<p>This has been really wierd for me. The first time I took the SAT I had no prep and I got a 540 with a 8 essay on writing.</p>
<p>Second time I took it, I preped 3 days prior to the test and I got a 510 with a 9 essay.</p>
<p>I just spent a good amount of time on the barron writing workbook, going through the MC section help and only not doing the essay reading. I did the diagnostic writing test and scored a 540.</p>
<p>Just today, I took a practice test from collegeboard online course and missed over HALF the questions. I scored a 440-570 so I'm guessing around a 500 with a 8 essay from what they say. My CR score also dropped after a bit of prep to 520-580 while i had a 600 score both times i took the real SAT.</p>
<p>so what exactly is going on... is the prep hurting me? or is the Online course just harder than the real thing (I took practice test one and the stories did feel tougher).</p>
<p>one slight reference, the only thing that might've made me lose concentration would be the piano practice from my younger brother upstairs, but I didn't think it would affect that much.</p>
<p>Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Hmm, the distraction may have affected your score. Take me for example. Yesterday was the 1st day I had to work and then when I came back home I decided to take 2 practice writing sections (49 questions each). Usually I only miss 2~3, but yesterday I missed 7~8 on each!!! So outside factors could've accounted for you sudden fluctuation in scores.</p>
<p>yeah i kinda thought aobut that, but still... i would've imagined that barron tips would've at least helped my score into the 600s</p>
<p>Well, usually it takes a lot of prep (or some sort of revelation) to increase scores by 100. Do not get discouraged! Just keep practicing and naturally your scores will rise.</p>
<p>doing problems over and over don't really help. you have to go back and analyze your answers. not just the ones you missed, but also the ones you got right, and try to identify any problem areas. (mine was idioms, btw) </p>
<p>gl on your quest for 2400.</p>
<p>there is no such thing as preping hurting you. Prep is supposed to help you raise your score. The problem is not in the fact that you prep, it is in HOW you prep. Your methods are probably wrong, find what you r doing wrong and fix it, your score will go up after that.</p>
<p>Yeah just doing practice for the writing or any section for that matter probably won't help much. That's what I did for the writing: just doing questions but on the June SAT I actually got lower on the mc than what I got a year ago when I didn't practice at all! So you have to know what you did wrong, like parallelism, idioms, tenses, verb-subject and pronoun-antecedent agreement, etc.</p>
<p>well i'm looking back and it seems like i'm taking the rules a little too seriously. like this sentence...</p>
<p>Most physicians reject biofeedback because they ignore its potential.</p>
<p>I remember a rule that says pronouns have to clearly modify its antecedent. So I assumed this is wrong because somebody might be confused that "they" could modify both physicians or biofeedback. But i guess since biofeedback is singular it can't be modifying it.</p>
<p>btw, i missed that question and picked another sentence. if it was biofeedbacks instead of biofeedback, would the sentence be completely incorrect even if its is replaced with "their"</p>
<p>this is just my opinion on getting ready, do what it what you will, i got a 2040 last time no prep</p>
<p>if you're going to do practice tests, real tests are the best
theres so many theres no reason to use anything else, it doesnt make sense</p>
<p>overpreparing is overpreparing, not preparing, so theres no point in practicing the wrong thing, even if it's harder</p>
<p>so go through the tests, any will work, this is what i do</p>
<p>1)do the section
2)check the answers
3)go through every question exruciatingly slowly, and verbalize in your head or talk to youself if you wanna seem crazy, why 4 of the answers can't be right and make sure you're positive, i got so much better at this
4)get better</p>
<p>if you do it enough, i think youll start doing it out of habit without having to spend much time at it
after 7 tests like this i went from 680 CR to three of the 7 tests being 800's
my math went from 670 to a top of 770
it's easier to verbalize CR and writing than math, but it can be done
fyi, these are in the red book 10 real sat's, but they're the same for CR and math in difficulty and most question types</p>
<p>hope this helps</p>
<p>yeah, so i put that last thing in completely the wrong thread</p>