<p>Can the people that did raise their scores say exactly what they did? thank you </p>
<p>Absolutely possible. I know because it happened to me (a 300-400 point gain from my PSAT).</p>
<p>First thing I did was commit time to studying. You need at least 40 hours of prep for the SAT. Sound like a lot? That’s only 5 hours over 8 weeks. If you don’t put in at least this much time you’re not going to improve, period. This is Rule #1. Without this you won’t get anywhere.</p>
<p>Next thing, I read the most popular advice around this forum. There’s a lot of good stuff (like Xiggi’s guide) but there’s also a lot of negativity and unhelpful people. Try to see what makes logical sense to you and tune out the noise.</p>
<p>I bought a Blue Book. 1700 SAT questions to work on with solutions - perfect. Use some tests for learning, use some tests as full-length practice tests.</p>
<p>I wanted to put in a lot of time to study and Blue Book wasn’t enough for me so I wanted to add on more questions. I looked around and briefly tried a lot of books - Barron’s, Kaplan, Princeton Review are all pretty bad with bad questions. I tried PrepScholar (online program started by Harvard grads) and it was worth it for me. Very realistic questions that felt like the SAT, with good explanations. I blew through the entire program (1000+ questions) in a few weeks. I think people usually use it more slowly but I was in a hurry. Yes I know most people on this forum don’t like paying for prep - this was my personal decision and we had the budget and it worked for me. My score went up as I put in more time.</p>
<p>Finally the second most important rule, after putting in time - make sure you understand your mistakes and why you’re making them. Learn from your mistakes. Don’t just put in 50 hours and do thousands of questions without thinking about your mistakes. This is like banging your head against the wall.</p>
<p>I improved from a 1900 to around 2300 and this is how I did it.</p>
<p>This probably works for the ACT too but by the time I finished with the SAT I scored really well on the ACT too, so I didn’t prep specifically for the ACT. </p>
<p>of course. I got a 156 on my PSAT and on my first SAT I got a 2110. All I did was take a Kaplan prep course. I wouldn’t recommend Kaplan to other people since my teacher seemed like he was likely worse at the SAT than I was. I would say the most important thing is to take practice tests and than go over the questions that you got wrong. If you do this enough times than eventually the subjects will click and you will see a drastic improvement in your scores.</p>