For those of you who have scored in the 1500s what have you found most important in your preparation? After getting my scores back I started up on Khan Academy and I was wondering if 7 hours of focused study per week for 10 weeks before the October 1 SAT would be enough to get myself into the mid 1500s and if all goes well “perfection”. My reading has always been very strong without any real plan on it. My writing/English is my weakest section but Khan Academy appears to have excellent prep for that area. My Math is pretty good but I have a lot of room for improvement. Just to clarify until 2 days ago I hadn’t done any sort of “SAT prep”.
Reading/Writing: 680 Math: 670 Essay: 6,6,6 all scores from June 4 SAT
Thanks for your time and advice! I appreciate all the help I can get.
It is definitely possible but it will be difficult. Firstly, I would focus less on the amount of time you spend studying and more on whether you get the “types” of questions of the SAT. Moreso than the ACT, SAT has always been a 5 trick pony each section really where they ask you the same 5 questions different ways. If you are as good as reading as you say, then no improvement needed. TBH, I think that you would be better pressed to practice ACT Writing before prepping for SAT writing as the two are basically the same thing with ACT Writing being more time constrained. If you can do well on ACT, than you should do excellent on the SAT. There are only two questions basically, correct the error and where would this go, so if you can hone in on which you do worse on, than there is high chance you will find that there is always a certain grammer rule that may trip you up. I can’t really help you for math because I’ve always believed it’s more of a school thing (if you learned it in school, you will ace it, if not good luck 
) The only thing I can say is that practice Math as a hybrid between critical thinking and reading because that’s how they have structured it unfortunately. Good luck and hope you get the score you want.
• Official SAT daily practice app
• Official Khan Academy online practice
• Official SAT practice book
Spend two hours or more every day practicing questions, and more importantly, read the explanation for why the answer is what it is. That boosted me from high 1300s, to 1490, to 1510.
And your reading is fine, but it’s not high 700s. You need to become a master at close reading. Keep on reading those passages, and after the fiftieth one you close read, you’ll pick up on the little details that the questions hammer you on.
There is always a good reason why a question is wrong.
Thank you for the advice. Coterie, you’re spot on about the reading and the only reason I downplayed it is because my reading us cores range between 36 and 38 (one official and one practice just today) while my writing is 32-33. What you mentioned about the “close read” is very accurate from my limited experience and I have personally found that at this point I don’t consistently “close read”. For example I will ace one passage (sometimes the hardest one because I bear down more) and on another passage I will not be as detail oriented as I should and I’ll pick an answer without going through a full vetting process and confirming my answer with textual evidence. I will check out the resources you mentioned and will up the study load to meet the requirements based on the scores I am striving to achieve.
Seokouji, I agree that the most important part of the studying is deliberate practice and my ability to become familiar with not only patterns but the types of questions and why the answer is what it is. When I reviewed my practice I was able to pick out 3 (possibly 4) questions that would have been answered correctly if I had checked over my work. 4 other questions were ones that I did not have the proper knowledge of grammatical principles. There was one question that I did not agree with even following the explanation and the answer that the SAT has for that question is highly questionable.