<p>I know there is one example about 2 years ago. A boy get from 1800 to 2300 in a few months. CB saw that and tell the boy if he hadn’t explained what happened, they would have canceled the new score. The boy said he didn’t do any tricks or cheats, but CB didn’t believe it. Finally, CB canceled his new score, and minus his old scores 200 points.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding a prior post where some kid say he improved by a zillion points, I don’t think you are being realistic.</p>
<p>In the end, the SAT is somewhat similar to an intelligence test.</p>
<p>No matter how hard you study, you are not going to improve by as much as you seek.</p>
<p>Just study hard, and do the best you can.<br>
Then, whatever score you get is what you get.</p>
<p>Getting a 1350 but hoping for a 2000 is like saying I want to be in the NFL, but currently are playing for Oswego State. First hit 1500. Then 1800. Then, you start talking about 2000. There is no magic pill to take.</p>
<p>You have a year to study. I would take a prep course. You can study on your own, but to me, signing up for a prep course where you have to go to some actual building to take the course is FORCED study. Kind of like having a personal trainer. You don’t really need one, but if you have an appointment with your trainer, you probably won’t blow off working out that day.</p>
<p>My son improved his SATs by 110 points with zero studying. And improved his ACT from a 31 to a 34 with zero studying.</p>
<p>Have you tried the ACT yet? Some people do better on that test than on the SAT.</p>
<p>Don’t listen to duydangle, his story is false wherever he heard it. Al though if you do improve by 800 CB will likely ask you to re-take it so that they know you are not cheating.</p>
<p>Now for whether you can actually increase that amount…its hard to say. I think 500-600 is possible but 1000? Not sure. It all depends on how much you are capable of. Some SAT test takers are capable of high scores (2100+) but usually just score 1700-1900 because they didn’t study or didn’t have a rigorous high school course. If you are one of those people who has the possibility to greatly improve than I would say 800 is within reach, but I am not convinced on 1000.</p>
<p>Did anyone notice this post is over a year old lol?
The student is probably done with all testing now.</p>
<p>lol completely forgot. I noticed that yesterday and today I just skipped to 2nd page so it kind of slipped my mind</p>
<p>Just do 25 practice tests, each smartly, go over vocab (20 per day depending on your time period), analyze each practice test… Get grubers math and dr chungs math. Read books and study hard at school to make your brain ready for the test. Get confident. Reading is easy once you know not to over interpret, and the answer is in front of you. Get wrong answers out first.</p>
<p>You can do it easily. I started with a 156 psat score. by march i was up to an 1860. Studied throughout the spring and summer and i am now up to a solid 2300+. Taking again in november and then going to actually send all my college apps.</p>
<p>I rec grubers/direct hits 1+2/ any sat prep class (if you are in ny, Test Takers is highly rec’d)/ barrons (with the 3k vocab)/ barrons critical reading book/kaplan writing/ as many practice tests as possible. </p>
<p>You can do it def.</p>
<p>Improving 800-1000 points on the SAT is certainly feasible. Sophomore year, I scored a 159 on my PSATs. In March I took the SATs and got a 2010, around a 400 point increase. More recently, I just took the SATs this past Saturday, and I am expecting around a 2100-2200, potentially a 600 point increase from sophomore year. All you have to do is study hard to improve your score. Personally, I did not even do all that much studying aside from Direct Hits, and I could probably score around a 2300 if I studied harder. So, yes, an 800-1000 point increase is possible, as long as you put in the work and effort required.</p>
<p>What is a bb test ?</p>
<p>BB is referring to the CollegeBoard Official Study Guide Book, its Blue so people call it the Blue Book…BB. so a bb test is just one of the practice tests in the book</p>
<p>This thread is a year old, but in case anyone new is reading it…</p>
<p>I wouldn’t put much stock in a “diagnostic” pre-test from a test prep company. They want to convince you that you need to pay them big bucks to take their test prep class!</p>
<p>My daughter didn’t do as well as we had expected on the PSAT, so we signed her up for a Kaplan class. Her pre-test score was significantly worse than her PSAT score would have indicated. The teacher was awful and the kids just goofed off, and D ended up missing a couple of the classes and not doing any of the homework. And yet, her post-test showed significant improvement - apparently simply from enrolling in Kaplan. Imaging that! 
In the end her SAT score was pretty close to what the PSAT had predicted, and Kaplan had $1000 of our money that would have been better spent elsewhere.</p>
<p>Instead, she took the ACT and did much better on it.</p>
<p>You know what, as much as people say there’s a learning curve in the SAT, anything is possible with an extraordinary effort. Study hard, use the blue book, and your efforts will show. </p>
<p>That being said, it took me 3.5 yrs of intense high school English/math + a huge stroke of luck + substantial # of weeknights studying to raise my grade 530 points.</p>
<p>I got about 700 points increase. Hopefully 800.</p>
<p>Hi gotmilklol,
My SAT score breakdown (1 sitting) is M:780, CR: 800, W:800. What I found were extremely helpful in attaining this score (other than some luck) are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Barron’s SAT (not the 2400; I used the VERY large one)
do all the practice questions you think are necessary, then work through its practice tests. Make sure you really take the time to understand how to do each problem first (especially the critical reading questions).</p></li>
<li><p>Barron’s SAT Critical Reading workbook, SAT math workbook, and one of its older versions for the Writing SAT II (when writing was still a separate test). The Writing workbook can only be found online, I believe. Check ebay, amazon, or abebooks.</p></li>
<li><p>The bluebook (Collegeboard). The math & writing questions are pretty much the same no matter what test brand you use; however, the CR is VERY specific, and I find that, other than the Collegeboard book, only Barron’s mimics the real SAT CR questions accurately. Albeit, the Barron’s CR questions are often harder than the actual ones–but that is definitely another advantage to using Barron’s. It will over-prepare you.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>On another note, if you’re having trouble with the vocabulary in context questions, rather than rote memorization, I recommend 1, or both, of 2 things:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Work through Level E of the Sadlier-Oxford Vocabulary workbooks. 60-70% of the vocab you will encounter on the SAT will be covered in this book. There’s roughly 20-or so chapters, with 20 words per chapter. One-chapter a day is very doable. </p></li>
<li><p>Barron’s “Hot-List” for SAT vocab words. I offer an anecdote to this success: On the day of my test, I encountered “Heyday” in one of my vocab-in-context questions. I had never seen the word before in my life other than the night before, when I was scanning through the Barron’s list of frequently-encountered SAT vocab words. I got it right!
(If you purchase the BIG Barron’s SAT workbook, the list is included in the grammar section).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>For the Essay Portion of the SAT:
- Make a list of 3 historical examples, 3 literary examples, and 3 current event examples that you think can fit into the context of any argument. For example, Steve Jobs & his success w/Apple as a start-up company can be used as an anecdote for questions asking about: Perseverance, our definition of “success,” heroism, etc. </p>
<p>Best of luck! Any more questions feel free to PM me.
Flamingo4</p>
<p>Oh–and I had a 700pt increase from my first practice test.</p>
<p>Read books on your own time; it’ll do wonders for your CR and give you substance for your essays</p>
<p>^Yeah, don’t do that.
To anyone in the same situation, as one poster above said, don’t put stock in practice tests from Princeton, Kaplan etc. They are horrible indicators of your actual score. I never did any homework in the Kaplan class, yet my score had risen 400 points from the first test to the last. One kid in my class had a 2090 on the SAT when he signed up for Kaplan, and on his diagnostic he got a 1750. They make the tests purposely harder so people see their scores, get depressed, and decide to take or stick with a class so they can raise their score. The tests will get easier, your score will go up, and it will feel like you’re actually doing something. If you’re starting around 1500, then your score will go up to maybe 1800. Beyond that, you’ll need to put in your own effort, mostly from the BB.</p>
<p>This sort of score increase is doable, but don’t let anyone tell you that it’ll be easy. Or even close to easy. I’ve had students improve in this range before, but they were putting 15+ hours a week into their SAT prep for 2-3 months at a time. If you have that sort of spare time, there is something you can do.</p>
<p>First of all, as others have posted, the diagnostics offered by private test prep firms are almost always “scored low” - their motivation is to get you to sign up for their classes, so if get an amazing score on their tests, you’re not motivated to do the one thing they want you to do. Buyer beware. </p>
<p>While I could write a whole book on this topic, there are two very simple (not easy - simple) ways to get this sort of massive score increase:</p>
<ol>
<li>Identify your weaknesses, focus on them one at a time, and kill them. DO NOT move from subject to subject or focus on your strengths, which are the areas which don’t offer any room for improvement. A lot of students do “stop and go” studying, flitting around from question to question without focusing - this won’t make anything stick. Instead, try this:</li>
</ol>
<p>If you’re bad at percentages (as an example), stop everything else you’re doing and focus ONLY on % problems. Find every single % problem you can in your book and attempt all of them. If you can’t solve them, look at answer explanations. Look up proper methods online. Do 40-60 problems in one category in a row. Then re-solve these same problems. The basic idea is to drill these concepts into your head. Once you’ve spent a full day of studying on one topic, I promise you it won’t flee your mind the way that it would if you only spent 3 minutes on the same topic.</p>
<p>Now rinse and repeat. Do this for every single weakness you have until you don’t have any weaknesses left. The big idea here is that if you can solve % problems with ease, you can also solve every problem INVOLVING % with ease. So if you have a geometry problem that combines % with circular geometry, you’re half way there. </p>
<ol>
<li>Take diagnostic tests like a maniac. Try 1 a week, timed, under realistic conditions, and track your scores. Use these scores to identify more weaknesses. Analyze each test after you take it in order to figure out which problems are still giving you the most trouble.</li>
</ol>
<p>My SAT tutor (back in the day) made me take 16 full-length tests before my exam. Not only did my score go from a 119 on the PSAT (back when the test was out of 1600) to a 1510 on the real deal, but I was cool as a cucumber during test day. All of my friends were sweating bullets and losing their minds, but I had no problem whatsoever.</p>
<p>If you identify and kill weaknesses, and if you get tons of timed, realistic practice, this sort of score improvement is possible. But expect to put in AT LEAST 8-10 hours of studying a week.</p>
<p>Also, @FloridaDad55 - I don’t want to be rude, but the ideas in your post are absolutely untrue. The SAT couldn’t be further from an intelligence test - it tests a collection of about 350 different math, grammar, and reading facts/tricks and how well you’re able to apply them to the exam, which is repetitive and easy to decode. If you know the tricks, and if you get used to applying them to the test, you will improve - that’s a fact. I’ve seen students with genius IQs get terrible scores on the SAT, and I’ve seen students with serious learning disabilities get near-perfect scores. This is a test you can study for without a doubt. I don’t disagree that a 1000+ point score increase is a bit of a stretch, but 500+ is easily doable with hard work.</p>
<p>Just like getting to Carnegie Hall–practice practice practice. Do the work & tests in the prep books, take the test several times in the usual settings.</p>
<p>I got like 160 PSAT (misbubbled on math/writing… only got 67/43) sophmore year ==> 2250 Senior Year</p>
<p>Its possible, for math i was always naturally good at it…</p>
<p>I took latin in HS so that helped a lot with vocab/grammar.</p>