So I have practically been living off of cc posts but wanted to know how to bring up my junior psat of 181 to
an sat score of 2200+ I have about a month and a half left before the actual test in March!! I find it super hard to find a balance between sat and school work. I go to a very competitive school and take AP physics and calculus (which is very time consuming).
MY STUDY PLAN:
I plan on doing 3 sections daily even on weekdays and taking a real timed SAT exam from the BB. I also have a winter break in February where I will do a practice exam daily from both the BB and PR 11 practice exams books.
-Math Section: I already own the “Kaplan math workbook” and the “Gruber’s complete guide to SAT Math workbook” so I am going to go over these books in about a week.
-Grammar Section: I recently bought the “Ultimate Guide to Sat Grammar” by Erica and plan to complete that book the week following the completion of the math books.
CR Section: I have the Barron's SAT flashcards and go over them everyday on the school bus and plan to go over the whole set again by March. Other than that, I am not really doing anything for this section because its the hardest to improve on and my worst. I feel practicing will make my CR score better though.
Do you guys feel this will be enough for me to bring my 181 on the psat to a 2200+ on the sat? (Oh and this the first time I will be taking the SAT)
I had a 180 PSAT score and i ended up achieving a superscored SAT score of 2130.
My first score was 2050, and I began to regularly tutor for SAT Math, which boosted my math score from 640 to 720.
The secret is to do problem, after problem, after problem, after problem… Obsession. Pretty much the secret to be exceptional at anything, I believe.
-You have to focus completely and eliminate all distractions. Go to the answer sections of your SAT books for Math and Reading as well and look at the how they interpret the answers.
-Don’t begin to time yourself too quickly, just go easy on your brain at first and try to figure out how to understand SAT-type questions and reason out the answer.
-You will soon figure out if you keep a steady obsession with doing well on the SAT that a lot of the questions are structured in a similar way. Once you reach this point you will know how to work your way around the problem by getting in the head of the person who wrote the problem in the first place.
But all this takes lots of dedication and reading and doing lots of problems.
-I used Princeton and College Board.
-Also for the vocab, focus on learning prefixes and suffixes and not so much memorizing the words. you will find that it is more handy to put together the definition of a random word using pre/suffixes than just wasting time learning 1000 words for a total of like 25 vocabulary words on a single exam.
-Lastly, if you are not focusing while you are studying, then you are wasting your time. You need to constantly be processing the information at this rate. If you notice you are too tired, get some sleep and concentrate the next day.
I think it’s possible to improve as much as you want but your goal will take lots of work. However, I was able to improve 300+ points, if I could, certainly you can as well and MUCH higher than that. Hope that helps.
CR was my worst area. The secret there is concentration and becoming familiar with the type of problems. Also develop a good strategy to not waste time - i like looking at the questions first and answering them in a random order to be as efficient as possible.
When i took the SAT for the first time, I got a CR of 700, and I honestly was shocked.
The second time around, there was a moment where I was out of focus and lost track of time, and I had the worst feeling about it for weeks. What do you know, my score shot down to a 600. Good thing superscores exist
So yeah, concentrate and really try to block out mental distractions for that one.
Thank You So Much!! Wow your story is really motivational Hopefully I’ll get into the habit of incorporating the SAT into my daily schedule and practice daily.
CR is a bummer. I end up getting distracted when the passages get longer and usually second guess my self a lot for the questions. I’ve been noticing patterns with the question structure when I do sections from my PR book so I just need to practice a bit more.
I had a 183 PSAT and pulled myself up to a 2130. Improvement is possible. I highly recommend Princeton Review, Gruber and Barrons books. Barrons SAT 2400, Barrons SAT Critical Reading Workbook, Princeton Review Power Vocab and Grubers Critical Reading Workbook. They helped me pull my scores up and get my stuff together.
For math, you just have to know the concepts and remember them. It’s important to not get tricked when you’re in the room and go for the Joe Bloggs answer. Math was my hardest to pull up but I managed.
CR was my weakness. Went from 59 PSAT to 760 SAT. You have to go with a strategy that works for you. I read the passages and then go to the questions. I remembered definitions obviously (not like flash card memorization) but like actually knowing what bellicose means. If you don’t know a definition, work off the ones you do know and go from there for POE (process of elimination)
For writing, it’s basic English. Know your idioms and don’t be tricked.
Don’t worry about timing yourself just yet. Familiarize yourself with the questions and the format. Then worry about timing. Don’t underestimate the essay either. It affects your writing score. About finding time for studying, focus about an hour a day to start. Either in the morning, afternoon, or evening. Doesn’t matter, just focus some time on it.
School requires us to take practice SATs every few months now. I took my first one a while back. I didn’t know the format or anything, got a 1980 (800 CR, but Math/Writing were disasters). My latest score was a 2160, and a few months ago I got a 208 soph PSAT.
Here are my tips. Looking at my friends, CR is the hardest section to raise. I’m really lucky because I love reading, but I can honestly say the only way to get better at CR is practice. Yes, there are a few strategies that can help you along the way, but the main part is practice. Keep in mind that reading anything can help you with CR. I recommend reading short essays and news articles.
Writing was easy to raise for me because what I failed was really the essay. If you review your basic grammar rules, you’ll be fine for the multiple-choice. For the essay, just learn the structure and keep a (figurative) cheat sheet of a few examples that are good in any context. If you’re good at it, consider making up examples (which is what I do).
Math is supposed to be the easiest to raise because it isn’t subjective like the others–it’s just applying formulas. I really struggled with functions, ratios, 3d geometry… I haven’t really gotten around to studying it though so I’m not sure how true this is.
One thing I like about studying for the SAT is that it automatically makes you better at schoolwork as well. Improving math and writing obviously help, but getting better at CR will help you all around with your analysis skills.
I raised my score around 200 points just by learning the format, learning the essay, reviewing grammar and basic math. I haven’t actually prepped for it, but I’m going to start soon. Reason I’m doing this so early is that I want to take the “old” SAT before it ends, so I only have 2015 to take it. I’ll probably do my first one at the same time as you (Spring) and do another one in Winter if I’m not happy.
Current junior, I took an SAT last year as a sophomore and I scored a 2220.
As everybody mentioned, CR is very hard to raise; practice and a lot of familiarity will help you the most here. Math section is very straightforward (just apply the formulas and don’t make careless mistakes, the content is not very difficult). The writing section score can be improved a lot by studying vocabulary and grammar rules. A major portion of this section is identifying grammatical and punctuation mistakes, so learn your grammar rules and your score will easily go up by 150-200 points. I used www.englishpage.com when I studied, this is a great resource. Just go through each lesson and do the practice, it’s great help for the SAT.
Tutoring may also help in some cases, but I found self-studying to be the most effective method for me. Do a lot of practice tests and see where you stand, work on the things you need to improve on.
Also, figure out how to optimize your score by seeing how many questions you should skip (i.e, if your writing score is below a 680, consider skipping a couple of questions to avoid the penalty)
I don’t know about the idea of CR being harder to raise…
When I was a sophomore I had like a 60 or something on CR (had always been my worst standardized test section by far) and the next year I somehow jumped to a 79 on CR for the PSAT (which ended up being what made me a national merit semifinalist) and a perfect score on the ACT’s reading section without really studying that section specifically at all.
I mean I know that my experience is really rare and all, but it definitely goes to show that CR can be improved very quickly.
I am not sure about the 2200 but a score of 2000 is a real possibility. Firs of all if time is a limiting factor you should pay more attention to CR and M and less to writing since a lot of colleges look mostly for the CR+M. Obviously I am not saying not to study at all or that it does not matter but if you are pressed for time you should prioritize. Second, in order to score higher the first step is not to learn harder things but to make sure you answering correctly the stuff you already know. For example in math I would not spend most of my time trying to attack really tricky questions or questions that you have no idea how to solve. Were you able to identify any of your weaknesses? That would be a key. For example again in math do you make careless mistakes such as answer what y is while the question asks what x is? Or answer what x is while the question asks what 2x is? Do you make a lot of “stupid” mistakes while you know exactly what you need to do and you are ok with the concepts? If you identify a few weaknesses then you should prioritize practicing for those. Same for CR. Do you have NO idea how to answer or are you frequently stuck between 2 answers that both could be true? One thing that might help for CR is to check the answer immediately. For example in question 20 you answered A. Check immediately to see if A is the right answer. This way you have very fresh in your mind why you chose A and you do not need to go back to the test and read again etc. You kind of save some time. Also you will remember better if you were debating between A and the right answer and it might be more clear where your thought was wrong. It is key to understand why you make certain mistakes.
Anyway, do not try to jump ahead of yourself and be realistic. See what you can do in March and then you can work harder and bring up that score a second time.
I went from 201 PSAT to 2330 SAT. I think you have a good plan, but I have some ideas to make it more efficient.
IMO studying vocab is a complete waste of time. You could learn 500 words and have none of them be on the test. In terms of bang for your buck, I think 50 hours of studying vocab will equate to at most, at most a 30-40 point increase. This 50 hours will be better spent on the other sections, on improving your GPA, or on extracurricular activities that you enjoy and that will further your college application.
Taking a full test everyday will burn you out, and 3 sections a night is a lot to commit during the heart of Junior year. What worked for me was 2 sections a night during the 5 weekdays totaling 10 (A full test) and then taking a full timed sat every weekend.
Other thoughts: The CR section is all about making predictions. You need to read the question, come up with what would make sense for the answer in your head, and then look at the answers. If you look at the answers first (and this applies for vocab as well as passage reading) all of the answers begin to seem correct in your head.
The most important thing is that you go over all of your answers and think about why you got problems wrong. There never truly is just a “careless mistake.”
Thank you so much !! I read through you suggestions and now know that I shouldn’t be too upset if I don’t get a 2200 on the first time but I know the SAT is a very predictable with its questions so practicing will bound to increase my score.
I was also wondering if I should leave about 3 sat exams to do the week before the actual SAT…would that be too much and cause my score to decrease?
And has anyone taken one sat per day during a break… was it beneficial towards increasing you score (because i know its very tiring and may even cause my scores to drop) ?
If you look at the PSAT analysis CB says that 6% of students raise their score from 60 to 700 (in M and CR) and 8% in writing. I do not know how many raise all three sections simultaneously but there must be a “number”. So CB is seeing 300+ increases in their statistically analysis. To look suspicious you have to fall way in the edge of their statistics. Do not worry about that.
Hope that helps.