<p>I will love whoever helps me for ever and for a very long time, if someone were to give me some solid advice on the SAT Math. I take the test Saturday and I'm not where I want to be. I'm only sending these scores to Georgetown and Madison so my situation is a little different. My scores are about average for Madison, but who wouldn't like a higher score? Georgetown only considers the CR+M but they ignore the writing. My CR score is about 680-700 so that's on track. My math score, however, is not. What should I do between now and Saturday? I'm thinking of taking 3 math tests per day until then and completely ignoring the others. But, I'm worried that I have not had enough practice taking the test under times conditions. I'm at about a 600-640 in the math and I would like around a 670.</p>
<p>The best way to improve in Maths is to practice, practice and more practice</p>
<p>Try get as many Maths questions under your belt. Redo the ones you get wrong, regardless of whether it was careless or not, after one or two days </p>
<p>Remember there are only so many types of questions they can ask you on the Math section and if you do enough questions, you will see similar ones in every test</p>
<p>Hope this helps. All the best :)</p>
<p>Think of math as a game, once you know the rules, you can get points every time. The math section is far from challenging if you know the strategies and various formulas.</p>
<p>Few thngs to remember</p>
<ol>
<li>SAT test writes love to use variables (x, y, etc
). Whenever I see a variable, I usually plugin a number that fits their description. It doesnt matter how hard the question is. Just look at the following example, that is deemed difficult according to CB themselves.</li>
</ol>
<p>Example(level 4 math question from 2011):</p>
<p>a <b<c<d<e
p = abcde</p>
<p>In the inequality above and the equation above, a,b,c,d,e are positive integers. When just one of these integers is increased by 1 and multiplied by the other four, the new product is n. The difference (n-p) is greatest when which of the five integers is increased by 1: </p>
<p>(I decided to plug in a few numbers so that the inequality above would be true, the numbers can be anything). </p>
<p>a = 1
b = 2
c = 3
d = 4
e = 5</p>
<p>p = 120 (according to the equation)</p>
<p>It says that we have to add 1 to one of the 5 variables. After that, the new product of all the numbers will be n. Since it says the difference between n and p are greatest, n has to be the biggest possible number…</p>
<p>a = 1
b = 2
c = 3
d = 4
e = 5 + 1</p>
<p>n = 144 (Thats better than 120, but lets try adding one to another variable to see what happens)
I added +1 to d to get 5. 5<em>5</em>4<em>2</em>1 = 150. </p>
<p>The pattern seems to be that as I add 1 to the smaller variables, n gets bigger. So I tried adding 1 to a, and it was 240.
The answer is therefore a. </p>
<ol>
<li>Remember that somethng perpendicular to a line is the negative recriprocal of the slope. Its a simple concept, but I see this tested on almost every single test.</li>
</ol>
<p>Example:</p>
<p>Line b is graphed on the plane above. What is the slope that is perpendicular to this line:</p>
<p>First you just find the slope of b (say it is 4x)</p>
<p>then we just add a negative sign and find the recriprocal. So the answer is -1/4x</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Triangles/Geometry rules that show up very often:</p></li>
<li><p>All triangles add up 180 degrees</p></li>
<li><p>A straight angle is also always 180 degrees. </p></li>
<li><p>Bisect means the angle is cut in half</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Well, increasing a by 1 will increase the product by bcde, which is greater than acde, abde, etc.</p>
<p>^ and that’s the fastest solution. But it requires a flash of insight. It is good to develop techniques to help you through the times when that insight doesn’t come. That’s where making up numbers can really help. Also, sometimes making up just one set of numbers is enough to trigger the insight that gets you the quicker answer. I’ve had lots of students say, “I started to make up numbers, and then I realized…”.</p>
<p>This specific question was at the end of a section, and typically most of these questions have multiple ways to solve them. I usually spend about 2-3 minutes on the hard questions using more than 1 strategy to check my answer. I find it a little harder to get a flash of insight with the clock pounding its fists behind me, but it completely depends on the specific student. For me, it took me about 45-50 seconds to plugin everything and do some quick math on my calculator to get the answer</p>
<p>oh are you a fan of Lil B aka the Based God?? i think lil b is supa funny lol</p>
<p>lil b is my father. I stay #based even though this SAT is killing my vibe. #wow #annoying #swag #woo</p>
<p>I’m in the same boat as you for next week. Luck will determine if I get a 650, 700, 750, especially since i’ve been too busy to do these lately…</p>
<p>Just do as many blue book practice tests as you can under ideal conditions (real timer, bubble in if you have to) imo… track down some legal official ones, some illegal ones if you have to. Work through the problems after the time limit (though they’re wrong given your scoring) and understand why you’ve gotten them wrong.
also</p>
<ol>
<li>The answer could very well be the highest or lowest value. Unless it’s absolutely unreasonable given the context of the problem, extreme answers are much fair game as the middle answers.</li>
<li>For modelling problems (how many calls, what percent of m is b, etc.) where there is no obvious integer answers, if there’s an answer you don’t understand, it’s not stupid and it may be correct.</li>
<li>Do at least look at some of the difficult problems. There’s a fair chance one is really challenging but very quick to solve if you immediately understand what it wants.</li>
<li>Check your answers in fill in the blank sections. Even if it’s just glancing to see if they’re filled in properly…</li>
<li>Work through the problems traditionally and quickly unless you’re comfortable with “gaming” them… many MC answers are trick ones that will catch you if you’re doing too much in your head…</li>
</ol>
<p>Also generally on hard problems, the answer that immediately looks right at first glance is usually not right (not saying it never is, just be cautious).</p>