I have taken the SAT 3 times, Ive never taken the ACT yet but I am signed up for the September test
CR: 540
Math:570
Writing: 630
I am really disappointed with these scores. Any pointers? Recommendations? How do I increase my score? I am entering my senior year in the fall.
just look around this forum! There is plenty of info! Plus your scores aren’t bad as is, it just depends on where you are looking at! But what most say is “Do a lot of practice tests!” So if you haven’t. Then try that! Also, it’s good you are trying the ACT, some kids just do a lot better with that format!
The cliche advice of “do a lot of practice tests” is one of the worst pieces of advice I’ve ever heard. It’s highly ineffective because most people don’t realize that taking these tests and reviewing the questions you got wrong are NOT what get people big improvements.
Imagine you had a goal to lose weight. Part of that process is stepping on the scale to see how much you weight. But does getting on the scale actually help you lose weight? Not really. Maybe if you stepped on and off 1,000 times, you might lose 1 pound. Taking a practice test is like stepping on the scale–it will tell you what your weight is (your score), but the real dieting and exercise is BETWEEN weigh-ins.
Most people just keep blindly taking tests, which is why tutoring programs that push students to do 20 weeks of testing hardly produce any real improvement. I’d worked with so many students who come to me after these grueling boot camps in which they saw basically 0 improvement. It’s sad because they aren’t learning how to REVIEW these tests properly.
Most people just look up explanations and understand how to do the specific questions they got wrong and call it a day. That’s sloppy studying and totally worthless. See, that exact question will probably NEVER show up again. What’s more important is understanding the CONCEPTS behind the questions you got wrong. In fact, you should use the fact that you got a particular question type wrong to identify different angles they can test that concept (or other similar concepts).
You have to find questions related to that concept type, do them, master them, THEN move onto the next question you got wrong.
If you just review, say, 20 questions you got wrong, you’re going to see around 10-15 different concepts, but you only exposed yourself to a very superficial understanding of them.
The key to improvement is DEEP mastery of SOME concepts (you don’t need to master ALL the concepts unless you are shooting for a perfect score or close). This is a much better use of your study time than trying to do superficial studying of various, random concepts.
You should immediately stop taking practice test after practice test. Not only are you wasting valuable official practice tests (there’s a limited supply), but you’re losing time and not learning much.
Instead, come up a hit list of tough concepts for you. Then find a bunch of practice questions on those SPECIFIC concepts. Learn those well.
@pwcpeng Thank you so much for sharing! What you are saying is making a lot of sense. I totally agree with you. Once I point out which topics I need to improve upon, what materials/books should I use to master them?
Ouch lol. I’m just repeating what numerous people have told me…but I suppose there is a discrepancy between what pwcpeng thought I meant and what I actually meant, sorry for the lack of clarity.
Anyways, when I suggested, “Do a lot of practice tests,” it does actually help, which is why so many people suggest it. But of course, you don’t just do one practice test after another, I didn’t think anybody did that or had the motivation to do that!
First of all, it helps you adjust to the format and questions of the test, and it also helps you get used to the timed sections. However you have taken the SAT 3 times, so I should have assumed you are fine in those areas.
I don’t mean to just blindly do a lot of practice tests. Because as @pwcpeng said, that’s not a good idea. When I take practice tests, I obviously review them, and the questions I struggled with, are obviously concepts I need to work on, and I then record the questions and concepts I got wrong. Then you can use the blue book or PWNtheSAT or Dr. Chung’s or Erica Meltzer’s or whatever sources you have to help you with those specific concepts. And then you can start to become proficient with them. Then when you take a practice test again, you should see an improvement in your understanding of those concepts, and in your score. That is what I do when I “do a lot of practice tests,” and that’s what I thought most people did, but I guess I took a lot of liberty in assuming most people would infer all that! My bad! :))
Sorry for the lack of clarity! And sorry for one of the " one of the worst pieces of advice"
@JeanJacket123 No worries at all, I truly appreciate you helping me out! Thank you for suggesting books to use to become familiar with concepts! Do you recommend any particular book for concepts?
Thanks 
hmmmm i took the SAT once before and I used the official CB blue book which did help a lot! However I suggest getting some of the books mentioned below to help you master certain concepts, because I didn’t think some parts (at least with math) in the blue book were thorough enough.
Since I need more work on math so I just ordered PWN the SAT Math guide, which several people have recommended. I read the reviews on Amazon and they all say he is very clear and engaging! However you may need to use the blue book in combination with this.
I also have 7 steps to a 2400, which is very helpful, however you need to follow a very strict schedule so that may not be convenient for everyone.
I also ordered Erica Meltzer’s grammar guide,which has been recommended to me several times, especially on here! I read the reviews on Amazon and everyone sings its praises!!
So those are my recommendations! Good luck!
Also! The day before I took the SAT I watched all these math videos on YouTube called SAT radical prep, and they acted as a good review of math and some grammar concepts. However you should also keep a notebook of concepts and Qs you struggle with so rereading that would be fine too!
@JeanJacket123 - sorry, didn’t mean to offend! You’re absolutely right that carefully documenting your errors and learning the concepts behind them is the proper way to learn from practice tests. There is an important place for practice tests, but most people don’t go about studying the proper way for some reason.
The key is to be active. Passively reading answer explanations or watching videos is nice, but it’s not enough. You have to get your hands dirty and try the questions out yourself. You have to identify which steps you’re getting stuck on, then systematically eliminate those weaknesses.
Rather than try to learn everything all at once, focus on the biggest bang for your buck–the concepts that show up most frequently or the concepts that you personally struggle the most in.
The Collegeboard blue book is a must, but it’s a bad teaching resource. It’s just for you to practice actual questions by the official testmaker. But the way they teach strategies and concepts is pretty atrocious.
@pwcpeng no worries I should have clarified what I meant anyways!
And you are definitely right about the mastery of concepts!!!
And I agree about the blue book as a bad teaching resource, it helps, but I didn’t find it thorough enough. Like you said, you need it, but I feel like I would have done much worse if I had ONLY used the blue book. Anyways, I hope All this helps the OP!
@pwcpeng I don’t know if I completely agree with that - I went from a 1880 (initial practice test) to a 2350 (actual SAT) and the only preparation I did was taking and reviewing practice tests.
I understand your analogy with weight loss - That taking practice tests repeatedly is just like taking multiple benchmarks of your performance and won’t increase it. Weight loss, however, and the SAT are radically different which, in my opinion, makes your analogy flawed. Stepping on and off a scale won’t help you lose weight because losing weight is the product of a simple caloric deficit, which won’t be achieved by weighing yourself constantly. Taking and reviewing practice tests, on the other hand, could raise your SAT score because it familiarizes you with the test, the questions asked on the test, and your strengths/weaknesses. Basically, although weight loss is controlled by one factor, many factors come into the play with raising your SAT score.
At least in my experience, taking multiple practice tests and reviewing your wrong answers is a great way to understand the underlying concepts. Once you’ve reviewed ten or eleven questions on circles, for example, that you got wrong, you should be able to understand everything about circles that’s tested on the SAT. You claim that you only get a superficial understanding of the concept, but the SAT doesn’t test for a deeper understanding - Often you just have the same questions rehashed in a different way. Also, in a broader sense, once you’ve taken 10 practice SAT’s, you’ll know pretty well how to pace yourself, how difficult the questions will be, and how the questions are organized.
From reading your post, I get the impression that you’re a tutor, so you probably know a lot more about this than I. I just got the impression that taking practice tests wasn’t very useful from your post, and wanted to clarify for other CCers that practice tests are still important.
@yousefk, congrats on going from 1880 to 2350! That’s not easy, but it means you’ve reviewed properly. Believe it or not, it’s a rare skill to know how to improve from practice tests. The point I’m trying to make is taking practice tests alone is not the way to go. You have to pair it with proper review.
To be clear, practice tests are definitely important. They have a time and a place. However, simply taking a test, then going over the questions you missed rarely leads to any significant improvement. Most people don’t actually go over questions they missed the right way.
Proper review involves:
The problem with only reviewing the questions you missed is that you’re never going to see that exact question again. Moreover, that one question doesn’t contain different variations of the same concept.
For example, if you got a 30-60-90 degree triangle question wrong and figure it out afterwards, that doesn’t mean you’ve mastered the 30-60-90 concept entirely. It just means you’ve learned how to do one variation of that concept. On the next practice test, you could get another 30-60-90 degree triangle question wrong because it’s asked in a different way, or the circumstances are a little bit different.
This is where prep books or programs come into play. You should go to the chapter that deals with that concept and learn every variation of it.
You said the SAT doesn’t test for a deeper understanding, but it does. Just look at functions. There are easy function questions, and there are very hard function questions. Functions are one of the most common concepts on the current SAT, so the test can afford to test that concept in various ways across multiple questions. Just because you can solve “If f(x) = 2x, what is f(5)?” doesn’t mean you can solve “If f(x) = 2x - 4, and f§ = 10, what is the value of p?” Or what about graph functions and symbol functions?
You’re right that there’s only so many ways the SAT will test a particular concept, but you have to expose yourself to all those variations and difficulty levels. Taking 10 or 15 tests is one way to gain that wide exposure, but it’s too unorganized and time-consuming.
Not only would you be trying to learn too many other concepts simultaneously, you’re also waiting to take 10+ tests before you would come across all the possible variations of a particular concept. It’s more effective to decide you’re going to master 5 concepts than try to superficially learn 20 things.
Another funny thing I’ve noticed is that many students will often miss the same EXACT variation of a concept on the next test. In fact, they could very well miss the exact same question. You can literally show them the same question they missed before, and they’ll have no idea how to approach it even a few hours later.
This happens because many students never go back to their missed questions more than once. Their idea of review is passively watching a video or reading an explanation. Once the explanation makes sense, they believe that’s all they have to do. They believe they’ve mastered it now. The problem is they didn’t actually work through the steps themselves until the concepts are ingrained in their heads.
You’re right that the weight loss analogy is a bit flawed, but no analogy is perfect. I’m using it to illustrate a point – not every factor has to be consistent for an analogy to be useful. Taking practice tests may lead to test format familiarity, develop endurance, and maybe even give a sense of pacing, but those factors are trivial compared to actually knowing the material. One big reason people are unable to finish or pace themselves properly is that they take too long doing the questions. Becoming more fluent in those concepts automatically increases speed.
Learning the concepts is the heart of prep – the true dieting and exercising.
I’m not saying don’t take practice tests. I’m saying don’t ONLY take practice tests. More importantly, you have to REVIEW the practice tests properly.
I agree that many people simply just glance at the explanations and never back at their mistakes and truly understand the depth and concepts. Taking practice tests are important but it must be the correct way. That’s what I am currently doing with my own practice tests. I go back and see what I got wrong and see WHY. I attempt to get the reasoning behind the correct answer on my own before I search for a video explanation of that sort to compare logic. From there I take a 1-2 day cooldown from practice tests to learn the concepts well with practice problems and attempt the SAT once again after I finish. Although I have just started this little schedule I believe that I will see successful results and hope to aid others with studying.