<p>I'm in need of help!!
I'm at the end of my junior year in high school and I feel like I am crazy screwed. I've taken the SATs twice and the highest score I got was just over a 1500 which is SIGNIFICANTLY lower then where I want it to be. ideally I would like it to be more around the 1900 range. I've taken the ACT once and I got about a 24 and I would like it to be closer to (or) a 30. The next time I'm taking them is the beginning of next school year (fall 2014)</p>
<p>My main problem is the little devil known as procrastination. Its not that I'm not interested in learning; usually what I'm doing when I'm procrastinating is researching things that interests me, its that those things and what i need to be learning about never seem to line up.</p>
<p>WHAT I NEED FROM YOU GUYS AND GALS:
- tips on how to keep from procrastinating
- study tips (SAT and ACT)
- best books and/or methods you found the most helpful
- general motivation to keep at it
- any other advice you have to give </p>
<p>thank you so much! </p>
<p>Get a prep book. Make a schedule for studying. Turn off your phone, turn off your iPod, turn off your computer, turn off your Internet. Go to a quiet place, remove all distractions, make sure no one will bother you. For that time, you are not allowed to do anything else. You are not allowed to go to the bathroom, get a snack, talk to friends, or research interesting things while you are taking timed practice tests. Then you go back and go over every single answer you missed. Then you reward yourself, when you are done, with some relaxation time, and do it all over again the next day.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Tips on how to keep from procrastinating: Check your social media before you start your work. It seems to be a big time sapper these days, so spend 20-30 minutes checking everything, and then throw your laptop into a corner until you’ve studied for an hour straight. </p></li>
<li><p>Study Tips: Review your basic math formulas/ theorems, vocab, and grammar rules. And then just keep taking practice tests. I did like 20 before I took the SAT, and 7 before the ACT. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>-Books:
*For the SAT: The Blue Book published by CollegeBoard. You can roam the internet, but if it has the CollegeBoard seal of approval on it, I’d use it. Princeton Review isn’t bad either.<br>
*Reading: Barron’s CR book
*Writing: McGraw Hill
*For the ACT: The Red Book published by Peterson’s. For some reason, there is significantly less material available for the ACT than the SAT. This is the only book I’d recommend (and use the practice test on their site). </p>
<ul>
<li>General motivation to keep at it: <em>Just keep reminding yourself that the test is sooner than you think. When I took the test in October, I convinced my brain at the beginning of June that I was taking the test in September. This way, any extra time I had in September just felt like a bonus.
*Keep reminding yourself that you don’t want your scores to limit where you apply. That was the biggest motivation for me. I didn’t want anyone telling me that I shouldn’t apply to my dream school because my numbers were too low. So I worked my </em> off for 5-6 weeks (I literally was sleeping, breathing and eating the test) in order to get the scores I got. </li>
</ul>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>I’d set a goal and a reward for yourself if you manage to reach that goal. My reward was Galaxy S4. loool Worked pretty well imo.</p>
<p>Print out your SAT and ACT scores in a large font on a piece of paper and tape it to your wall where you will see it when you get out of bed every morning.</p>
<p>This should be a good reminder to yourself when you start your day where you stand, and that you need to dedicate some time every day to trying to improve your scores.</p>