<p>For anyone who took this in 10th grade, and then in 11th grade to try to qualify for national merit, did you study and what do you feel helped the most- specific areas of study, review, materials, etc? One kid is about 9 points away from the average semi cutoff, would like to go as far beyond that pointwise as possible. Thanks for any responses esp based on your experience. We have a few books gotten secondhand, are any of the PSAT books out there especially helpful?</p>
<p>i got a 195 on my PSAT doing a little prep, and i was very dissapointed. i then studied out of the Blue Book, and went to a writing tutor like 5 times or so, and got a 2120 on the january test. i then hit the blue book pretty hard and supplemented that with Kaplan 2400, taking all the practice tests i could in CR and Writing (math i dont need help with) and took the june SAT and got a 2300.</p>
<p>Congrats on the improved scores. Question: when you say "blue book" does that refer to the books published by the College Board itself, and if so, does that focue on SAT's but is also good for psat prep?</p>
<p>that's the one. everything on the psat also appears on the SAT, so prepping for the latter will cover the former as well. for psat purposes, you can ignore the essay-writing in the blue book tests.</p>
<p>i'd recommend hitting the blue book as well. what were your kid's sub-scores on the psat, and how did they fit with this expectations?</p>