<p>About 200 days till sat and act, is it too late to start now?
will be able to spend 1 to 3 hours everyday into prep</p>
<p>What? That’s a good/plenty amount of time, I have just about the same as you and 1-3 hours wouldn’t be bad at all either. </p>
<p>I always recommend beginning preparation 3 - 4 months before the test with 10 to 20 minutes of math preparation per day, and about 1 official practice test per month. You have plenty of time to maximize your score.</p>
<p>I agree with @DrSteve and @medicsz. Also 1-3 hours a day sounds like too much. I would aim for one section a week where you study all of the problems that you missed. That should take ~2-3 hours per week total.</p>
<p>Its a good idea to set a pace that is not too fast. Studying for the exam is actually kinda fun if you take it slowly and learn a little at a time. But if you go too fast, its easy to get stressed out and want to quit. That’s the worst.</p>
<p>I disagree with @DrSteve with regards to testing. The SAT is very methodical and you need to try to take the exam as much as possible in one sitting to try to replicate the real test. My d took the exam once a week for the 10 weeks prior to the exam. She brought her SAT score up by about by a little more than 400 points by doing that, and 45 minutes of prep per week.</p>
<p>Listen to Anniebeats. I did the same exact thing and it produces results</p>
<p>My daughter did a hybrid - she started three months before with one section test a week, concentrating on one specific section for three weeks (only for Math and English). The six weeks she took a section test a day up to one entire exam a week and then studied her mistakes. Total study time per week was about four, five hours, including the test time. </p>
<p>We didn’t try to replicate anything. I would hand her a section test at random times during the day. She never took an entire practice exam in a single sitting.</p>
<p>Her ACT score went up 4 points, with English going up 9 points and Science up 5 or 6 points.</p>
<p>I think what this all shows you is it is definitely not too late but more important, you need to do what works for you, not my daughter, AB’s daughter, or another poster. There are many ways to study. You know what works best for you - you have to go do it.</p>
<p>There are many ways to prepare for the SAT. For a motivated, above average student almost any decent method will work. For example, if a motivated student completes all the blue book tests, one by one, goes over their answers, and then periodically reattempts each problem they got wrong until they can get each of these problems right on their own, then their score will absolutely improve substantially.</p>
<p>So why don’t I recommend this method? Here are just a few reasons:</p>
<p>(1) The average student may find this tedious and burn out very quickly - preparation doesn’t work if you stop doing it.</p>
<p>(2) Taking full length practice tests over and over is a very inefficient use of one’s time. For example, suppose you never get Level 1 and 2 problems wrong (this applies to most students in the 600 range) . One third of the problems on an SAT are Level 1 and 2. This means that one third of your total preparation (well maybe a bit less since these problems can often be done more quickly) is spent solving problems that you don’t need to be practicing. Wouldn’t this time better be spent working on problems that you actually might have trouble with?</p>
<p>On the other end, suppose you are getting most level 3 geometry problems wrong. In this case it is counterproductive and a waste of time to be attempting level 4 and 5 geometry problems. You need to keep practicing level 3 geometry problems. One of the biggest mistakes lower scoring students make is to practice hard problems that are 1 or to levels above their current ability level. This can be extremely frustrating, will lower confidence, and mostly a waste of time.</p>
<p>(3) Studying in short bursts will allow for the maximum amount of retention. Studying for 3 hours in a row is not that useful for most students since they will not retain a large percentage of what they studied.</p>
<p>@DrSteve I agree with what you said about learning retention, as just an average student like me had attempted to study 3-4 hours straight last week, however I found myself to forget most of the things that I learned in the earlier sections.</p>
<p>How short do you recommend study sessions to be? And the break interval?</p>
<p>I always recommend a maximum of 20 minutes at a time (the only exception is when taking a full practice test). Breaks should be as long as possible. For example, if you want to study for an hour a day (which is a lot), then I suggest 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon, and 20 minutes right before bed.</p>
<p>If you have 4 months before your next SAT, then one 20 minute study session per day is enough. If you only have 1 month, then 3 times would be better. </p>
<p>You can study more than 3 times a day if you wish, but try to follow the general rule - space out the sessions at equal intervals so that they are uniformly distributed throughout the day. This will optimize the effectiveness of your study sessions.</p>
<p>Everyone’s capacity is different of course, but I’m guessing that the “average” student can handle more than 20 minutes of ficus at a time.</p>
<p>I improved my SAT 380 points in around 200 days. Studied a few hours some weeks, many hours some weeks, not at all some weeks.</p>
<p>over 2200 :)</p>
<p>@CHD2013 I think that most people can handle more than 20 minutes of focus at a time. But quality and retention tend to decrease for most people after 20 minutes (even if it’s not noticeable). Let’s take myself as an example. I always excelled in school with very little effort, I have a PhD in mathematics, and I teach both undergraduate and graduate level mathematics. Yet, when I write out solutions to simple problems for more than 20 minutes at a time the quality of my explanations decreases. When I review what I have written later, the content that I had written for the first 20 minutes requires very little editing, while the later content sometimes has to be rewritten completely. </p>
<p>I am not saying that someone who studies 2 hours per day will not do well. All I am saying is that the first 20 minutes is the most productive. If you want to put in the minimum effort with the maximum result, about 20 minutes at a time is the best way for most people.</p>
<p>And let me also emphasize that this is just a guideline. If a student wants to continue practicing for more than 20 minutes I’m not saying that they absolutely shouldn’t. I’m just saying that they don’t have to.</p>