<p>@Kelly92: Stop being so bitter because you didn’t get the score you wanted. </p>
<p>@DreamingBig: Oh another tip is to use a .9 lead pencil. The SAT says no mechanical pencils are allowed to be used, but usually they don’t care and if they do, they will just tell you to put it away. So it doesn’t hurt to bring one! .9 is the thickest lead and therefore you can fill in the bubble the fastest. In the end, it’ll save you about a minute or two and that can be crucial if you have a question left!</p>
<p>Also @ DreamingBig: Totally can’t sleep so I was perusing through some school websites and Columbia, UPenn and UChicago requires that you submit an SAT score for transfer applicants, so obviously, they will look at it.</p>
<p>i retook it in the fall and raised my score from 2230 to 2380. i had taken just to lessen my anxiety about it being a “black mark” on my app–i wanted to give columbia,cornell, penn, etc. one less reason to reject me</p>
<p>You didn’t clarify, because you realized your sentence was grammatically incorrect.
Also, why would I be bitter??? I am about to be a sophmore in college, so why should I care about the SAT?? Like I stated before, my college work is more important then the SAT’s, period.</p>
<p>Oh god, I’m sorry things have to be fed to you with a spoon. While my first post may have seemed directed towards you, the advice was obviously not for you. Others seemed to understand this and I’m sure DreamingBig understood the advice too.</p>
<p>And you’re obviously bitter. You spent half your posts complaining about how unfair the SAT was and how it is pointless to re-take it. If you didn’t care, why are you here posting about “biased” it is and all that?</p>
<p>Now I’m upset because I’m bringing this thread off topic.</p>
<p>You don’t have to spoon feed me nothing. I understood exactly who it was meant for. Am not illiterate.</p>
<p>How is that being bitter?? Am speaking the truth, unless you are a minority and attended a low performance HS, which I know you ain’t neither. Then this conversation is done. You obviously don’t understand the bigger picture and you never will. And no am not using this as an excuse not to good. So stop beating a dead horse and move on.</p>
<p>Instead of asking me if I practiced. You attacked me in your first post by making the assumption that I did not practice or didn’t make an effort to find an alternative way of scoring higher. All of this back and forth talk would have been eliminated, if only you would have asked me what I else did I do to prepare myself instead of making an assumption.</p>
<p>Well then I apologize. I take back that statement.</p>
<p>To move forward, I recommend the SAT flash cards. Along w/ the SAT book my brother gave me, I forgot to mention that he gave me some SAT flash cards. They helped me quite a bit with the vocab section.</p>
<p>if you want free prep help, check out number2.com</p>
<p>I used that site and the collegeboard’s prep book and got over 2100. The prep book I bought used at a Library book sale for $2. </p>
<p>@kelly: if you can stop being so egotistical, it’s actually logical to assume that mgm had switched from addressing you to addressing DreamingBig. You are welcome to insult me though =)</p>
<p>take practice tests as often as you can and try to time yourself as well. when i was prepping both times, i tried to do the problems as fast (but accurately) as possible so that for each section i would have 5-10 minutes to look over my work. it worked the second time around after i had taken calc and stats, several lit classes, and over a year of reading the WSJ, the economists, and LOTS of classic lit. Do read quality stuff when you have any time to spare, it does wonders for both your CR and WR sections.</p>
<p>oh I second melonbread91’s suggestion on reading classic lit. I saw passages from Kipling and Dickens on my tests, both of which I had read before. Read widely to get familiar with different styles of writing. Memoirs are also a good category to peruse. </p>
<p>Let me give you some tips. I work in admissions at a moderately selective institution and have done some coursework in assessment theory. Hopefully this will be helpful.</p>
<p>1) First, the SAT seems to correlate with verbal intelligence measures. There are many different types of intelligence. If your strong suits are more in analytical thinking (i.e. math and science), you might want to consider the ACT instead.</p>
<p>2) ALWAYS retake your tests. Unless you got a perfect score you can always do better! Right now with heavy discount rates at most institutions, it is imperative that you at least try to get those scores up. Colleges are buying students across the nation, so having more merit is always helpful. Even if the college does not have merit scholarships, there is no harm in trying again. I always say to take them until you are exhausted or are sure you can do no better.</p>
<p>3) Do not select College Board’s “student choice” option to send your highest score only to your colleges of choice unless you KNOW that those colleges only look at the highest from one sitting and think poorly of scores originally being low. Honestly, most schools will combine multiple sittings because it helps our admissions profiles to help you in such a manner. I am personally very impressed when I see a student has raised his or her score by a significant amount.</p>
<p>4) Study, Study, Study. 20 minutes a day for a month or more has been shown statistically significant in improving scores for most students. You do not need to spend loads of money at a test prep place. Buy a book or maybe some fun software and be diligent. I know someone who increased her GRE score (SAT’s for college kids) by over 300 points from first practice test to actually test. It can be done. Poor thing nearly cracked under the strain, but she did it.</p>
<p>5) NEVER tell anyone you are a bad test taker, not even yourself. Why? Well first, admissions people hear it all the time and, unless you have a medical report proving an abnormality in processing information on standardized tests, it sounds like a weak excuse. Secondly, telling yourself you are a bad test taker is a horrible self fulfilling prophecy. Psychologists did some research and found out that, particularly with women, expecting poor performance on tests yields poor performance. Take that monkey off your shoulder: go in thinking you are going to rock that stupid test. Own it. Don’t second guess, don’t change answers unless you are CERTAIN, and definitely don’t let yourself believe you are “bad test taker.” Most people are able to learn how to beat tests, and if you can’t you are in a world of hurt when it comes to attending college. College is full of tests folks.</p>
<p>I say definitely take it again, if anything your scores should improve drastically and show that you have the ability and determination to learn.</p>