SAT 100+ Point Increase-- doable?

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>Hello, I'm a junior in high school and I'm planning to take the SAT this coming March.
I've already taken one last November with a score of 2200:
770 in Math, 760 in Reading, and 670 in Writing</p>

<p>I'm not too worried about my Math, as the points I lost were due to an extremely simple error.</p>

<p>My Reading is really shaky, as can be seen on my practice tests (Barron's, Princeton Review, Blue Book), on which I've always gotten around a score of 700. I've found that I don't have as broad a vocabulary as I want, so I'm studying SAT vocab words from The Unofficial SAT Word Dictionary by Burchers and practicing my analysis for the passages. </p>

<p>My Writing score is probably the one that I am most unsure of. I get an average of 9's on my practice essays, and on the official SAT, I received a score of 8. I don't know what I can do about this given the amount of time I have until the test, but I'm constantly practicing essay writing in my English class.</p>

<p>On the multiple choice, I feel like I'd do well, because when I leaf through the practice tests, the questions seem relatively easy and simple, but when I take the tests, I constantly miss at least 5 questions. I find the big paragraph at the end of the writing section doable and rarely miss any of the questions relating to it, but I seem to stumble on the sentence correction section often. </p>

<p>I'm thinking of stopping the vocabulary studying in order to focus on my Writing, but is it wise? Also, what is the best way to study for sentence correction? I've taken multiple practice tests and a bunch of other worksheets in order to strengthen my grammar (as well as spend some time on the internet acting as a Grammar-Fixer-Upper.. It seems to be somewhat good practice as well as some fun, ehehe), but I'm not seeing too much improvements. The small nuances in the English language always trip me up, such as which words use "from" after it and which words don't.</p>

<p>May I have some advice on what to do, please?
Should I keep focusing on my vocabulary?
What can I do for my sentence corrections?
I thank you in advance. </p>

2

<p>If I got a 2200 on my first try, I would call it quits. At this point, there aren’t any colleges that would see your SAT I score as a weakness in your application, especially since you M+CR is 1530. You should start figuring out what SAT II tests you are going to take.</p>

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<p>Yeah I agree with immasenior. The writing score is the one that’s looked at less harshly, and you have a 2200 so you should be fine. But if you’re already planning on taking it again, a good thing to do for the essay is include history or talk about books you read in English class (or you could make up a story about someone or include some not blaringly fake history). I took the SAT three times and I got an 11 and a 12 when i included history and talked about books whereas when I wrote about something hypothetical, I got an eight. Also, include semicolons, colons, commas, transitional phrases/words, etc if you know how to use them correctly (using a semicolon or something incorrectly or in a way that muddles up the essay just hurts the score).
As far as the MC goes, just continue studying grammar. <a href=“http://www.theyuniversity.net/”>http://www.theyuniversity.net/&lt;/a&gt; has some really helpful grammar facts and mentions some study guides helpful for the SAT. I learned the most about the “fine tuning” grammar skills from them. Also, memorizing idioms is SUPER helpful. Like super duper friggen helpful. Sparknotes also has a really good study guide and has a good grammar section. </p>

<p>Personally, I would put all my focus into getting my writing score in the same range as my M&CR scores, and I wouldn’t put any more focus into the reading section. A 760 is amazing, and trying to get a higher score is unnecessary (as long as you aren’t trying to get into a ridiculous program where everyone has a 2400). </p>

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<p>I’m with immasenior on this one. Be proud of yourself cuz that’s a great score and move on to some other tests!</p>

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<p>Knowing that @Mahkookeh is aiming for a 2300+ on the SAT, I would assume that he is planning to apply to ‘top-tier’ colleges, which means that a 2200 is not really good enough (unless he applies to colleges that overlook writing score like Williams). I think Writing is the most improve-able section of the SAT, as the rules of grammar are pretty straightforward and there’re certain ways of “hacking the essay”.
See AcademicHacker’s post for advice on the essay: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/645763-how-write-12-essay-just-10-days.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/645763-how-write-12-essay-just-10-days.html&lt;/a&gt;
About the sentence corrections, check out SparkNotes Seven Deadly Screw-Ups, which I find very helpful.</p>

<p>Now, about the vocabulary, I would recommend that you should ONLY study vocabulary from The Essential 500 and Direct Hits (the latter being the more favorable). Seriously, there’s no way of prediciting which words will show up on the test and the best vocabulary lists are the ones that do not pretend they are more than just a list of words that appeared earlier on the test. You don’t need to learn around 3500 words from Barron’s, more than half of which, I believe, are taken from the dictionary and probably will never show up on the test. Trust me, just get yourself Direct Hits and you’re fully equipped for the SAT.</p>