Hi everyone!
I am extremely happy with my October writing scores, and I’m glad I will not have to study for it anymore. Now I’d like to ask anyone who has experience with raising scores some questions.
Is it possible to raise crticial reading from 670 to 730 before December? (I know this change might be the hardest because I’ve read stories on how people stayed stuck there for ages!)
I got Erica Meltzer’s the critical reader. I will be working through it daily and I’ll also take a full test every weekend. (and I like to analyze harder texts too!)
What did you do/plan did you follow to hit 730+ (from the 650-690 range)?
As for math, my mistakes… an idiot wouldn’t do them. I do not lack concepts, but I just sometimes misunderstand the question no matter how many times I read it! (I underline what it asks for by the way)
Will this (hopefully) stop through practice? The issue is that I did problems for months but I still do this kind of mistakes.
Thank you for any advice you have to offer.
PS: random, and I know it sounds silly, but how do you recognize a sarcastic tone in a passage? I get most of the questions with answers “sarcasm” incorrect
First, congratulations on your writing score.
Second, considering I raised my 720 practice test score to an 800 on Oct. 3 in the span of 2 days, I’d say its very possible to raise it from a 650 to a 730 in 1 month. You’re definitely on the right track with “The Critical Reader” but the best way to get good at CR is developing your own test-taking strategy, which is what happened to me. Usually the biggest problem someone has trying to break 700 or 800 is with second-guessing themselves and not understanding the entire passage. So what I did was take an entire practice CR section by reading the entire passage and then answering questions on intuition alone (the day before the test). I got an 800 and the same thing happened the next day. The moral of that story is that your intuition is usually right and to not change your first answer unless you have definitive evidence to change it.
Third, practice is key for math. Once you consistently do SAT math questions, you develop a knack for how to solve them because the question format is always similar. Then its a matter of ironing out careless mistakes. If that’s not the case, the best idea would be to get a tutor/test-prep program or to really understand why you got a question wrong and really understand how it should have been approached.
Finally, sarcasm is usually found when the author is deriding something. Once you establish an author’s position on a subject, it becomes easier to identify the tone.
And as a last note, if any of these strategies don’t work for you, don’t be discouraged because it was what worked for me, you may learn better another way.
thank you! 
I didn’t try that method yet (I’ll try it next time), but I completely agree with you on reading the entire passage first. I DO notice that many of my mistakes come from not having a proper chance of understanding something (because I wouldn’t have read the whole passage). So I will certainly follow your advice.
For math, I do not have problems with the pattern - it’s exactly what you said! “ironing out careless mistakes” If I do not get an 800, it’s 100% because of stupid mistakes. And it really irritates me that I had the knowledge to score 800.
I will try to develop my own strategies too for reading (and math probably, to avoid the careless mistakes) thank you so much for your invaluable tips!!
@PRAN1999 holistic reading! This tip is gold.
Today I solved a passage I did back then and had like 3 mistakes following my method.
With full reading, I got them all correct today.
I hope I’ll continue to see such progress! But I do have one issue with this method.
I don’t really read very quickly if I need to understand well (and I have to) - I took more or less 5 mins to read a 75 lines passage, and 5 mins to answer its 8 questions.
Am I safe?
Its all relative. If you can whip through the sentence completions in 2 minutes give or take, you can afford to take 10 minutes on one passage as a whole. If you take more time on the sentence completions, you’ll have to be able to pick out the important parts of the passage as you read, a skill that comes with experience. In the end, its all about effective time-management which boils down to your personal strategy.
That said, I usually take 4 min each for passage and questions but I’ve always been a fast reader. I’m sure you’ll be fine because I always end up with 8-9 minutes to check my answers.