<p>Hi!
I'm a sophomore- can anyone give me tips on the SAT?</p>
<p>Winter break started two weeks ago, and for the entire time, I have been going to a SAT group tutor with my friends. We have practice tests every day and we go over them but I really don't think the tutoring is helping at all. After two weeks, I haven't seen an increase at all in my score.</p>
<p>I got a 1650, 1730, 1880, and a 1800 on some recent practice tests.
(Average: CR- 580, MATH-620, WRITING- 600)</p>
<p>The people in my study group are scoring extremely well. We're all sophomores, but everyone else is scoring in the 2000~2200 range. I'm started to feel very inferior and stupid around them, especially because they like to rub it in my face. They're slightly mocking how 'the top sophomore student is scoring so low.' Am I doing very poorly or are they just doing abnormally well? :(</p>
<p>I thought I was quite smart- I'm going to a very competitive private school in the states and I'm one of the top in my grade. I'm taking 2 AP classes at school and am maintaing an A+ average in all my classes. But the SATs are just killing me. </p>
<p>The SAT classes are just making us practice the SAT, but I really want to actually LEARN sentence structure, how to approach the critical reading section and how to solve the math in the SAT. Can you give me any tips on how to do this?</p>
<p>First of all: Keep your scores to yourself.</p>
<p>I think the national average is like 1500, so you’re above that.
Scores above 2000 are highly above average and it sort of bothers me that anyone has parents rich/OCD enough to pay for an SAT class when their kid’s score is already almost perfect. What you’re getting is normal and you just need to study more. </p>
<p>Take a lot of practice tests. It seems like just knowing the structure of the test can raise your score. </p>
<p>For the critical reading/writing stuff, get a prep book from the library or something and actually read it and pay attention. It goes over grammar rules and I thought it was interesting because I hadn’t known all of them before.
Study vocab. If you have a lot of trouble with this, I recommend the ACT.
With the sentence structure, it’s important to make sure the answer you choose doesn’t have redundancy or ambiguity.</p>
<p>In the math section…know geometry and algebra very well. The ACT has some trig but I don’t think the SAT does. I feel like there are a lot of questions about angles, so know the rules about transverses and corresponding angles and vertical angles and all that. Don’t make dumb arithmetic mistakes. Know how to read charts/graphs. They try to trick you a lot in this section, so make sure you read the questions carefully. The easier questions are in the beginning, so answer them well first.
When you calculate the area of a circle or anything involving pi, don’t approximate the value of pi. Just leave it the way it is, because the answer choices will be something like 16pi, 8pi, etc.</p>
<p>The essay doesn’t actually count that much toward your score, so just make it decent. They grade them in like two seconds. Longer essays tend to get higher scores.</p>
<p>Use the Blue Book to supplement your SAT Test Prep if you’re not already,</p>
<p>Also, try the ACT.</p>
<p>And ignore your friends, it does them more harm to be focused on one little score in the big scheme of things. You’re still the top sophomore as they say, so don’t forget it.</p>