<p>Hello everyone, I was born in the U.S and stayed there until I was 5. I then came to Egypt which is my parents' country, and I have stayed here every since. Thank god I'm still very good at English and I have the accent, read book and watch movies and stuff. Anyway, I'm in the 11th grade and I'm taking the SAT for the 3rd time in about 2 weeks. The first time was in June/2011. I got a 1540 without studying (To give you the idea, I didn't know the difference between the passage on the writing section and the passage on the reading section). Here's the thing, because I lived in Egypt all this time, I took Egyptian curriculums all my life until 10th grade when I joined the American Diploma system in Egypt. I'm saying this to tell you that I'm not a fully based American student. If I'd stayed in America I wouldn't have been as clueless as I am now. I'm not that bad, really. I got a 4.0 gpa every quarter of every year. But the SAT's test your total comprehension of your curriculums from 1st grade to 12th grade. Which I did not pass through! Here's how I did: On that 1540 test, I got a 560 on the math section, 540 on the reading section and a 430 on the reading section. The reading IS hard. I really do struggle with the vocabulary. I mean what kind of test tests your vocabulary?! It's not a book of 10,000 words that are bound to be in the test, just not fair. Anyway I'm really good at math, and I really want to get a 1900-2000. Really really do. I've been really studying the past month, I finished a couple of books for writing and math. Pretty freaked out about the reading though. Anyway, "Confessions of a sad student". Sorry to bore you, I want good advice please!
Note: The sad part is that my second attempt was on January/2012 and I got a 1570...</p>
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<li><p>You should take the ACT test too. Many students do far better on the ACT and virtually all universities will accept either the ACT or SAT scores for admissions purposes. SAT and ACT test different abilities – ACT is more fact driven.</p></li>
<li><p>You should continue to study and keep retaking the test. My daughter took the SAT and the ACT three times (six tests) before one of the test scores yielded an acceptable score for the schools she wanted to apply to. </p></li>
<li><p>Study. When my daughter finally focused on studying her test scores improved. Get a test preparation manual (or online version) and spend several hours per day going through the exercises. It is not much fun, but if you study you can improve your score. (The SAT preparation course that she took was absolutely worthless, she did much better when she finally focused on the self-preparation.)</p></li>
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<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>I agree with ArielsMom. Self study is fine and prep classes will waste your time teaching worthless “tricks” that do you no good.
Think about this. Throughout the rest of your education, you will be reading ever-increasing amounts of difficult material. The vocabulary of academic texts is generally more difficult than the vocabulary one finds in the popular media. In short, in order to survive in English-speaking schools, you will have to improve your English vocabulary whether you think it is fair or not.
Do you know an English-speaking person with whom you can read and discuss English texts? Novels, magazine articles on all subjects, newspapers? If you highlight any words and phrases you don’t understand and find out what they mean and learn other ways the words may be used, you will improve your vocabulary as quickly as possible. Keep a list and study it at night just before you go to sleep. That is the best time for memorization. (That is a scientifically-proven fact.) Remember that English words have many different meanings and they also suggest different emotional attitudes than other words that have the same literal meaning. We speak of “denotation” (literal meaning) and “connotation” (implied and emotional coloration of the meaning). Many SAT questions stress these second or third definitions of the word and reading comp often bases inference questions on the connotations of words.</p>