<p>Weenie: the The Official SAT study guide for the new SAT includes 8 (or 9?) practice tests. They aren't actual old release tests: since this is a new SAT there aren't any to release! This is the book to have. You can use it for PSAT prep also. (There is a section in the book that addresses this issue.) Basically the PSAT is the SAT without the essay, and without Algebra II on the math section. This is the only book we are using to prep with. Time is short and DS's attention and cooperation is limited, so this is the only book we will need. HTHs!</p>
<p>Atomom - (I'm way off topic here...) The tightwadders Gazette helped change my life... it was like a revelation! The whole concept of "most bang for the buck", and "reuse,borrow or do without". We made significant changes to our lifestyle - seen by some as extreme but not really a hardship... (I remember siphoning out the bathtub to water the plant, handwashing all the plastic bags to use again, and the whole family around the kitchen table kneading our weekly 6 loaves of whole-wheat bread) We later ended up helping to build our own house, which we could afford to do due to following the frugal plan. Somehow, as our incomes rose, we got lazier and less frugal - and now I'm afraid that we buy our carrots pre-scrubbed and in bite size pieces, and all the bread is store-bought. Still, if DS makes NMF and is so inclined, I will gladly send him to Univ. of Florida to take advantage of their very generous offer for oos NMFs - thus being EXTREMELY frugal in regards to college expenses. LOL.</p>
<p>I have worked with my daughter on studying for the sat's. I hasn't been of much value for several reasons. When she uses the CB blue book, she scores close to 800 on each test and easily finishes within the time frame. However when she took the test in May, she scored 150 points less on each section. At first I couldn't figure this out. I then had her take a practise test that is given out when you register for the test. Surprise - she score 150 points lower on this test also. Clearly the actual tests are significantly trickier than in the blue book which is a joke. When you look at the questions rated H for the CB tests and actual tests, you will find there are a lot more H questions in the actual tests. Any comments as to how to find more realistic questions. Actually my daughter finds the blue book tests so easy, she finishes them with a great deal of time to spare. The only realistic part of the CB blue book are the essays.</p>
<p>Essay topic: Raised by tightwads ;)</p>
<p>Three years ago I was too cheap to pay for a prep course for my son. He didn't want it anyway. But he was clueless about the importance of the test, and convinced himself that since he did well on high school tests without major effort he could also ace this one. I didn't listen to him, and rather than browbeat him, gave him a reward. I think I paid him to take practice tests for several Saturdays in a row; I went over the tests with tips following.</p>
<p>The result was very good. Yes, I feel guilty about paying the darn kid. I envy the parents of kids here who are motivated to study. But my kid was a great self-starter in school, so I it seemed right to help him past his ignorance about the importance of a good score.</p>
<p>The $40 or so I paid him has translated into about $60,000 in aid at a good school. </p>
<p>Last bit of advice: remember that scores aren't everything. My son got 1530 or so on the old SAT. Because of other quallities he got into a school that turned away at least a third of its 1600 scorers that year. </p>
<p>I just don't think it's worth torturing yourself if your kid is clueless and immature and needs to be bribed to study!</p>
<p>SBmom- I think your son and mine would be plotting together. I'm REALLY jealous of all you parents out there who can actually work with your kids, especially boys. Right now my son is in full-blown male teenager land which means constant mumbling, slouching, eye-rolling and complete exasperation with a mother who dares to ask such intrusive questions as "how was your day?"</p>
<p>fredo, exactly. </p>
<p>Somehow, I am particularly oiffensive to him when I attempt <em>any</em> light humor, which earns me an expression of such contempt that, if I had not already learned to how activate my maternal force field, I'd be fried to a crisp.</p>
<p>OTOH, he occasionally gets into my lap or bear-hugs me.</p>
<p>Such is the hormonal rollercoaster.</p>
<p>"Actually my daughter finds the blue book tests so easy, she finishes them with a great deal of time to spare. The only realistic part of the CB blue book are the essays."</p>
<p>One of the test that was given in March 2005 is now available online. You may want to check your daughter's zcore on this official and compare to her previous scores. As I wrote before, there are six extra test available for whomever suscribe to the TCB online course. </p>
<p>As far as the realism of the tests, despite your daughter's variable results, there is nothing better than the official tests. The blue book was composed by combining old released tests with the new material. In the same vein, the new tests offered in Match, May, and June were also a combination of the old material plus 10-15% of new material. At this time, it is hard to voice a less speculative opinion since the tests of May or June have not been released yet. However, it the test of March 2005 is an indication, the difficulty of the test has not been increased in general, and may actually be easier for some students. </p>
<p>This said, some students experience great difficulty to duplicate their practice scores, as the conditions might be different when taking the "real thing", stress is greater at a test center, proctors may mess up as far as timing and breaks, bathroom breaks might not be available, noise at the center, and the list goes on.</p>
<p>What my kid got on his last few blue book practice tests was almost exactly what he got on the March (new) SAT. (He even went up a bit on the reading section). I thought the blue book tests were very helpful and in line with the actual tests, but it probably depends on the student and the testing session. Stress/time limits/environment of the actual test could help/hurt some students' scores. (Probably helped my kid--quiet room at real test vs. six screaming siblings during practice tests).
fredo/SB: Mumbling, slouching, eye rolling, bickering, backtalk, hormones, etc. all here, too. Nothing to be jealous of.</p>
<p>Xiggi:</p>
<p>You are missing my point. The CB blue book tests have far fewer "hard" problems - you can count them. The blue book tests and the practise test handed out when registering for the test were taken under exactly the same conditions - our house. The questions were clearly trickier and the scores that I calculated on that test were within 10 points on each of sections of the May test - ~150 points less on each section than the cb blue book. The actual test unlike the blue book tests are purposely constructed to confuse the test taker. For example with the math there would be a lot of extraneous information that confused even me - I have a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. I've looked at both tests and the differences were huge.</p>
<p>Xiggi - where is the March 2005 test available on TCB site? I've looked and can't locate it.</p>
<p>DocT, I do not think that I missed your point as much as I have to disagree with your conclusion, mostly because of the lack of material to compare. </p>
<p>For what it is worth, the number of questions marked easy, medium, or hard are meaningful and serve only as a small indication of the difficulty. Inamsuch as the original 8 tests available in the blue book were an amalgam of past questions that WERE used as well as a few new ones, there is one undisputable evidence: the March 2005 was the real test given and it did respect the same longitudinal norm of the test since 1946 and so did the May and June test. This fact is easily the most important at ETS/TCB In other words, the real test of May was exactly comparable to the March test. And, what information do we have? The March test, and only the March test. </p>
<p>I am not sure what you are using as basis for your comparison, but unless you compare official released test, I do not see how you could attempt to define any kind "yardstick". Unless I missed something, from your earlier posts, you label the tests in the Official Study book as jokes and decree the May test much more difficult. For this to be true, the March test should also be much more difficult than the test released in the Official Study guide. From my personal and subjective review, I found the test easier than several of the last tests that were offered prior to March 2005. </p>
<p>In the meantime, the tests released by TCB are the ONLY ones that deliver correct prognostics of future tests. Also, the overwhelming majority of posters report that their last practice tests are usually in line with the real tests. Before the changes of March 2005, we had access to a HUGE library of releeased tests. For instance, I have close to fifty tests that WERE administered, so you cannot get more realistic than that. </p>
<p>As far tricky or trickier questions, this is mostly an illustration of the various levels of preparation of students. The SAT presents problems in an arcane way, but also in a very predictable way. Anyone can eliminate the impact of "tricky" questions by practicing and developing a better sense of reasoning. Falling for a tricky questions is almost never due to a lack of knowledge but the same cannot be said for a lack of ADEQUATE preparation. The more time one spends on the SAT, the easier it becomes. This is one of the reason that the test is trivial to most tutors and instructors, and most tutors worth their salt will score close to perfect scores.</p>
<p>You get access to the March 2005 tests by logging in at the site and proceed to this page:</p>
<p>The College Board lets you review the SAT online course. The test you can check for free is the March 2005. They have the detailed explanations available in the scoring section.</p>
<p>
[quote]
We recently introduced key enhancements to The Official SAT Online Course to make the service more valuable to students and educators. These changes are designed to provide students with more official SAT® practice and educators with better tools for class management.</p>
<p>For Students
More practice tests. We have increased the number of practice tests from three to six, plus the pre-test, to give students more opportunities to practice before test day. </p>
<p>Updated pre-test. The pre-test is now the March 2005 SAT, providing online course users access to the first new SAT administered by the College Board. The same test will appear in the 2005-2006 SAT Preparation Booklet and SAT Preparation Center.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Thanks, Xiggi.</p>
<p>That March test was downloaded and my daughter took the test in our house. Her scores were significantly lower than any Blue book practise test. Yes the questions in the blue book may have come from prior tests but the number of tricky questions on any one of those tests is less than on the actual test. I am saying that if someone gets 2 "H" questions wrong on the math portion for example and there are only 3 "H" questions in the whole Blue book math test, the results will be different than if the test has 6 "H" problems. There is a significant probability that more will be answered incorrectly. Just because questions in the blue book are from previous tests, doesn't mean that the distribution of tricky questions is the same. My daughter isn't the only one that this happens to. I know a number of students who have taken SAT courses and scored very well in practise tests and blown the actual tests. Contrary to what some people assume, it isn't due to nervousness during the actual test. A lot of these students didn't have a clue that they screwed up. My daughter when she took the actual test in May thought she did very well, only to be surprised with the results.</p>
<p>My D is not strong in Math but was educated in Europe where the curriculum is more challenging than in most US public high schools.
On practice tests, she sometimes gets E and M questions wrong but H questions right. I assume this ranking is just based on frequency of students getting certain questions right-- so subjective or personal factors may influence an individual performance.</p>
<p>pyewacket: You might also want to see if you can notice a trend on subject material. Maybe she's stronger at either algebra or geometry. That could also explain why she is getting some (commonly considered) hard questions right and some (commonly considered) easy questions wrong.</p>
<p>Strong math students often report making "silly" mistakes on easier questions. When a question looks too easy, one tends to relax a bit too much, and ends up missing the question altogether. Since ETS loves to provide an anwer that is the exact opposite of the correct answer, the incorrect answer looks plausible and the tester moves on. Since the question was easy, the same students will probably NOT go back and review that question. </p>
<p>This type of error usually take the form of missing a small detail or answering the wrong question. It is easy to provide the surface when the question asks for a perimeter, to answer for y when the question asks for x, to answer for x when the questions asks for minus x. </p>
<p>This is where concentration comes in. It is human to start the test with more nervousness than solid concentration.</p>
<p>My son used a combination of kaplan and pr to review bits of math and grammer that had somehow blown by him in HS. He also received some of the tutor money that we didn't have to spend. </p>
<p>Mistakes not to make: some of the math books, Gruber's and Barrons in particular, require a lot of concentration and time. If you don't get deeply into the program, they can do more harm than good, IMO.</p>
<p>beck, </p>
<p>You're right about that. Since my D is not aiming for 800, she's practicing quicker recognition of the types of problems she can do, so she skips what's hard for her.</p>