How to improve from a 1510?

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
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I have taken the SAT twice (without studying other than a couple of practice tests on Khan Academy) and have gotten a 1500 and a 1510. I know I have a very good score, and I’m happy with it, but I think if I could raise it 40-50 points or so that could make a significant difference. My highest scores in each section are 38.5 Math, 35 Reading, and 39 Writing. Because my reading score is obviously the weakest, it seems I should focus most of my attention on that.

I bought The Critical Reader yesterday because of the spectacular reviews I have seen, both on this forum and on Amazon (someone on Amazon said their Reading/Writing score went from like 640 to 760 in three weeks or something like that as a result of using this book lol couldn’t believe that). However, I am afraid that reading the book alone will not be enough.

Does anyone have suggestions for 1. How to maximize the benefit that I would get from reading The Critical Reader (should it be supplemented with practice tests or something like that) and 2. Just how to raise my already high score in general? Does anyone have experience with going from missing 6-10 questions in the reading section to missing only 3-5? Is it just about practice (would buying the college board book with 8 practice tests help?) or is there some specific thing I should be doing to cut down on the mistakes I make? Also (and I’m sorry this is like the 4th question) is it worth trying to raise my math score at this point, or should I be focusing exclusively on Reading? I don’t know I’m just nervous that I’ll get the book, read though it, and not really improve in the end and waste the money I spent on the book plus the money I spent on the SAT plus all the time I invested. By the way, I’ll be a senior next year and I plan on taking the August SAT, so this will likely be the last chance I have to nail a 1550+.

Thanks for the help. Please don’t think this is about bragging or making others feel worse… I have friends who laugh when I tell them I’m trying to improve from a 1510, I seriously am just wanting every advantage I can possibly get as far as college admissions and scholarships go.

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Work through the Meltzer book chapter by chapter, doing all of the practice questions, checking them, and then making sure you understand why your wrong answers were wrong, but also why the correct answers are correct.

Give yourself a week to go through the book, doing 1-3 chapters each night.

At the end of the week, do the CR section of an official practice test. Score it. Use the concordance in the back of the book to see the skills that were being tested for each one you got wrong. Re-study the relevant sections of the book. Sleep on it before you continue.

Take another official CR section, rinse, repeat.

I don’t know if I’m the one who wrote that review on Amazon, but I can tell you that my S started with an initial 670 ERBW on a Kaplan practice test administered under test conditions. He prepped on his own for a month or two by doing practice tests and correcting his wrong answers. This took him to a plateau in the 700 range. This wasn’t high enough, so I bought him the Meltzer books and had him do what I outlined above.

He took the real SAT three weeks later and only missed one question on the CR section, for a score of 39. He missed three on the Writing section (dang semicolons!), for a combined total of 760 ERBW.

He says that the single most helpful chapter in the CR book is the one titled The Big Picture (or something similar). Once you grok that, there will be a lot of answers that are suddenly just plain wrong even if the question isn’t necessarily a big picture question.

Additionally, he says there’s a certain feel or voice to the official SAT questions, and once you get that down, it helps immensely. Something clicks. There were only 6 practice tests when he was doing his prep, and he did them all, some of them twice, to get that feel.

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@DiotimaDM thank you very much. It’s definitely encouraging to hear that about your son, hopefully the same kind of “click” will happen for me. I would be thrilled with a 39 like he got. I’ll definitely pay special attention to the Big Picture (or whatever it’s called) section. Thanks again