<p>My SAT score: 1460/2230 (800 M, 660 CR, 770 W)</p>
<p>Colleges I'm interested in: UVA, Georgetown, Brown, Boston College, Duke, Princeton, UNC Chapel Hill, Northwestern</p>
<p>I know most of these require some subject tests (2?) and I was planning on taking Math level 2, Biology (don't know which one), and US history. I am a junior, and this year I am taking AP Bio and AP US History, which is why I'm taking subject tests in those subjects.</p>
<p>My questions are: 1) Am I taking the right subject tests? 2) Which biology would be best for me considering I have a horrible teacher but am doing well learning the material on my own 3) What is the best prep for these three tests?</p>
<p>Okay, first things first: some schools (Princeton for sure) require 3 SAT II's. No school (that I have ever heard of) requires more than 3 for normal freshmen applicant's, but plan to take at least 3 for sure. Given the classes you are taking, those seem like fine SAT II's to take. A little advice: be sure to review for Math II--it does have some weird stuff that you might not remember (the double angle trig conversion doesn't quite stick in my mind these days) or have never learned (I never took stats, and standard deviation was on the test). I memorized these (and a few more) formulas, and they pretty much all showed up on the test. US History is really similar to AP US--you are on target there. I never took any science SAT II's, so I can't give you specific advice on Bio, but in general I would say just look at test prep books and see which discipline you would do better on (or, in your case, would be easier to teach yourself). Any test prep book by a major company (collegeboard, princeton review) would be fine.</p>
<p>^^Advice about Lit. I got into the test not having studied for it AT ALL, and there were a couple of nasty surprises. First of all, if you are taking Lit, you have to take it first, which probably wouldn't have been my choice. Also, it is a decent amount (like, half of it) of poetry, which...I was not expecting. I basically powered my way through the test. Consdering how ill-prepared I was, my score is kind of amazing to me (770), but English is probably the subject that I am most talented in. Also, I lucked out--the first passage was on Frederick Douglass, and I had both done a presentation about him for APUSH and written an AP English essay (that I rocked, by the way) from a passage from his biography, and so I had totally by chance seen that passage that was on the Lit test before. He showed up on my ACT, too...weird!</p>
<p>i think a language would be a good idea if you're decent in one...</p>
<p>also, a word of advice--take the ones you're confident in in one session, and take the "iffy" ones at another...that way, you can cancel bad scores without killing good ones, too. so if you take lit on a whim, don't do it with you math ii, b/c you won't want to destroy your beauteous 800.</p>
<p>Advantagious - I'm taking an Honors Am Lit class this year, and AP Lit next year. I'm thinking I'd rather take french over lit because I am better at french. That's funny about Frederick Douglas!</p>
<p>Zel-That's intersting about taking confident ones at the same time..I hadn't thought of that. I'm kind of confused about canceling scores - you have cancel an entire sitting's worth of scores at the same time?</p>
<p>yup...unless your calc fails (in which case you can cancel just the math), you have to cancel all of them at once. </p>
<p>the "sitting fee" makes it tempting to lump all tests together, since it's cheaper, but then you have to worry about mixing a not-so-good score in with stellar ones. like my u.s. history... :-(</p>
<p>i took bio M, 2 years after taking sophomore bio h...never took ap bio or anything else. i got a 660 on the bio, which isn't great i know, but i took it at the same time as latin (which is only offered 2x/yr) and got a 700 on the latin. so i didn't cancel. plus i'm going into liberal arts, so no one cares about my science aptitude...or at least not as much.</p>
<p>oh yeah, i took 4 SAT IIs, btw...Princeton requires 3, and it's the only one of my schools that required any...some recommend them for scholarship consideration, though. i took ush, latin, bio, and math ii. math ii was my best, which wasn't a surprise.</p>
<p>^^Yeah, they would only look at your 3 highest scores. Possible exception: I think if you apply as an engineering major there, they "prefer" that you take a Physics or Chem test (and probably also a Math test, although that part I don't remember), so conceivably in that case they would look at a lower score in one of those subjects. Of course, if you were applying as an engineering major, hopefully your lowest scores weren't in those subjects....</p>
<p>lol your SAT is EXACTLY like mine except the CR is 40 points lower...damn we must both hate CR huh? :D</p>
<p>Anyway, try to take SAT IIs in a variety of subjects. Take a math, science, and a humanities (my advice at least) - I would do USH if I were you, esp. if you take APUS.</p>