Hey guys, so I have been practicing a lot for the CR section of the SAT, mainly by taking practice tests. I’ve gone through the barons and CB tests, and just started with princeton review too. Unfortunately, my scores for PR are consistently 100-150 points lower than the other tests I’ve taken! Am I just getting worse or are the PR practice tests for reading actually harder in your opinion? Also, this only happened to me for the CR section, math/writing sections in PR were fine.
Third party tests are absolutely useless for score prediction. They may be helpful for practice, though, of course.
@gunnerGirl
I wouldn’t even use the PR tests for practice. Third party tests, like @marvin100 pointed out, tend to be unrealistic. Official, authentic CB questions use SAT logic in reading questions. In other words, the answer is provided in the passage. But what I noticed from looking at Barron’s, Kaplan, and PR is that often times their questions require assumptions on the part of the reader that the real test will not require. I assume this is why you are getting lower scores on the PR tests. I felt like this “over-implication” is a bad habit to make. I think it may lead you into wrong direction in the real test.
I say stick with good quality practice questions like Erica Meltzer’s questions (I’ve looked at them and they are almost indistinguishable from the CB’s) or the Ivy Global (They do have unrealistic questions, but for the most part, they are pretty good. I did notice that they tend to be slightly easier than the CB ones, though.)
I think PR, Kalis, IvyGlobal, and MGH tests are good practice for R, although some q’s need to be stricken. Many students need more R practice than the CB/KA currently provide, unfortunately. Meltzer’s good, but she doesn’t offer a ton of practice material.
@marvin100 @gunnerGirl
The ones that you should ABSOLUTELY avoid is Kaplan and Barrons. They have horrible reading questions.