<p>I'm a sophomore in high school in n.y. and want to take the SAT sometime later in the year. What should i do to prepare for the math portion and maybe the writing part. I got a 660 on the CR portion of the PSAT this year (98 percentile). i think a 560 in math and 580 in writing. please help!</p>
<p>Math-practice, practice, practice. math is a drilling type of subject; you have to get the experience to be able to do the problems. so go out and get some SAT prep books, and do the practice exercises for math. focus on the second half of each set, since those are the harder problems. when you do each set, look for the tricks and shortcuts to solve each problem. for the hard problems, they are usually hard b/c the trick to solve it is hard to find. hence the practice problems–the more experience you get with finding the trick, the better you’ll get at finding them.</p>
<p>Writing, it’s a matter of grammar. in the U.S. we don’t learn grammar, which completely screws up kids’ abilities to write. I think the education system decided not to have grammar taught because they “thought it was too boring and they wanted kids to do more creative things.” Anyhow, if you want a great score on the SAT writing, you’re going to need to learn grammar on your own or with a tutor. Most SAT prep books will have some “grammar rules” you should know–learn them. Sometimes paying 1000 bucks for an SAT writing class helps; there’s a lot of grammar, usage, and mechanics out there, and it helps to have an expert help you understand them.</p>
<p>in addition to learning grammar, to improve your writing score, do lots and lots and lots of writing problems. i got like 2394872349 packets of practice problems from the SAT writing class that I took. I did them all, and my score went up from a 590 to a 750.</p>
<p>thanks a lot! that helped a lot. What SAT prep books would you recommend?</p>
<p>Gruber<code>s if you want to gain basic knowledge and pull 600-650 but if you want to score more than 720-740 you need to get used to CB</code>s problems ;thats why i recommend you to use the Blue Book</p>
<p>what is the blue book and where can i get it? is that the same thing as CB’s official SAT prep guide with the 8 practice tests?</p>
<p>Yes</p>
<p>10char</p>
<p>what’s 10 char?</p>
<p>^posts on CC have to be at least 10 characters, so if you’re post isn’t at least 10 characters you add 10char so that you can make the post.</p>
<p>ok. where can i get the blue book though?</p>
<p>Amazon.com</p>
<p>I picked up the Blue Book at Barnes and Nobles…Borders, what have you. :]</p>