I’ve been practicing on khan academy and was disappointed that my reading score has stayed the same. I can’t learn it the way I learn math and I feel stuck. I find myself guessing on a lot questions too. I don’t know if I should just spend my time trying to perfect my math or is there a better way to study for the reading section?
Once upon a time, two SATs ago, I taught SAT prep for a national company. And the bad news is the reading section score is very stubborn. There are a few read the question first, underline as you go tips, but the only real way to move the needle on the score is to read (especially non-fiction) a lot and take the strongest English and reading based history/ science classes possible. If you take challenging classes and read regularly for a year, you can improve it. So that’s what you need to do, if you have time.
The good news is that the math and writing & language sections are preppable. So focus there. My kid was able to go from missing 9 on the language and writing test to missing 3 on the last practice and 2 the day of by focusing on that section and working a few problems everyday for a month and reading the official SAT guide on what they were testing.
Good luck!
I did take college level english and history classes last year and I think that helped but I’m a senior now so I don’t have a lot of time. I got 41/52 on reading and 27/44 on writing. Do you think I can significantly improve my writing?
I think you stand a much better shot on writing than reading, and that their is room to make a significant difference.
Get the 8 Test official College Biard book. Work through the three or 4 four chapters on the writing test. Work through recommended Kahn Academy sections. And sit for the writing section in a timed setting for each of the 8 tests. They are not that long— about a half hour. My kid was able to go from 9 misses to 2 with about 5 hours of work— doing what I just outlined, minus Kahn Academy.
If you have a solid English background, I don’t see why going from 17 misses to 7 is unrealistic. Focus hard on just that section, especially if your target college superscores. Read the chapters to understand what they are testing. Then take the test again and again. Read the explanations and understand why you miss every problem you get wrong.
I obviously don’t know your specifics. But yes, I think with your profile, that is a good place to get points.
Good Luck!
Yes. 27/44 suggests that even mastering the grammar should get you a lot of points, and SAT grammar can be mastered very, very quickly if you study and practice the right stuff. Good luck!
My sister told me about Princeton Review so I decided to do a little research. I found them on reviews.com and bunch of other sites. They seem to have some negative reviews, and some positive. My sister and her son swore by it so I decided to take the plunge. The price was not much different from other places, but it was not cheap. Overall, I would agree with my sister’s recommendation.
The SAT Black book, along with the official College Board book of eight tests is a great way to learn how the SAT tricks you with their questions and how to take the test. I know many kids that jumped after using the Black Book to learn how to take the test that have had significant jumps in their scores.
I know how you feel, I have been in your position before. For my first SAT, my reading/grammar score was a 520, which stressed me out because I was a straight A student, and usually did good in english class.
Lucky for you, the grammar section is arguably the easiest section to improve on. After only a few hours of reading and memorizing grammar rules, I went from getting 10+ questions from to only getting 1 or 2 wrong. I know that you only mentioned struggling in reading, but if you get your grammar score up, then you can afford to struggle a little bit in the reading.
While improving on the reading section is more difficult than improving on the grammar section, it is still very possible. The most important thing that I did to improve my reading score was changing my mindset. Instead of giving up after a hard question, I told myself “the answer is somewhere in the text, I just have to find it.” that, along with doing many practice tests, helped me improve my score by a significant amount.
Thanks everyone! I was able to improve reading and writing from 620 to 680.