<p>Hi there!</p>
<p>I did an SAT test cold turkey (zero preparation) in the fall and scored a 2080. I got prep books and am considering enrolling in a prep course for the summer (or for the early fall) and want to up my score by the time early decision applications are due.</p>
<p>Is it realistic for me to want to see an improvement from 2080 to around 2300? </p>
<p>You could definitely see a big improvement in 6 months, but I can’t guarantee you’ll get up to 2300. I don’t think you need a prep course, so I would suggest self studying and having some more fun over the summer. The threads on this site are really good for study plans and books. There are a lot of inspirational stories about kids who improved their scores massively. </p>
<p>Most people on this site will agree that the official tests are the way to go. You can find these in the Blue Book (there are 10) and you can search online for pdfs. You should probably do the question of the day on the college board website, and take the practice test they have on the site. There are a few PSATs available too, which you can use if you run out of SATs.</p>
<p>You could start off with no time limits, but since your scores are great already, you should probably be strict with time and imitate testing conditions as best as you can. You can basically take the tests and study however you want. Find the strategies that work for you. Maybe it helps you to read the CR questions first and then underline the lines that the questions refer to. You could do a section at a time or the whole test at once. When you grade the test, go over the questions you got wrong and the questions you guessed on. Do this for a few tests, and take note of the types of questions you get wrong. For example, on practice tests I’ve noticed I get the most vocab questions wrong. Once you notice the patterns, you can focus in on a specific area and you know what you need to study and practice.</p>
<p>When you take a lot of SATs, you start noticing the patterns too. This has helped me a lot in CR. By this, I mean that there are similarities in the questions and you can start to “see” which answer is the correct one. If you aren’t used to the math, you’ll start seeing that a lot of the questions require the same type of approach, and while questions aren’t repeated, they can be similar. If you’re starting at a 2080 and you’re willing to work hard, I really think you can achieve a 2300. Good luck!</p>
<p>Didn’t you ask the same question last week and got like 10 responses? ;
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<p>@skedge THANK YOU. </p>
<p>@Sanwal – posted them at the same time, since I didn’t know if this thread got as much traffic as others did. 
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