<p>Please Post :
- Your score of your first SAT
- Your score of your last SAT
- Any advice for future-SAT-takers?</p>
<p>My score has increased quite a bit.
My first SAT was 1880
October 2008 SAT 2270
December 2008 SAT 2270</p>
<p>Superscore: 2300</p>
<p>Things I wished I knew sooner:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>leave your english skills at home. The answers are fully implicitly/explicitly supported by the passage. Subjective thinking will get you to pick the incorrect answer.</p></li>
<li><p>find your CR style. Whether it is going straight to the questions or reading the passage first or doing both, find it and familiarize yourself with it.</p></li>
<li><p>don’t use your calculator for every problem math. the hardest ones usually don’t require any calculating at all. BUT, do write out your work or you can get silly errors.</p></li>
<li><p>learn your writing skills cold. There will always be 1-2 questions that look very…weird? Use your mental list of errors and compare until you either find the error or mark no error.</p></li>
<li><p>prewrite your essay. Always come with at least 6-7 examples in mind. This not only lets you write more, but also makes you sound smarter. My prewritten body paragraphs have always yielded a 11 or a 12 on the essay. :]</p></li>
<li><p>FILL THE PAGE OF THE ESSAY! GUARANTEED 10 OR HIGHER
thats all… for now</p></li>
</ol>
<p>What do you mean by prewrite, how can you predict the essay topic?</p>
<p>You can’t. Its a matter of adapting already written body paragraphs into the prompt.</p>
<p>can you explain?</p>
<p>anhtimmy, I think your advice is sound, other than the prewrite suggestion. I would simply alter that suggestion a bit and recommend that test takers familiarize themselves with a handful of literature they enjoy and some history and recent events. Practice writing good paragraphs about these books, events and individuals, and make them paragraphs that describe some basic tenet or virtue demonstrated by the book, event or individual. I think this may be what you meant by prewriting anyway.</p>
<p>I’ve seen students try to plug prewritten paragraphs into essays in answer to SAT prompts and it sometimes comes across as weak evidence. “An example from history comes from [pick a war/book] when the oppressed valiantly fought against their oppressors. [generic prewritten history text/book summary]. Therefore [random essay topic] is good.” Um, no, please don’t write something like that.</p>
<p>If you have multiple books and events that you have thought about from different angles, you won’t sound like you are stuffing canned material into an essay where it doesn’t belong.</p>
<p>almost a 400 point increase!!! that’s huge!</p>
<p>from 1800 to 2300! OUCH! is this possible?</p>
<p>sorry, I meant : HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? How did you do it?</p>
<p>ido potter, its not that you can predict the subject of the essay but you can prepare it by practicing on the other prompts. You can actually reuse your examples that you have prepared while practicing and use it on your actual essay during the SAT. And these examples doesn’t really matter - spiderman and shakespeare meant the same thing for SAT essay correcters, what matter to them is the fluency and correctness of the essay and not the quality of examples.</p>
<p>Oh great , I made a while ago list of books and history events I can use and I used most of them on my practice test essays:)</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/645763-how-write-12-essay-just-10-days.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/645763-how-write-12-essay-just-10-days.html</a></p>
<p>I’ve found this to be an excellent guide. It talks about ‘pre-writing.’</p>
<p>Speaking of score raising, last time a Kaplan prep teacher came to my school said the his “star” student raised his SAT score from 1200 to 2000 !!! I repeat 2000 !!! a 800 increase !!! I was blanked out when I heard the numbers and doubt badly the prep guy. Does that really exist?</p>
<p>I started preparing late March and am taking the SAT on saturday.
Note: My scores are from practice tests and real SATs that I managed to get a hold of. But, I did take them in the allotted time, followed the “rules” etc. I was pretty meticulous about it.</p>
<p>March 26th- First practice test (from the college board website): **1680 **[I graded myself an eight on the essay, just to be safe] Breakdown: 640 CR, 520 M, 520 R</p>
<p>Yesterday’s practice test (an actual test from '06): 2040-2130 [2040 for an 8 essay, 2130 for a 12] Breakdown: 710 CR, 670 M, 660-740 W (again, depending on essay 8-12)</p>
<p>So about a 400 point increase in a little over a month.</p>
<p>A guy I know got 1590 the first time and a couple of months later got 2050. Huge 460 point improvement.</p>
<p>I’m taking the test tomorrow and pretty badly prepared :(</p>
<p>October 2007 - 1460
December 2008 - 1950
May 2009 - We’ll see.</p>