<p>* He had heard if he left an answer blank it could not hurt his score. He did not answer 38 questions! Is this true? He got 18 questions wrong. Would it not have been better to use the process of elimination to find an answer? Is it possible to gain 500 points in a year’s time?*</p>
<p>Your son needs to learn to apply a logic-test to crap he hears. If that were true, then a person could just answer ONE question that they were sure was right and then have a perfect score. Obviously, that isn’t true.</p>
<p>As for the “penalty” for putting a wrong answer, the truth is that if you can narrow down and then guess, you’ll likely come out ahead over the course of a test where you had to guess several times.</p>
<p>Yes, there have been kids who’ve increased their scores by that much. In your son’s case, he has a good chance since he followed VERY bad advice the first time around. Next time, he’ll know better.</p>
<p>Remind him to use this experience as a learning experience…don’t believe what you hear, and “test” what your read/hear for logic and truth.</p>
<p>I would just focus on the SAT. Students can be offered plenty on scholarship money without being a NMF. The good news is he took it in 10th grade so you now have a base</p>
<p>I don’t agree. The focus can be and should be on both. Any prep for the SAT is prep for the PSAT…so it’s a twofer! And, have him take the ACT.</p>
<p>“Any prep for the SAT is prep for the PSAT…so it’s a twofer!”. Of course SAT prep will help for the PSAT, but the PSAT is easier (that will affect your pacing), and it doesn’t have an essay. You could certainly use an SAT book to prep, just ignore the essay section, and I’d still suggest doing several practice PSAT tests to work on timing.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there is no hard evidence behind the universal claim that guessing helps a students. Some extremely knowledgeable tutors support the guessing; others who are equally “smart” about the test have written expos</p>
<p>While some of the “hardest” material is absent from the PSAT, it is actually harder to earn a higher score than on the full SAT. The fact that the test is shorter account for a larger penalty for the shorter version. The essay is really not a big problem on the SAT, and any well-prepared student should see the essay as a potential score boosting device.</p>
<p>By the way, the “studying” of vocabulary is also a pretty bad idea, if it involved the asinine attempt of memorizing lists of words. People with strong vocabulary tend to do well on the SAT, but that is not really because of “knowing the words” but because how they gained the strong vocabulary in the first place. And this often because they were strong readers and strong critical thinkers. </p>
<p>The SAT is hardly a vocabulary test. And if there is a need to improve on the reading part --and building up a <strong>SAT</strong> vocabulary, this should done via dedicated practice IN CONTEXT. And that means to practice with the tests and not with silly lists of words. One of the most effective ways to build the vocabulary is to actually READ the past tests (dozens of them) and look up words that are still foreign. </p>
<p>As an example, how hard are the words low, table, and rank? Those can be very hard in the hands of an ETS writer who wants to test your understanding of cow, motions, or cigar smells!</p>
<p>The statement that guessing helps is based on the raw odds of selecting the right answer from among a subset of the available answers (after the student has narrowed the choices to 2 or 3, say) and the penalty for guessing–which is intended to yield a net score of 0 for purely random guessing (on average).</p>
<p>Issues include: Among students who are guessing, some of them will have eliminated the correct answer already! Among students who are guessing, some may be more drawn to answers that are included as “distractors,” rather than to the correct answer–that is, the guesses that they are making are not truly random.</p>
<p>I would never advise a smart student to leave 38 blank answers on the PSAT when he can narrow down to 2-3 answers…not when the goal is to try to make NMSF.</p>
<p>From Princeton Review:</p>
<p>MYTH #4: It’s better to leave a question blank than to guess.</p>
<p>FACT: Not necessarily. You receive one point for every correct answer, zero points for every question you leave unanswered and minus one-quarter of a point for every incorrect answer If you can eliminate even one of the answer choices, guess! From a purely statistical standpoint, this approach will gain you more points over the whole test than you’ll get by playing it safe and leaving the questions blank.</p>
<p>…because there is no “playing it safe” when the goal is NMSF and you’re leaving 38 answers blank!</p>
<p>I’m assuming that anyone who is asking about SAT prep a year in advance would be doing quite a few practice SATs. Obviously, looking up words they didn’t know would be part of their studies. The question is whether it’s worth studying vocab lists. I agree that for many students, it’s not. Most kids don’t spend that much time preparing, so they don’t really have time to do this, and they can gain more points with other study activities. I think it’s really only worthwhile for the student who has some months to prepare and is trying to maximize their score for NMF or other scholarships. That would be in addition to doing lots of practice tests and review, not instead. I think younger kids who have years to prepare are better off reading a variety of high quality materials.</p>
<p>Mathematically, random guessing should be neutral, but there is a cost in time spent. If the student really has no idea, it’s probably not worth the time to try to select an answer. However, a really good student will likely be able to eliminate some options and overall benefit from guessing. Actually I just asked my daughter if she guessed and she said no random guessing but there were about 4 questions where she wasn’t completely sure of the answer, and she answered them as best she could.</p>
<p>Here’s a trick that I told my kids when they were studying for the ACT and SAT…</p>
<p>When you take a practice test and you narrow/guess an answer, circle the question and circle the “narrowed down” answers. Then when you score your sheet, review those “guessed questions”…see why the “guessed-right” answer was right…and why the “guessed-wrong” answer was wrong. Use the “explanations” that are in the back of the test book.</p>
<p>IF you don’t mark the guessed questions, then if you get them right, you’ll forget to go back and review.</p>
<p>Your son can definitely make a 50 point gain in a year’s time. I’m a senior now and I went from a 179 to a 228 (49 points) from sophomore year to junior year. It was definitely a time consuming process to improve my score and I had to give up most of my summer, but the generous national merit scholarship I will be receiving next year is well worth it. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions on how I brought up my score that much and what study materials/ techniques I used!</p>
<p>And really, making NMSF is the only goal for the PSAT, it’s really not good for much else!</p>
<p>I agree with xiggi that memorizing vocabulary is a pretty useless exercise. Learning to read faster and better is more useful. If you get too bored reading practice tests my kids recommend a heavy does of sci fi and fantasy. They are generally written with a pretty robust vocabulary and sentence structure. </p>
<p>Well at least your son got his bad PSAT advice as a sophomore, plenty of time to improve the score. Younger son went up over 25 points with no real studying at all.</p>
<p>Im confused a bit by the numbers thrown around here, but the PSAT score max is 240 and qualifying for most states is in the mid 210’s, so a 50 point bump wont really do it. </p>
<p>Because of its nature of qualifying for the NMS the PSAT is an all or nothing go for it kind of test. You need to answer all the questions and get only a handful incorrect. </p>
<p>Try some practice tests and see if he can score close. If not dont bother.</p>
<p>I have to disagree about memorizing vocabulary. After taking quite a few past PSAT’s, I’ve compiled a list of the words most commonly used by college board on the test, and nearly every vocab word on the PSAT I took appeared on that list. It makes it easier to answer those first 8 questions and instead of taking 5 minutes to answer, you’ll finish within 3 and have a very high chance of getting those questions right. More importantly, it gives you the confidence that will help you more easily complete the more arduous part of the reading section (double passage).</p>
<p>I agree about learning to read better and faster. That’s why I think it’s a waste of time for parents to push middle-schoolers into test prep mode. But for a 16 year old who has been reading for so many years and is spending many hours each week already reading high school and possibly college material, I’m skeptical that perhaps another say 20 hours of extra reading is going to make a measurable difference to their reading ability, whereas spending the 20 hours in focused vocab prep may help with a few questions, because those words do appear on the tests. And they do appear in college reading. Perhaps in some school systems this may be less helpful, if the vocab program is stronger, but in our school system the vocab covered in English wasn’t of any help to my daughter.</p>
<p>That is hardly memorizing vocabulary in the way people usually define it. I hope you realize you compiled a list … from working through official tests. That is not the same as slaving over an asinine list of 3500 words without context.</p>
<p>I agree, there is no substitute for years of avid reading of quality material. But I don’t think that means it’s a waste of time to study vocab lists. I was a bit surprised at some of the words from those lists which my daughter didn’t know, since I consider some of those words an essential part of a well-educated adult vocabulary, and even though I don’t think it boosted her SAT scores by much, I still think it was worthwhile to go through those lists. In fact, as she worked through the lists, she also began to notice some of the words showing up in her general reading, which she otherwise might have glossed over, and I think she did appreciate the value of having slogged through those lists. Of course you can say, well she should just look up every word she encounters which she doesn’t know, but most kids simply aren’t going to do that. In fact, we tried to get her to read some books we felt would be somewhat interesting to her which contained a lot of SAT-type words, but in the end she didn’t find them that interesting and she didn’t want to read for pleasure with a dictionary in hand. She was more willing just to study some lists. She didn’t get anything out of the vocab program in our schools, so it was nice to see her learning something at last. At some point, how much benefit is there in going through yet another old test? If you’ve done 15, how much will it help to do 20? I really don’t know the answer, but I think for a student who knows all the material, vocab may be the only thing left to learn, and will be more helpful in college than trying to further fine-tune SAT taking skills.</p>
<p>“The school did nothing to prepare the students.” - That’s pretty typical. Many students study for PSAT/SAT But some of the best scores come from truly bright kids coming in unprepared. It would be good if teacher (or proctor) explained general test approach. (It seems like it is often worth guessing, especially if you can rule out an answer. </p>
<p>The very best prep for verbal of course is to read extensively from an early age. For those that have not, it is hard to totally catch up on vocab. I suspect coaching on test methodology is something that can be helpful to all. Going in the test confident and relaxed is important.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry too much, OP. Leaving all those questions blank was a big issue.</p>
<p>My sophomore goes to a top private high school, and they bring a coach to instruct the kids prior to their first PSAT. The coach instructed them not to leave any questions blank at all unless they had absolutely no idea and couldn’t eliminate even one answer as improbable.</p>
<p>Also, my oldest son did pretty poorly on his first PSAT . . .in the 170s. He improved a lot on the second go around. And his SAT scores were quite reasonable (not super terrific like most CC kids, but he’s going to a top 50 LAC . . .so good enough).</p>
<p>“After taking quite a few past PSAT’s, I’ve compiled a list of the words most commonly used by college board on the test, and nearly every vocab word on the PSAT I took appeared on that list.”</p>
<p>Is this list available for purchase? I’m only half kidding.</p>
<p>For the people interested in the effectiveness of studying long lists of words, here is a thread from a few years ago. For full didsclosure, I spent a number of years analyzing the effectiveness of the lists. Like many who start preparing for their first tests, I believed it would be “interesting” to organize words into lists. In my early days of CC --more than a decade ago-- I shared some of what I considered the “better lists” such as one that was culled from all the hard words that came up in the (up to then) released official tests. </p>
<p>I also debunked the myth of the “reported” effectiveness a very popular (and mostly irrelevant) Barron’s list of 3400 or 3500 words. It was and still is one of the worst ways to spend precious preparation time. </p>
<p>Here’s the bottom line. While anyone would find reading (or memorizing) a long list of words, the issue is really about ROI, or better Return on Time. And that ROI/ROT is most evidently abysmal. Even well-composed lists such as the Direct Hits that are culled DIRECTLY from past tests have a very low occurence of appearance. And one that is really too darn low to invest much time “preparing” for the occasional occurence. </p>
<p>The good news is that there are better ways! :)</p>