<p>I recently got my Oct SAT score back.
Math: 670 [lower than what I expected]
Critical Reading: 510 :(
Writing: 560 :(
Essay 9/12</p>
<p>I am planning to take the Jan SAT. My goal is to get around 2000, and I know it is achievable because I am defiantly capable of doing better. But I need an advice. As you can see from my scores, my weakest sections are CR and Writing. I really want to prepare for these sections and increase my score to 650s. Math I can do on my own. But it is CR and Writing that I blow everytime. So does anyone have any advice on how to increase my score? What books should I buy? or What are some good strategies?
Keep in mind I only need help with CR and Writing.</p>
<p>Please help me with this problem
P.S. If it helps, I am Junior and this was my first time taking the SAT</p>
<ol>
<li>Practice.</li>
<li>Reading strategies. Study them up and practice with them. You can’t just “read” like you do normal books. It’s very formulaic.</li>
</ol>
<p>Thank you Impero that was very in-dept analysis of good strategies.
And thank you CalDud I will consider your recommendations. </p>
<p>I guess the problem I have is agreeing with the author, this kind of sounds silly but on many occasions (during practice SAT and real SAT) I’ve caught myself arguing with the author and their point of view. I guess that alters my judgement and therefore I always choose the wrong answer. </p>
<p>BTW I have the Blue Book and the Rocket Review Book…Are those any good?</p>
<p>Think: You’re here on this page so I can get a good score on my CR (WRONG though you may be). One important thing is to NOT make outside inferences and let your prejudice influence you. We all have them. Of course, we can think “there’s a stupid argument”; I’ve thought like this on more than one occasions. Only stick with what’s in the text. For example, if the author says “x, therefore y”, and you KNOW from outside info that this is fallacious… No. You don’t know that. Not today. You don’t know anything beyond the text.</p>
<p>By active reading, try to be able to own, and then summarize the passage in one sentence. For example, the passage in the test we just took about plants eating rocks, you should be able to say: The passage argues that we should just let natural decomposition happen instead of removing all of the rocks. I know this passage was boring; but try to be interested. By interacting with the text, it’s no longer so boring, and you understand it better. Try Barrons; they usually have the harder questions from the SAT, and you should be worrying about those. I like Barrons 2400. It has a lot strategies which I adopted. Where’d you think I get the “mark line numbers first!” strategy from? :)</p>
<p>^agree completely. for this sat i just did like one practice reading section a day for 2 weeks before the test. my reading scores: 530,550, but 620 this time.</p>
<p>jonisigel is probably referring to the practice tests in the Official SAT Study Guide (aka the Blue Book). I suggest to practice a CR section every day and really try to play devil’s advocate and figure out which answers are wrong. You really have to throw away your biases when taking the CR sections or you will be led to the wrong answer. I didn’t like using Barron’s questions since those questions were not as similar to the real test as the blue book’s questions were but some people like studying harder materials for the SAT. Marking line numbers is a good strategy but the best strategy will be a personal strategy after trying several different strategies. </p>
<p>For writing, I didn’t read a grammar guide but I did practice the BB’s writing sections to practice the grammar the SAT tests; this is probably one of the best ways to improve the writing multiple choice portion. </p>
<p>Also, for the vocabulary on the SAT, I don’t recommend memorizing a ton of words but rather practicing the CR sections of the SAT and learning those words on the sentence completions. Wordlists will NOT guarantee a perfect score on the sentence completions. I find that learning the words on the practice tests from the Blue Book and learning the strategies (compare and contrast, definition, etc) to determine the type of word the sentence completion wants are more helpful than just memorizing words without their context.</p>
<p>^Yes, I was referring to the Official SAT Study Guide. You can also use the Princeton Review 11 Practice Tests, too, if you run out of sections in the Official SAT Study Guide.</p>
<p>^I’d recommend Barron’s CR. The Barron’s writing is a bit different from that of the actual SAT. Gruber’s CR is a little weird in my opinion. The practice test I did had very few line references so it was kind of confusing.</p>