<p>The key to reading is, obviously, reading. All the 800-780 scorers that I know read a lot or used to read a lot. It helps build vocabulary and understanding at the same time. Also, I find it helps to do sections at a time, rather than hours of prep, trying to envision each section as a seperate entity. </p>
<p>Math</p>
<p>I was scoring 800 here before any prep so I don't have much to say, but the key would be double and triple checking your work on the tricky problems, because the only difficult part for me was is understanding the wording.</p>
<p>Writing</p>
<p>This section I don't believe assesses knowledge of writing very well, as I raised my score over 200 points via test prep to a 780. The key would be learning the grammar rules cold, and after doing enough sections (20ish) you should have seen pretty much everything that they can throw at you.</p>
<p>Essay</p>
<p>Fill all the space, and cliche is good. I scored 12's both times I took the SAT using very trite examples from liturature and history. (brave new world, cold war, etc. ) As long as you say something relatively smart and insightful, no matter how many times its been said before, it should be fine. Lastly, writing a smooth essay is all important, awkwardness will lower your score.</p>
<p>Coming from someone who got a 590 on writing, and then did a bunch of practice tests to prep for Oct, I agree with you that learning the grammer rules cold is probably the best way. After a few practice tests, you start to see similar patterns in problems, and can therefore answer them the same way (especially the identify the error part)</p>
<p>So when you mean doing sections at a time for reading, do you mean doing all the reading sections in one practice test at once or just one individual section at a time?</p>
<p>I would do one section, then check my answers. This way I could more quickly identify what problems I was having. The most common problem for me was reading too much into the text of the passages, and inferring too much. Always the “obvious” or clear-cut answer that spelled out in the text was the answer.</p>
<p>I can write to the last line, have a good structure with intro and conclusion, 3 supports. However, my style is not very good. It’s not that my writing sounds like an ESL’s writing, but rather, I can’t use “big words” and can’t have stylish sentence structures. What I write is semi-insightful, I guess, depending on what the prompt is.</p>
<p>Any recommendations for me? Should I prepare a few “big word” lists with similar meanings so I can try to substitute a big word when I get the chance, risking using it incorrectly? Or should I just stick with what I have?</p>
<p>nice job. So for critical reading, you dont go for any of those tricks? You’re just into close reading to start, and then answer each question one by one?</p>
<p>RR is ok, it’s not great though. It’s only really good if you need to know the basics of the SAT, but the essay writing looks pretty solid.</p>
<p>But then again, prep books are only designed to tell you the basics of the SAT and give you some of the basic strategies - the rest is up to the practice tests.</p>
<p>I found RR’s writing section to be EXTREMELY helpful. I highly recommend it to anyone who needs a substantial score improvement in time restraint. (in other words, prepping for Oct. sesh)</p>
<p>My problem is the critical reading. Do you read the passage, and then answer questions. Or do you read the questions and search for answers? btw, does anyone take “notes” after each paragraph and found that helpful?</p>
<p>-Read passage first QUICKLY, then questions. THINK ABOUT QUESTION for 1-2 seconds BEFORE READING CHOICES. </p>
<p>-Be pessimistic, not optimistic, when looking for answer choices. Find a reason to get rid of each one until you find the best answer. BE CAREFUL - this takes practice. Back up and read the passage as needed, this time slowly and carefully</p>
<p>-Taking notes seems to me like it would be an incredible waste of time. </p>
<p>If you’re eliminating the right answer quite a bit, however, then I honestly can’t say I have much hope in you getting above a 700 in CR.</p>
<p>I can complete an entire 25-minute long CR section in about 17 minutes using these techniques. This leaves me 8 minutes to review my answers/twiddle my thumbs. I rarely ever miss passage questions, and occasionally a SC. I got an 800 on my SAT this way. </p>
<p>There is no “secret” to CR. It’s all about thinking critically, and very rapidly. Most of all it’s about NOT GETTING DISTRACTED by bad answer choices.</p>