<p>Can all you 2300-2400 people help a sista out? I need advice, please. I know it might not seem hard for you guys, but I am striving to get a 1500. I got a 1330. I need advice. Is it possible? All of your scores are amazing. You don’t need to retake the test and you know it. Please and thank you.</p>
<p>SAT score: 2400 (12 essay)</p>
<p>Let me share how I prepared for SAT, and hopefully some of you may find it useful.</p>
<p>1) General: SAT is a practice makes perfect kind of test, and so I practiced a lot. I did not time the tests until I got comfortable with answering questions. Then I started to time the tests. Even though making silly errors was frustrating, I was very rational. I made a list of all errors I made and reminded myself every time I did the practice. I mostly used Barrons (BA) and Princeton Review (PR). The main thing that I had to remind myself about SAT was that SAT is testing my common sense and not my intellectual ability in any way.</p>
<p>2) Critical Reading: I did all the passages in BA and PR. I analyzed every mistake of mine, and I realized that my problem was that I was over reading questions or injecting my own knowledge of the subject the passage was about. Also, I read passages completely and understood the main idea/theme before answering questions. Many of the SAT coaching methods such as Kaplan, PR, etc., stress on doing spot reading to answer questions, but from my own experience, I can say that understanding the main idea and tone of the passage is crucial to get especially the hard questions correct. I poured through BA vocabulary as well as I tried to use the context clues of the sentences to figure out the correct choice of words in sentence completion questions. With practice, I got good at identifying context clues.</p>
<p>3) Math: I tried to avoid being over confident and making silly errors. I reread the questions and checked my work over and over.</p>
<p>4) Writing: I studied grammar rules, and I did a lot of practice from Barrons. Here too I was over analyzing while looking for grammatical errors, and it took some effort on my part to control it. For essays, I made a chart of a) five favorite books with themes and protagonists/antagonists, ten current events with details and ten historical events also with details. I picked these so that they cover a wide variety of topics, and I spun these to write essays on any prompt. I practiced about 15 timed essays as well as I mentally walked through several other prompts to see how I would go about writing with examples from the topics I had chosen.</p>
<p>Hope this helps!</p>
<p>2300 even. </p>
<p>My only tip: time moves at a neck-breaking cadence in the testing room. So brace for it! </p>
<p>When you complete practice SATs at home, limit yourself to 18-20 minutes on the 25 minute sections and 15-18 minutes on the 20 minute sections and 7 minutes on the 10 minute section. That’ll give you a feel for the actual test day conditions. </p>
<p>And remember, only perfect practice makes perfect. Don’t waste time by doing random problems. When you practice, practice by taking an entire section at a time under austere time restrictions. The more austere, the better. Remember - you likely won’t have time to check your answers in the testing room so while practicing, aim to get all the questions right on your first shot. There really isn’t much time for double-checking.</p>
<p>Thank you :)</p>
<p>General: I started my major prep over the summer. At the time, the only materials I had were the blue book and my old PSAT from 10th grade. I went through the old PSAT and tried to re-solve the problems I got wrong/see if I would make the same mistakes. I also did a few sections out of the BB almost every day, though never an actual full test. When practicing, I like to clump sections together (for instance, on a given day, I would do only the CR sections of a test and then look them over).</p>
<p>CR-
Vocab: While taking practice tests, I circled any words I was unsure about (even if it was possible to rule them out in the given question, becuse you never know how they can reappear) and put them onto a Quizlet set. If I saw any vocab while reading/doing schoolwork that seemed SAT-level, I put it on there, but it would be an exaggeration to say that I was a master of all of the words. This made me a lot more comfortable with words that would otherwise frighten me.<br>
Passages: This mainly took practice, though I also had to review words associated with tone, because they ask about that fairly often. Before reading the actual passage, I look at the line #s cited in the questions and put a marking next to them in the passage. Once I get up to reading that part of the passage, I see if I can answer the question.</p>
<p>Writing-
MC: This just took a lot of practice. I had to get used to the fact that the SAT favors sentences that are not only gramatically correct, but also concise. Sparknotes has a pretty good grammar guide.
Essay: I normally do intro + 3 body paragraphs + (very short) conclusion. Try your hardest to fill all the space given to you. You have 25 minutes, so you can afford to spend the first ~5 minutes planning the essay/writing your intro, then a little more than 5 minutes on each body paragraph. Make sure your thesis is very strong, and don’t pick a side on the argument until after you’ve come up with examples. Also, I’m not even sure that the conclusion is that important, but it’s nice to have, because you can put your essay into a more modern or profound context. I like to draw examples from different media; my most common build is 1 literary, 1 historical, and 1 psychological (but TV/movies/anecdotes are all good as well.) </p>
<p>Math- This has always been my weakest section, which is a little embarrassing, considering I want to major in chemistry, lol. In the beginning, I went through the BB tests, and upon getting questions wrong, I would erase my work and re-do the problems to see if I could identify my errors. After I had worked through a significant amount of the BB, I realized that my skills needed some fine-tuning, so I used the John Chung book. More specifically, I worked through the problems that followed each “tip” in the book, then made a review sheet of the principles I needed the most help with, and tried to memorize them. Also, this probably sounds really basic and stupid, but I felt much more confident during the math section once I’d gotten comfortable with using my calculator. Always fill in all the grid-ins, even if you’re just guessing, because there’s no penalty for wrong answers. I like to start toward the end of the math section (hardest questions) because I like feeling as though the test is getting easier, but do whatever works for you. </p>
<p>Before the test: This sounds like stupid advice, but please don’t exhaust yourself or try to cram the day/night before or the morning of the test. The SAT is largely a test of endurance, and I’ve made so many stupid errors just due to tiredness. Before the exam, I like to do something that makes me calm, so I put away all the prep books and read for a little while. Good luck! (:</p>
<p>^Those are some great tips. I like the working backwards startegy on the math section too.Starting with 20,19, and 18. Once get the hard questions done with, it feels like that huge burden is gone and you can zip through the rest.</p>
<p>As for the essay, I always make up two of my three examples lol. It’s working and factual accuracy is not checked so why not.</p>
<p>I checked the admission data of Cornell engineering school online, it seems to me that writing score is not considered?
It’s depressing for me, as my CR is only 680 and W is better than expected 750 with 12 essay. Math is 800 though, but there should be a pile of applicants with 800 since it’s engineering…
Can anyone briefly evaluate my chance?
I applied for UCLA, Berkeley and Cornell engineering school, and Brown physics.
SAT I score by December delivered to the UCs:
Reading 610, Writing 670 (essay 9), Math 800, Total 2080
SAT I score by January delivered to Cornell and Brown:
Reading 680, Writing 750 (essay 12), Math 800, Total 2230
SAT II score in November:
Physics, Chemistry, Math II all 800s.
Class rank is about 10%~15%, I’m not quite sure.
Thank you.</p>
<p>^Start your chance thread, you get more response. UCs admissions are never about SAT score. It’s about your UC GPA.</p>
<p>Post 307, that is a pretty good tip.</p>
<p>^
“UCs admissions are never about SAT score. It’s about your UC GPA.”
Even for an international?</p>
<p>For internationals, if you can write $55K, you are in. JK. I don’t really know, maybe you need to lurk the UCLA forum.</p>
<p>Ok so the real score report says it is available online tomorrow. I know I will be able to see my scanned essay, but what else can I see. Will thy tell me how many of each section I got wrong.</p>
<p>Also, what time is the score report available? Midnight?</p>
<p>So, I got a 2400 with a 9 on my essay…is that going to negatively affect me a lot? I didn’t think my essay was THAT bad…</p>
<p>IamHarry, you are kidding me right? 2400!?@?!@?!?@?@ and you are worrying about a 9 essay!!! you ************************************
lol
sorry, but seriously…be satisfied!</p>
<p>My scores we delayed. I got the message saying to check back in about a week. What are the chances they will be up tomorrow? I heard they post scores Tuesdays and Thursday, true?</p>
<p>Only a 9 essay? Forget the Ivies or any name school. ;)</p>
<p>Honestly, do any schools even look at the writing component much, let alone the essay itself?</p>
<p>First time. 750 CR, 790 M, 800 WR 11 essay. Eeh i’m done. Retaking would be too much work :-P</p>
<p>9jagurl96 said:
First time. 750 CR, 790 M, 800 WR 11 essay. Eeh i’m done. Retaking would be too much work :-P</p>
<p>How can you get 790 M on math? -1 = 760 on math curve</p>
<p>Can any of you guys help me with what specific study plan you used to get at least a 2000? I got a 1520 this time (1st time ever taking the test and I’m a junior), and I really would like to get this by June, please help? I’ve looked up the xiggi method and I’ve read the entire silver turtle posting but could I have like how many hours a day I should study? Thanks.</p>
<p>There may be a “degree of difficulty” factor involved. If you got a question wrong that a lot of other people also got wrong, you might get penalized less.</p>