How to pull off a 2400 in six months

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
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<p>Hey guys</p>

<p>When I first started preparing for the SAT earlier this year, I was barely sure that I even wanted to go to the US. Adding to my uncertainty was the score that I got in the very first practice exam I did: 1980. I'd like to spill the beans, so to speak, and share some tips on how to drastically improve your SAT score in a short amount of time, as I did, pulling off a 2400 in one sitting.</p>

<p>The first thing is that when you start taking practice exams, you shouldn't worry about your score, even if it's tremendously bad.</p>

<p>Many people seem to think that Barrons or PR's prep books are the best. Wrong. The only book that you should ever need, or buy is the one from CollegeBoard, which CCers affectionately call the Blue Book.</p>

<p>Work through the book gradually, but if you're good at math you can skip the math part. It is important to go through the writing section slowly cuz the trick of the writing section in the SAT is to know all the patterns that CollegeBoard uses.</p>

<p>Ease into the habit of doing SAT-type questions until you can take a full practice exam per weekend. This is the most important part which I'll talk more about later on.</p>

<p>Personally, I sucked at the reading section, often getting scores below 700. To remedy this, I voraciously started reading the classics. But two books MUST be read IMO: The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird. In addition to them being great for vocab and comprehension, I found myself using these books time and time again as literary examples for the section 1 essay. Start up a little journal that you fill with words you encounter daily whose meaning you don't know, or whose alternate usage is unfamiliar, like "prodigious".</p>

<p>If you have a decently populated cranium, you should be experiencing improvement in each successive practice exam. That improvement was small for me, going up only ca. 50 pts each time.</p>

<p>The most important thing about SAT success is to maintain discipline in your prep. As I said before, you should keep on doing 1 exam per week until the real test. I would do it on Saturday morning, take a jog afterwards, mark it that afternoon, then go through the answers on Sunday. Also get the most severe disciplinarian in your family to keep you under strict timing conditions.</p>

<p>When you are reviewing your errors, you should try to identify the pattern that you used to get to your initial answer and find fault in its logic. Maybe you made an unsupported assumption in the CR (very frequent mistake for me)? Maybe you made a silly error in the math (again)? Then try to find out why the correct answer is logically superior to yours. Sometimes this can be frustrating, and sometimes you need to ask someone else to explain it to you.</p>

<p>When you have done all the Blue Book exams, purchase the Official Online Course from College Board. Repeat the procedure, doing an exam per week and reviewing thoroughly.</p>

<p>I know this to be the tried and proven method because I was able to go from a 1980 to a 2400 - a whopping 420 improvement. If you think I'm joking, try this method for yourself and be amazed at your own achievement.</p>

<p>Good luck everyone; I hope this thread was useful.</p>

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<p>I agree that this is the best study method, but you must realize that 98% of people who use it will not get 2400. It takes both a rare personality to get a 2400. It’s like coming up with a training plan to run a 4:30 mile: the majority of people are not built to run one regardless of the preparation they do.</p>

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<p>For once, I actually agree with ChoklitRain. Your method will allow someone to achieve his/her personal best, but I don’t think it’ll guarantee a 2400. Definitely, if someone’s reasonably smart, can guarantee a 2100+.</p>

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<p>hiero:
Congrats !!
did you score relatively close to 2400 on each of the practice tests you took?</p>

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<p>ok Q:
What is the best way i effectively practice and improve writing essays? I’m not the greatest writer but I feel that all i need is that extra vocabulary or allusion to bump my score up.</p>

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<p>prewrite your examples.
and just assimilate them into the prompt.</p>

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<p>I would have in stock two examples that I would use frequently: the first being the literary example from Gatsby or To Kill a Mockingbird, the second being the historical example of Hitler’s Germany. Coincidentally, I used both examples in the real test and got a 12.</p>

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<p>A couple of weeks before the real thing, my score was hanging around 2300-2350, with the mistakes usually coming from CR. But I never got 2400. When I saw my online score report at 5am in the morning, I was like … holy crap!</p>

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<p>Great Thread! Thanks!</p>

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<p>You are amazing!</p>

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<p>What were your study methods for the CR passages? Could you give us an example of how you went over the wrong answers and made sure you never made those mistakes again?</p>

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<p>As I said, the mistake for me usually came from faulty reasoning.</p>

<p>The tricky thing about CR questions is that several choices can be “correct” but one of them is the most “correctest”. The others usually have a little flaw in their logic which will help you eliminate them. This is particularly true in the inference questions.</p>

<p>Use the tactic of elimination everywhere.</p>

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<p>Thanks! Hmm, I always seem to miss only the inference questions. What can I do about this?</p>

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<p>OP: That’s so weird, I improved by the exact same amount and scored a 2400, too. Though, it took me 10 months :p</p>

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<p>Totally. When you’re dealing with a difficult question (which usually involve inferences) you have to constantly check your reasoning. When you think you have the correct answer stop. Think. What are the reasons I chose this? Actually list them out in your mind. The way the mind works you’re most likely to have something like “well, the author blah blah blah so he said he was talking about his past so blah blah… OK i got it!” going on. Fill in the blahs! Often times you’ll realize your reasoning is terrible.</p>

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<p>I plan on taking the SAT test in January and I’ve gotten a 1960 when I took it in Jan 2006, although I got a 178 on my PSAT last year. Do you think it might be possible to get 2300+ in Jan if I start to prepare now? Or should I wait until March (very busy time for me)?</p>

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<p>I went from a 1420 (3 sections) on a practice test to a 1970 on the real thing in just one week (less than two hours a day) using my own method :P. I’m now going to try to raise that 1970 to a 2400 by studying all month this time.</p>

<p>And yes, I do know it’s insane to think I can raise my score 430 more points, but it’s not going to keep me from trying.</p>

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<p>hier-
i just read Gatsby…i should probably reread mockingbird…
you think it’d be beneficial to write some practice essays and go over them with a teacher?</p>

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<p>also-CONGRATS!!! i applaud you!. :)</p>

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<p>@cornellhopeful13: Can you share your OWN experience and offer some advice for me? I scored round 1810 (CB practice tests) and I’m taking the SAT this Dec. Is it possible to lift my score to 21xx.</p>

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<p>I was pretty much weak all around the first time… 5xx in math, 4xx in CR and writing. So I…</p>

<p>-I used the Barron’s SAT flashcards (went through them only once lol (2 hours)). This alone probably raised my writing score by two hundred points.
-Made my homepage the New York Times. (Read a few articles a day for a week (25 minutes a day?)). Practice reading actively.
-Did around a third of the Kaplan Critical Reading workbook. (4 hours)
-Looked at the mathtraps inside Kaplan’s “Inside the SAT 2008 edition” (30 minutes to an hour) I really should have reviewed more for the math though… huge mistake not doing it (110 point huge) 690 lol shame on me… my Calc teacher graduated from Yale. :(.
-Researched things to write about on the essay (civil war, an influential person, blah blah… history (30 minutes)) 8 on the essay… I’m going to actually look in the bluebook at actual essays people have written this time to see how I can better my score.
-Made myself blueberry banana smoothies everyday. Blueberries have been proven to increase cognitive abilities (though I’m not sure how well I benefited from them since I only started ingesting them the week before) and bananas can calm your nerves. All building up to one 4 hourish long saturday morning. That reminds me, I need to go buy some more frozen blueberries…</p>

<p>Keep in mind I’m one of those students who procrastinate on everything and are still somehow able to turn in work done at the very last second and do better than a majority of students. I honestly wished I had tried harder though, a higher SAT score would have definitely gotten me into Cornell (it was my only weak point). Ah well, I’ve given up on that now and am currently looking at other schools. Johns Hopkins/Upenn/Yale/Northwestern, here I come.</p>

<p>Edit: </p>

<p>opps, forgot to add the advice.
-Don’t bother learning strategies from those big-name companies, just figure out what’s best for you and use it.
-Review, review, review. I take it that since you’re viet (like me) your CR/vocab sucks… do as many sentence completion questions as you can for practice. -Practice the CR section over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
-Do a practice writing section (multiple choice), see what you messed up on, and learn the correct rule. Repeat a few times.
-You’re asian, you should be good at math. Find questions you don’t know how to do and learn how to do them. The math on the test is honestly a joke.
-Find some material you can write about, read some essay prompts and practice shaping the material you know into an essay that fits the prompt. I would also suggest not making the same mistake I did and read actual essays people have written to get an idea of what a good essay is.</p>

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<p>thanks cornellhopeful13! great idea of the NYTimes as a homepage!</p>