<p>i just saw my score of 570 today, a decrease from 610, and the 560 i got last year. How would I improve the reading score if I were to take it a fourth time? I actually felt that I knew the questions and read the passage. I took the Testmaster's online course, but that did not help.</p>
<p>What is one to do?</p>
<p>One is to take AP English (Composition or Literature) and one is to spend a lot of time reading, analyzing passages and novels, taking notes, and reading the interpretations people have had of previous works. To be honest, the reading score is hard to raise in a few months... I would recommend a year spending a lot of time reading the classics. I had no special training in reading besides my AP Courses in English and my love for books, and I still got a 750.</p>
<p>To be honest, no class (unless its something really amazing) will instantly raise your CR score.</p>
<p>I had a embarrassing 630 and just got a 720 on CR in Nov. My stategy? I read and took ALL the official reading passages from collegeboard. I went through the ENTIRE blue book, online courses, and 10 Real SATS (well worth it). Eventually, you not only get faster at skimming, but you also begin to effortlessly pick out wrong answers. IF you take enough tests and take the time to ANALYZE uyour response and the correct answer, you can figure out those close questions. For me the biggest thing was knowing that IF ITS NOT IN THE PASSAGE IT ISN'T RIGHT.</p>
<p>For vocab all I used was one of those most common word lists, felt good about sentence cfompletion</p>
<p>I got a 740 on the Reading, so I'm not totally authoritative, but here it goes: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Learn all the vocab words. None of that Latin gibbltygook, just memorize thousands of words. Many people I know learned the SAT vocab through years of reading, but if you only have a few months: do a crash course in intense vocab. </p></li>
<li><p>I'd recommend reading a lot of hard non-fiction, since most essays are personal narratives or newspaper like pieces. So read a difficult magazine like: Scientific American, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, etc. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>But read a magazine you like.</p>
<p>i got a 760 but then again, i've been making those vocab cards since sixth grade. you know, because of those cty tests.</p>
<p>btw, question - how bad does a 650 in literature look next to a 640 in us history, a 790 in korean, and 800m-760v-710w?? i already applied early decision to nyu, and i only took a third subject test because georgetown requires it, but how much will this affect the admissions people at nyu or other schools?</p>
<p>DO NOT MEMORIZE VOCAB WORDS! - focus on other work instead</p>
<p>I just got my score (790) which was a big improvement over my previous score (680) (My PSAT scores were 57, 65) and I did not memorize a single vocab word for the SAT (we did some vocab in AP(which I highly recommend taking) - but it was only ~300 words). I recommend just spending 10 hours practicing and getting the logic down and maybe reading a little bit each day - not forcing yourself to read 800 page novels from the 1700/1800s, but maybe a little news. </p>
<p>A lot of people recommend reading Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, The Economist..., I just spend 10-15 on Google News and look thorugh what interests me and read from different sources - this is very often the only real reading I do in a day (reading textbooks won't get you anywhere on CR).</p>
<p>everyone's different, and even though it was a huge pain in the @ss writing out thousands of vocab cards, it WORKED for me.</p>
<p>I got a 770. I have two tips for you:</p>
<p>1) Memorize vocab. I never actually studied vocab specifically for the SAT, but I've done 300+ words in school since 6th grade (it's part of my school's required curriculum), and it really helped.</p>
<p>2) Do practice tests (college board ones if you can). Do the tests from the Blue Book and online course.</p>
<p>I got a perfect score on the CR section of the PSATs (80) and a perfect score on the CR section of the SATs (800). My advice for doing well is not reading a lot, to be honest I probably read less than the average 600 or even 500 CR kid. What you do is take ALL the CB practice tests and pay attention to what you missed. Also, take care to memorize some vocab if that's a problem. Other than that, you should start to memorize the pattern in the way the questions are asked. You may want to read outside material, but I highly doubt it will help especially over a very short time period. And as I have already proved, being an avid reader is not mandatory.</p>
<p>I raised my CR from a 70 on the PSAT to an 800 (with no questions missed) on the SAT.
I didn’t do all that much formal studying. What I think was most important in increasing my score was the fact that I focused as hard as I could on the passages, no matter how boring and stupid the passages were. I also read actively, actually thinking about what I was reading. When it came time for the questions, I knew all of them right away, and it seemed way too easy. For the sentence completions, all I did was look over roots, prefixes, and suffixes in Gruber’s. Also, whenever I came across a word I didn’t know in my everyday life (someone else talking, books, TV, whatever) I would look it up and write it down with the definition—writing it down was the key thing here, as it helped me remember it much better than just looking at the definition ever would. A good place to find new words is [url=<a href="http://www.freerice.com/index.php%5DFreeRice%5B/url">http://www.freerice.com/index.php]FreeRice[/url</a>] .</p>
<p>To whomever said not to bother with the "Latin gibbltygook:"</p>
<p>While using knowledge of Latin wouldn't be very effective if you only have a few months to study, if you have taken Latin for multiple years, it can be very helpful. On multiple words I fell back to my Latin knowledge in order to find the definition. If you have taken Latin, it is very very useful.</p>
<p>In fact, if you've taken Latin and read a lot, then there is absolutely no reason to study vocab. You have both the knowledge and the experience to know all the words on the test.</p>
<p>I've got a 750 on my first test and an 800 on my 2nd.</p>
<p>Although I have never studied vocab myself, some of my other friends, who are not native English speakers, got hold of the 3000-word word list and memorized every single one of them, and got 800s on CR, so if you don't mind that, that might work for you.</p>
<p>I regularly read Time and The Economist, and I usually think about the issues and viewpoints presented after reading an article inside. I find that helped a lot in CR.</p>
<p>Good luck anyway =)</p>
<p>Yes, I forgot to say... Buy a subscription to Newsweek/Time/etc. You don't have to read all of it, but read some of the shorter articles. The quarter-page columns, half-page stories, and full-page stories can all help reading comprehension especially if you try to incorporate the information into your everyday conversations.</p>
<p>as someone that scores higher than 750 usually, I would not recommend memorizing vocab. vocab was highly emphasized on the old SAT, but not the new SAT. fill the sentences using common sense. and for critical reading questions, don't think too much of the answers. even though people say some questions have more than one answer, it is not true... the SAT tricks people by putting stuff in that the actual answer infers, but it is reading too deep!</p>
<p>but for some foreign students, we lack of the ability to using common sense, or more accurately, we don't have the sense to use english, what are we gonna do? We gotta memorize those freakin' words...</p>
<p>oh yeah, I second yumihoo's post. What you might call SIMPLE WORDS sometimes could be the hard ones for us internationals. When it comes to taking SAT Reasoning, being foreigner sucks!!!</p>
<p>You seem to be the average student who is willing to be motivated and is not getting the motivation.</p>
<p>You are the type of person who can really benefit from an SAT prep class, even though it's expensive.</p>
<p>Check with your state's virtual school if you can sign up for that class, you can also get high school credit for taking it.</p>
<p>I wish I could help, but I don't know how to. I just got my score and got a 720 (I didn't study because it was my first time and I wanted to get a raw score).</p>
<p>However, my math and writing need work.</p>
<p>luck- luck- luck. And making educated, intelligent guesses. </p>
<p>The themes and question types don't differ much. After a first try, you'd probably get the idea. </p>
<p>the first time i did my sat, my CR was 670. The second time, enlightened, easily bagged a 800.</p>