SAT Feedback/retake suggestions

<p>I'm a current Junior. I am in the IB program and thus go to school with a highly competitve crowd whom I will have to compete against for college admissions.
I am horrible at standardized testing.
I just got my scores for the December SAT (first time taking it).</p>

<p>My score is: 2150</p>

<p>Math: 800
Writing: 720 (10 on essay)
Reading: 630</p>

<p>Since I am Russian and English is my third language I didn't expect anything great from the verbal section, but I know I have to improve it.
I know I have to retake but here's my dilemma:</p>

<p>There is a testing day in January and one in March. If I wait till march, I will be stressing for an other 3 months about this and possibly forget everything I studied up until now (I did a lot of prep). Though, I will have more time to study. January is pretty close. I am on break now so I have time to prepare, but the SAT is almost at the same time as school finals.
My mom says I should take the January one and get it over with. I think I agree with her but I wanted to get some more opinions about the best way to raise my score. Would a prep course be useful? </p>

<p>Also, can someone give me a brief summary of how the SAT now works with colleges? I know you don't have to send any scores you don't want anymore, but how does the thing work where they take the best in each section? Someone told me about that... but I've no idea how true it is and how many colleges do it.
I'm afraid of doing worse on math and writing (I never expected to get over 700 on that one)</p>

<p>Any other feedback and/or comments on my SAT's would be highly appreciated :)</p>