<p>Both bballmaniac and the OP made this remark. DON'T GIVE IN. IT"S A DUMB TEST, you're a smart kid, and you can beat it. </p>
<p>A year ago, my D scored an 1100 on her first practice. She began to worry that YEARS OF studying for AP tests and honors classes were for nothing. We looked into test prep classes and realized that they're based 99% on practice-practice-practice. I looked over her practice test and realized she thinks TOO HARD on most of the questions. Relax, sweetie-pie. SO--she went out and bought "Ten REal SATs", and started studying the SAT is if it were another difficult, maddening, unfair class. She never scored above a 1250 in practice. On her first official try (March 2004) she got a 1380, proving to herself that she does better under actual combat conditions. </p>
<p>She studied the test report, said "I can do better", and spent the summer practicing some more. She was smart enough to look for PATTERNS in what she got wrong--certain types of math questions she misread, decimal point placement, geometry, etc.--and work on those over and over again. She also practiced the SATII writing and the SATII Math. She had a normal teenage summer--with an hour of homework a day.</p>
<p>She took the SAT September of her senior year and got a 1470. She was going to try one more time to crack the 1500 barrier, but decided at the last minute it was just too neurotic. </p>
<p>BTW: She's been accepted to the honors colleges at UCLA, NYU, and USC (imagine having someone like T.C. Boyle teach your writing seminar!) and we're waiting for results from the four Ivies she applied to. Even if they're all NO, she's got some good choices available to her right now. Go and do likewise!</p>