, I read the passage first if it was short and then looked at the questions, and I read the questions first for line numbers if the passage was long. I always read the short summary in the beginning of the passage to get some background information about the topic and what I should be reading about.
5) For short passages, I just sped through the text and answered the questions with the text, choosing the answer directly supported by the text.
6) For longer passages, I looked forward to the questions to see if line numbers were mentioned. For the questions that did mention lines, I made sure to go back in the passage to bracket the line numbers. Doing this let me read the passage up to that certain part and look to the question to see if I could answer the question with the information I had just read.
7) For the main idea and big picture questions, I answered those after reading the whole passage or paragraph, depending on if the question was asking about the overall passage or a paragraph.
8) I made sure to predict an answer for the question by using the information solely in the passage. Please keep out your personal biases when answering the questions. Even if you dont agree with the viewpoint of the author, just accept it as if it is the given truth.
9) Lastly, I played devils advocate a lot on these questions. When I narrowed the question answers down to 2, I would ask myself, Why is this answer choice clearly WRONG? I looked directly into the passage and if there was no support at all for the answer choice, I would eliminate it. Doing this helped me improve from the low 700s to the high 700s. Earlier on, I had been stuck between two answer choices and had chosen the one that I had felt was better. This is wrong. If the answer choice is not directly supported in the passage, it is incorrect.
10) With all that being said, time management is a crucial part of this. The sentence completions should take less time (30 seconds or less) so you have more time to read the passages and answer those questions. Also, I like to bubble in my answers in my answer sheet as I go along, but others like to answer all the questions and then bubble the answers in the answer sheet. I think that bubbling in the answers as you go along is better so you dont run out of time while bubbling in the answers in the last-minute frenzy, but this is up to you.
11) Overall, my best piece of advice that I can give you is to read this strategy, try it, and merge it or adapt it if it doesnt work out the best way for you. No strategy can fit all people, so the best strategy in the end will be your own developed strategy.</p>
<p>With all of this being said, I wish you luck on the SAT. Do not fret if your scores dont seem to improve at all. I was doing the Blue Books practice SATs and my Critical Reading scores were staying around 700. Somehow it just clicked after another test and I started understanding the reading comprehension questions a lot more and answering them more confidently and accurately. As long as you practice you will improve eventually.</p>
Good Luck to all who are taking SATs this week.</p>
I think I kinda panicked during the CR sections because I knew the proctor wasn’t keeping track of the time properly.</p>