<p>Post your stories here, so you can help all of us who feel like there is no hope. Post the before and after scores and your story too please :)</p>
<p>To improve on CR...READ! A lot! I think I read a lot between March and June even if it was in preparation for APs/SAT 2's or whatever and it paid off to a 100 point improvement(630-730) Even if the books are not that intense, but if you enjoy reading them you will be a lot more focused on SAT passages...</p>
<p>May CR: 580
June CR: 650</p>
<p>No prep in between, took a practice test or two the week before and gained 70 pts in a month doing nothing really. Was expecting around a 690 though so I'm actually disappointed. Oh well.</p>
<p>December: 680
June: 740</p>
<p>Studied vocab, but not a lot. Did a lot of practice tests, too.</p>
<p>March: 560
June: 700</p>
<p>I am not longer totally illiterate. yay.</p>
<p>January: 690
June: 800</p>
<p>I did some practice sets, and went over past mistakes.</p>
<p>Damn. Nile and itsasmallworld, those are some highly impressive improvements.</p>
<p>Nile and itsasmallworld- Nice job. What methods did you guys use? Grammatix or something else?</p>
<p>For me it was a matter of familiarizing yourself with the questions. There are those people who just read all this quality literature, and the New Yorker and stuff. I was never one of these people. But in the critical reading section, you tend to notice that a lot of the questions asked are somewhat repetitive, the easiest being the "what does this word mean in this context" and the hardest being the overarching passage question. But with practice (and a little luck!), I got better.</p>
<p>Yeah, Im not even thinking about reading all this stuff. I honestly dont see how it would help. CR is always hard for me, so Im trying this grammatix stuff. Maybe it helps?</p>
<p>Oct PSAT 580
Jun SAT 680</p>
<p>For me, I'm not a big fan of reading, especially the books that we need to read for school. I feel that a big part of my improvement is due to RocketReview and the tips and strategies that the book gave me. Also, I also create just a few (about 30 maybe) vocabulary flash cards that I derived from SparkNotes. Fortunately, many of the words that I studied came up on the SAT. I can post them if requested.</p>
<p>Also (this is important), as I read the CR passages, I underline text that contain words that represent the theme and the plot of the story. These words are such that have really positive or negative connotations. I also underline these words because our short-term memory goes out after a few lines. Now I can refer back to the plot if the questions beg me to.</p>
<p>Feb SAT reading - 680
June SAT reading - 800</p>
<p>I read every single article from RealClearPolitics</a> - Opinion, News, Analysis, Videos and Polls every day for 3 or 4 months straight, and then read every comment about every article. No matter how weird this sounds...it works (for me at least). I'm more of a political junkie, so this might not suite everyone.</p>
<p>Also, don't circle stuff not mentioned by the reading passage</p>
<p>PSAT - 650
Fall '08 - 650
March '09 - 640
June '09 - 720</p>
<p>I'm not exactly sure what happened. I didn't study or do anything special to try to improve it. I think taking it three times familiarized myself with the types of questions. I left about four of the vocabulary blank, so I'm sure I got lucky with the articles and was able to understand them fairly well.</p>
<p>Ahhh, I wish I could just improve by 50 points! 650 --> 700. </p>
<p>Thank you guys so much! They really helped.</p>
<p>by learning prefixes, suffixes and root help u in the critical reading?</p>
<p>^definitely, sometimes the little nuances and pre/suffixes in the word choices show the answer.</p>
<p>Yesterday I had to run so I never had a chance to share my story but here it is....</p>
<p>Well, first of all, I love reading. I mean I was that person that checked out like 20 books every week and actually read all of them....That's why I couldn't understand when I took the SAT in 7th grade for the CTY programs why my score was so low...450! (for reference, this was also the old SAT)</p>
<p>I knew it was a lost cause. I mean like I probably could read a lot faster than the average high school junior and I was still not scoring average...I took the SAT(old again and then the new one) in 8th grade and scored even lower(420) and then higher(490)... From then on(meaning like for the past 4 years) I resolved to hate the SAT verbal(as it was called then)... </p>
<p>I didn't really want to care about the SAT until I needed to so I ignored the SAT as much as I could in 9th and 10th and envied the luck of those 1 to 2 people who kept getting perfect scores each year... The summer between 9th and 10th grade my parents forced me to take a stupid SAT prep course at my school which majorly sucked and was so not worth my time (My CR score was still a 510 and I still hated CR)...</p>
<p>Then the summer between 10th and 11th came around...Nearly all of my friends took an "elite" preperation course with a 2100+ program and wasted their summers away like this... As I said already, I tried to avoid the SAT at all costs until I needed to face it so I traveled and did some internships and did not do this course...Then my PSAT scores arrived and they were thoroughly unsatisfactory, but somehow I improved a little(11th grade PSAT I finally got a 60 somehow)...My parents of course were pretty ****ed when they found out that all my friends had taken this course and questioned why I hadn't and then the middle of Junior year made me take the same course with the same amount of homework during winter break and continuing throughout the school year...</p>
<p>The course was not helping no matter how rigorous it may have been, and no matter how much I was actually trying...
I mean seriously, on the night of my 17th birthday all I did was homework for that SAT prep class and I was up until 1:00am studying for a stupid vocabulary quiz the next day because each day I was required to memorize 100 SAT words and when I mean memorize, I mean like verbatim...
The class was 8 days during winter break so 100 words a night meaning 800 words total. Everytime you failed a vocab quiz you had to write out that set of words and their definitions 10 times each meaning 100 words times 10=1000 total lines ..ewwww.
when I took this course it extended past Winter Break and was supposidly preparing me for the March SAT... I kept scoring around the low 600s on Critical Reading on all like 20 practice tests that I took and it was really frustrating...</p>
<p>The March SAT came around. I certainly seemed to know my vocab because I only got 1 wrong on Sentence Completion but the Passages screwed me over...I only got a 630 for all my hard work...</p>
<p>To tell you the truth, I was really disappointed in myself because after spending so much time preparing all I could achieve was a 630 in Critical Reading... My parents even started thinking that this was all to my abilities and this was all that I could score and didn't really even believe in my potential when I told them that I was going to take the June SAT... They nearly lost hope and began to settle in their minds that I would just score the same again... but I didn't and I knew that I could do at least a little better(670ish) if maybe I took it again because I knew I wouldn' be as nervous as I was the first time...I wouldn't let something like the SAT CR prevent me from getting what I wanted.</p>
<p>I signed up for the June SAT. I spent a lot of time studying for my APs and SAT 2's rather than the SAT. I only touched one book in between the 2 tests- Barrons CR book. All I did in it too was spend 2 hours at Barnes and Nobles the week before the test and I did all of the sentence completion exercises and one of the practice CR tests. I did not take a practice test again from the March SAT. That was all. </p>
<p>I went in as calmly as I could on the day of the SAT and the only thing I told myself was to do the best that I can. Considering that I really do not like Critical Reading I actually enjoyed the passages on the June SAT and I had to do more Critical Reading than required because my experimental section was also CR. I finished each of the sections around 5 minutes early and I went back and re-evaluated my answers. I made sure that for SCs my answers fit and for passage questions that I really did answer the question based on the passage and did not overthink the questions too much. I paid attention to detail and tried to stay as awake as possible. After the test, I tried to not think about the test and hoped that I would get lucky on some questions.</p>
<p>Apparently, that was all it took. I improved and got a score that I never even dreamed that I would get. I was hoping for a 670 but I got a 730. A 730! Yesterday, when I told my mom the first question she asked me was "Are you sure that this is you're score?". Unbelievable.</p>
<p>I think I just got lucky but now I am very very satisfied with my SAT score and never did I even think that my score would be this high (2290)... I was just aiming for 2100+...</p>
<p>So, the point is...
Yes, the SAT Critical Reading sucks
Yes, sometimes the scores are based on luck
Yes, people with higher vocabulary do seem to score better
AND...
Yes, YOU CAN IMPROVE
(although for some people this improvement is more natural than forced)</p>
<p>~DON'T LOOSE HOPE~</p>
<p>March 08 - 630</p>
<p>June 08 - 740</p>
<p>I really dont understand the people on this site who say to read articles and books and whatnot. In my opinion the best thing to do is study vocab because it is essential, and take as many tests as you can get your hands on. You must familiarize with the test and the way questions are worded as best as possible. The reading section is much less about reading then it is about understanding how to answer the questions. IMO this is the only way to really increase your score, although i guess if reading is a legitimate flaw in anyones abilities, reading is definitly a way to increase your speed.</p>
<p>Ivyhopeful555</p>
<p>Well, how can you study vocab if you don't constantly see it in context? The SC asks you to match the words in context...
That's why you read...</p>
<p>3 practice tests is enough to get familiar with the test. At a certain point, you too must have gotten sick of taking practice tests...</p>
<p>heresyxgpaholic - Oh my gosh, I thought I was the only person on earth who checks out twenty books a week! Unfortunately, not as many any more- I'm busy with other ECs. But I'm a hardcore bibliophile. :)</p>