I NEED HELP

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

ok so I realllly need help. I am a junior in high school and I’m planning to take the October 1st 2016 SAT. I’m scoring very high 1400’s consistently (1480-1510). My goal score would be a 1550. The problem is that it’s not that I have content issues/gaps. It is that I CANNOT stop making silly mistakes. Any given test, I make 4 silly mistakes (usually on math). I get 750 on the math section when I could be getting 790 when I don’t make those mistakes. My silly mistakes usually are
1.) transferring over the answer wrong
2.) not reading carefully enough
3.) simple arithmetic errors
I DONT KNOW HOW TO STOP AND I CRY EVERYDAY BECAUSE OF THIS. I look online and all it basically says is to underline what the problem is asking and read carefully. I read super carefully but I still make these mistakes and I don’t know why! It’s very frustrating BC I do 1530+ if I just eliminated these mistakes.
Any tips to stop making silly mistakes/how to focus better is GREATLY APPRECIATED
Thanks

2

@happybogostar A few tips:

  1. Do your scratch work neatly (& legibly) and with organization. Suppose you had to solve a simple inequality, such as -2x + 5 > x - 1. It would be much easier to read something like this:

…-2x + 5 > x - 1
<==> -3x + 5 > -1
<==> …-3x > -6
<==> …x < 2 (dots for aligning each line since spaces don’t seem to work)

than if I had steps written randomly or illegibly or if it’s not clear that one step immediately follows from another.

  1. Circle your answer if you need to, or find another way to minimize the probability of transferring over an answer incorrectly. For multiple choice questions this shouldn't be much of an issue since you will know when an answer doesn't match up with what you obtained. For grid-ins, you'd want to be a bit more careful.
  2. For fixing simple arithmetic errors (such as adding or multiplying), I don't know any quick fixes on that. Of course, if you are on a calculator section, use your calculator to check your answer if you have time. The non-calculator section shouldn't ask you to do tedious arithmetic calculations. Part of the fix could include slowing down and writing more legibly as in 1.