<p>First, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm a freshman in college and would like to re-take the SAT so I can get out of the crappy community college I'm going to right now and have a better chance of getting accepted to UMBC. Please confirm if it's possible for me to take the SAT now. I've heard it's possible. I'm 18 years old right now.</p>
<p>I've taken the SAT twice during HS and got 1400 on the first and then close to 1500 on my second test. I did study for the test but it was no use, I could not significantly increase my score. So I've joined this forum for advice on how to increase my score and I was surprised to see so many comprehensive guides. </p>
<p>I made this thread because I want to know if it's worth memorizing vocab or is it better to learn the roots, suffixes, and prefixes. Or should I do a bit of both? Also, I have the Direct Hits 2011 edition but I haven't used it yet so please advice on how I should improve my vocab for the SAT.</p>
<p>If you can do both, it will be perfect, but for me, I tend to only memorize the vocab. Sometimes there are really similarly-spelled words that for some you can use roots, suffixes, and prefixes to estimate the meaning while for others you can’t. For example, re means to do it again but some words that start with re might not have meaning of doing again. These confuse me a lot so I just memorize the whole word without thinking of roots, suffixes or prefixes. You should go with whatever fits you the best. </p>
<p>Just like you, I am currently studying Direct Hits 2011 edition (reading them as I am typing) and I read all the paragraphs that are used to describe the meaning of the main vocab. It takes time but after I finish reading all 200 vocabs, I go to the back of the book (Fast Review) and just keep reading them over and over again. Go take a break, read it one more time, go take a practice test, come back and read it one more time. As I read it again and again, I can remember it quite easily. </p>
<p>I am taking Jan 28th exam and hope both of us get good scores on the tests.</p>
<p>Both are equally important. If you want a full sentence completion multiple choice score, you’re going to do both. Memorize Direct Hits volumes 1 & 2, or 300 Essentials. Do a quick review on the prefixes, suffixes, and roots of words.</p>
<p>You know that your college GPA matters a thousand times more than the SAT, right? Seriously, for transferring, GPA/convincing essays are what makes or breaks the deal. Anyway, Direct Hits is awesome. I liked Barron’s Hot Words, too (only book I used). You don’t really need to know prefixes and suffixes well; you just need to have a general feel on a word’s feel (negative or positive) and remember some words that are similar.</p>
<p>The thing is, community college isn’t working for me. The teachers suck and the environment is terrible. Not a good learning environment at all. So my GPA isn’t that good either right now. I’m trying to improve it but I think if I get good SAT scores along with an okay college GPA, I can get transferred to a good university. That’s my plan and I think I should have enough time to study since my college classes don’t take a lot of my time and I’m not working these few months either. So this is the perfect time for me to study for something so I decided to re-take the SAT. Also, thank you all for your advice. I will use both methods.</p>