<p>I need help! So I studied really hard for the March 2012 SAT by taking a Kaplan class over summer, using Barron's 2400 and other books. In the Kaplan class, my final SAT score was a 2130. But I ended up getting a 2020 on the actual SAT:
Math: 660
Reading: 620 (i hate this section)
Writing: 740
Essay: 9
I know I can do better on the math section, because I got a 770 on Math II and 730 on Math I SATs without studying at all. But I have absolutely no idea how to increase my reading scores.
I'm taking them again in June and October and I'm hoping to get at least a 2200 by October. Please help meeee!!!!
any books, courses, etc. will be extremely appreciated. Thanks!!</p>
<p>Recommended books:
Math: PWN the SAT by Mike M.
Grammar: The Ultimate Guide to Grammar by Erika M.
Vocab: Direct Hits 4th Edition…get both “Core” and “Toughest” (two separate books)</p>
<p>MATH
First off, don’t compare your Math IIC with SAT Math scores. The curve on the normal SAT is much less forgiving, whereas you can miss some on the IIC and still get an 800. Miss even one on the SAT Math and almost always you just killed your perfect score. Very very very rarely, you may miss ONE math question on the normal SAT math and still get 800.</p>
<p>That said, your 770 IIC and 660 Math seems about right compared to one another. To raise your math higher at this level, I’m betting you know pretty much all the math concepts. You need to focus on not making careless mistakes.</p>
<p>There are two types of careless math mistakes:</p>
<p>1) actual careless mistakes where you wrote down a + but somehow copied it wrong in the next step as -, or maybe you stupidly added 3 + 7 as 9, or -2 + 10 as 12.</p>
<p>2) trap careless mistakes that the SAT and the ETS (evil testing serpent) love to employ</p>
<p>I was in your same boat back in high school - knew every math problem down pat. The problem? A score stuck in the mid to high 600s. I then broke 700 and got a 720…still wildly disappointing because I knew I was an 800 student. Finally I got an 800 on my last try by realizing how to eliminate “careless errors” - meaning the second type.</p>
<p>Here’s the biggest secret about preventing the second type of careless errors:
Understanding that what you’ve been trained to solve for in school is NOT ALWAYS what the SAT is asking for.</p>
<p>We all know in school, we always solve for x. Get it down the simplest form. X = whatever, right?</p>
<p>The SAT writers love to exploit that fact. They will DELIBERATELY not ask for the value of x. They want to know y, or 2x, or x + 2, or something else. Yes, sometimes they ask just for x too, but a lot of times not!</p>
<p>YOU MUST RE-READ THE QUESTION BEFORE YOU ANSWER. Physically circle what they are asking for. If you don’t physically circle and think you can just remember to check beforehand, you’re wrong. You won’t. I hate circling and underlining too. Too bad, do it.</p>
<p>Here’s the thing: when you start solving a math question, esp. one with a lot of steps, you become INVESTED in your work. You want to solve it all the way down to its simplest form…which is x = whatever.</p>
<p>And for sure, x will be one of the answer choices. You get so excited you knew how to do the problem and that you figured out x, so your instinctively bubble in the first choice that matches.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the question was asking for 2x. Maybe 2x was even your second to last step. You had 2x = 10, so therefore x = 5. But the answer is 10, not 5 because they want to know what 2x is, not x.</p>
<p>If you play COD (call of duty), there’s something called the Last Stand - one final chance to kill your enemy. The SAT has their own version of the last stand for math. This is it. The last stand is to not ask you what you expect to be asked (x), but to ask you something else. You must take ONE EXTRA STEP and check what they are really asking.</p>
<p>BEAT THE LAST STAND and you’ll cut your “careless” mistakes in half.</p>
<p>The other trick is to recognize the patterns in your careless mistake.</p>
<p>Popular careless mistake traps:
- make you solve for x, then ask for y (or 2x, or x-squared, or x + 2, etc.)</p>
<p>2) make you solve for the area…then ask for perimeter, or vice versa</p>
<p>3) ask you what x-squared is…which turns is is something like 25, so you automatically pick 5 (which is x) instead of 25 (which is what they really are asking)</p>
<p>4) you find out the radius…they are actually asking for diameter</p>
<p>5) make you figure out a bunch of stuff about the area of a circle…then ask for circumference</p>
<p>6) you take the square root instead of squaring (second power), or vice versa</p>
<p>7) you confuse halving with doubling with squaring with square-rooting</p>
<p>8) ask you how many peanuts Bobby has…but make the number of peanuts Jill has a choice as well</p>
<p>9) add % to the answer choices (remember 0.1% is not the same as 0.1). You probably correctly solved the question and got 0.1 as your answer, but then you wrongly choose 0.1%…because correct answer would be 10%</p>
<p>10) make you solve question in feet…but make answer in yards or inches. But of course the “correct” answer in feet is also present in the choices (same with seconds, minutes, hours, days)</p>
<p>11) mention triangles (so now you’re thinking about triangles and 180 degrees, etc.), but then ask something about squares at the last second</p>
<p>12) make you break up a larger shape into smaller more manageable shapes…so like a big triangle turns into two identical smaller triangles. You solve for the area of one of the smaller triangles, then forget you have to double it at the end because question wants the area of the BIG triangle (two small triangles together) </p>
<p>Study the above list of traps so that when you see “perimeter” you automatically think to check if they are asking for “area” and so on.</p>
<p>CRITICAL READING:
Here’s the secret: SAT CR is NOT about analysis or interpretation like you’ve been trained to do in English class. It sucks, but you have to UNTRAIN yourself now for the SAT. If you do what you’ve been trained to do in school, which is to analyze and interpret, you’re going to get stuff wrong on the SAT.</p>
<p>This ain’t English class. This ain’t Ms. Holden’s British Lit class. This is the SAT, which is about finding the answer directly in the passage (not analyzing). It’s a giant open book test.</p>
<p>Here’s another secret: don’t justify your answer, identify the wrong answers.</p>
<p>Looking for the right answer is the WRONG METHOD for the Critical Reading section. Instead, you need to identify which four are wrong and WHY they are wrong. The reason you are debating between two or three choices is because something about each of them feels right; that’s why they’re still in the running. You can easily convince yourself that any one is right (this is called justification). But if you identify what’s WRONG with a choice, it’s game over for that choice. Identify four wrong choices and you’re left with the right answer.</p>
<p>There are 7 main reasons why something is wrong:</p>
<p>1) Not stated in the passage. Duh. The trap here is that some answer choices actually feel really logical and make sense to any smart-thinking student like yourself. But if it doesn’t say it directly in the passage, it’s wrong no matter how much that choice makes sense.</p>
<p>2) Opposite of what’s stated in the passage. Duh again. But they will try to trick you by mentioning something you remember reading about, and then contradicting what the passage said. Even small discrepancies can mess up the whole game and meaning of an answer choice.</p>
<p>3) Too extreme. Good writing is about grey areas, nuances, and subtleties. So the SAT probably isn’t going to make the right answer so black and white. Things like “extremely” or “absolutely” or “undoubtedly” or stuff along those lines are probably wrong. “Always” or “never” are usually bad too. The SAT is also part of the PC (politically correct) police, so controversial stuff probably isn’t right either.</p>
<p>4) Too broad. Good writing is about being specific. So if one of the choices feels too general or vague, it’s probably wrong (unless the question is asking for the main idea). This answer choice might feel true in a general sense, but it’s just too broad.</p>
<p>5) Too narrow. This choice might actually be true and stated in the passage. But it’s not the full reason, so it doesn’t completely answer the question.</p>
<p>6) True, but unrelated. This choice might actually be true again and stated in the passage. Unfortunately, it’s unrelated to the question, so again, it’s wrong. This one is a killer because if you read the entire passage at once, you’ll have all these thoughts about various parts of the passage in your head jumbled up. The SAT loves to ask something about paragraph 3 but have an answer choice reminding you of something you read about in paragraph 5. This is why you reading the passage all at once can be detrimental. </p>
<p>7) Only half true (or partially true). Remember, even if the rest of the choice is perfect, if there’s even ONE word that’s wrong, then the entire choice is wrong.</p>
<p>Note:
The answer choices themselves are not the only things to pay special attention to though. The question itself is quite deserving of your attention. Be wary of key words such as “primarily.” A choice might say “because Bobby was a smart guy.” There might actually be a specific incident in the passage where Bobby did something incredibly stupid like microwaving a metal fork. Many test takers would then say the choice is wrong because Bobby did that one stupid thing. But if the rest of the passage shows how smart Bobby was, then Bobby was “primarily” or “mostly” smart. You can’t cross this choice off as wrong anymore. </p>
<p>Again, don’t justify why something’s right…identify what’s wrong. What I suggest (and this will take a lot longer in the beginning…by like tenfold) is to create a Word document with the following:</p>
<p>A) _____________
B) _____________
C) _____________
D) _____________
E) _____________</p>
<p>Have A, B, C, D, and E for each and every reading passage question. You’re going to need a lot of paper. When you answer a question, write down the reason why the four answers are wrong. Print out the list of wrong answer reasons and refer to it every question. Just leave the right answer’s slot blank.</p>
<p>It’ll end up looking something like this:</p>
<ol>
<li>A) too extreme
B) _____________
C) opposite
D) not stated
E) half true</li>
</ol>
<p>Getting the right answer is good, but it’s not enough. To become a master, you have to know why ALL the other choices are wrong. It’s not hard to get the right answer by looking for it in the easy questions, but my method is going to train you for those tough questions.</p>
<p>Parting thoughts on the right answer: the correct answer should feel right easily and effortlessly. You shouldn’t have to force it to feel right. You shouldn’t have to say, “Well, if I think about it from this angle, I can see how it’d work.” No. If you have to look at it crookedly for it to make sense, it’s probably wrong. </p>
<p>The right answer MUST BE SUPPORTED by the passage itself. That means you must be able to point to a specific word, phrase, or sentence(s) that led you to your answer. Don’t let yourself off the hook with “Oh, I got the overall sense that she was feeling scornful.” Instead, be able to point to a sentence that says, “Those theories are all hogwash. The pioneers of those schools of thoughts knew nothing.”</p>
<p>No matter how attractive or logical an answer choice sounds, if you can’t support it with the contents of the passage, then you can’t pick it.</p>
<p>GRAMMAR:
Get your hands on all the SAT grammar rules. Learn them.</p>
<p>Then follow these steps in order for every grammar question:</p>
<p>1) physically cross out “intruders,” non-integral parts of the sentence that don’t mess up grammatical flow if you delete them
i.e. The set of books were expensive…turns into…The set were expensive.
“were”…wrong subject-verb agreement. You should change to “was.” Kicking out intruders helps with S-V agreement.</p>
<p>2) physically circle all verbs and pronouns</p>
<p>3) use following “Nuclear Codes”</p>
<p>Nuclear Codes for Grammar:
These are to the SAT what the atomic bomb was to the world: an overwhelmingly devastating weapon for which there was no recourse. Complete annihilation of the target, which in this case is the grammar section. But please, use these nuclear codes liberally, frequently, and unforgettably.</p>
<p>Prelaunch sequence: you must first kick out all intruders, always. This is the first step to all grammar questions, no exceptions. After you’ve completed this prerequisite step, you may enter the launch codes as follow. Use one, use two, hell, use all codes…whatever is applicable and appropriate for the situation.</p>
<p>Nuclear Code #1: VERBS
If you see a verb:
• Check for subject-verb agreement/number agreement (did you cross out intruders first?)
• Check the tense</p>
<p>Nuclear Code #2: PRONOUNS
If you see a pronoun:
• Check for ambiguity/vagueness
• Check for number agreement (“their” vs. “him/her”)
• Check for pronoun consistency (i.e. doesn’t change from “you” to “one,” etc.)</p>
<p>Nuclear Code #3: DANGLING MODIFIERS
If you see a descriptive phrase followed by a comma:
• Check if the subject immediately following the comma is the thing being described by the descriptive phrase (called the modifier); if not, it’s wrong</p>
<p>Nuclear Code #4: COMMAS
If you see a comma:
• Check if the clauses before and after it are independent or dependent; then follow appropriate protocol regarding commas/clauses
• Remember sometimes commas are meant to create appositives (intruders created by two commas on either end of the intruder phrase). These commas do not follow the independent/dependent clause rules.
• Make sure you don’t introduce a comma mistake! Some answer choices will actually ADD a comma that shouldn’t be there. Some choices will DELETE a comma that should be there.</p>
<p>Nuclear Code #5: BEING/HAVING/IN REGARDS TO
If you see these words (being/having/in regards to):
• The choice containing those words is probably wrong because there is a simpler, cleaner way of expressing the same idea in another answer choice</p>
<p>Nuclear Code #6: OF (PREPOSITIONS)
If you spot the word “of” or other similar short prepositions:
• Check to see the intruder that is probably following immediately behind, and kick it out</p>
<p>Nuclear Code #7: THAN/BETWEEN (PARALLELISM)
If you spot these words (than/between):
• These two words necessarily mean there is a comparison happening in the sentence, so it behooves you to heed my words on illogical comparisons/parallelism
• Identify the two things being compared
• Check that the two things being compared are logical and parallel (apples to apples, oranges to oranges)</p>
<p>Nuclear Code #8: PARALLELSIM (LISTS)
If you see a pair, list, or series:
• Check to make sure everything is parallel
• Remember to identify the phrase setting the parallel tone for the rest of the sentence
• Beware of tricky crap where they try to get you to create parallelism with the wrong part of the sentence (add an example here)
• Sometimes the word “and” can sneak pass, so make sure the two things joined by “and” are parallel (add example)</p>
<p>Final note: if you think a phrase or word is unneeded, you may NOT identify it as an error…yet. Just because the sentence reads grammatically fine without the extra phrase/word you’ve identified doesn’t mean the sentence is wrong to include it. Only choose it as an error if there is a GRAMMATICAL error.</p>
<p>Get used to “weird sounding” phrases. They are often used in more sophisticated writing that you may not be used to or have even ever heard before. But they are not wrong.</p>
<p>You differentiate between “weird” and “wrong” by attributing a specific grammar error (like the ones listed above) to it. If you can’t, then it’s probably just weird but not wrong.</p>
<p>wow! you are a lifesaver! I’m definitely going to follow this!</p>