<p>hey guys, thanks for the advice.
so I'm not real big (at all) on prepping for any sort of test, especially standardized, and went into this SAT without prep.
I took the SAT in June for the first time (was sick in March) and received a 2140 - here's a breakdown of my scores with a comment or two</p>
<p>Math - 740 - it's a good score, but I made two stupid mistakes (apparently) and as someone who scores high on AIME, places high in state math team, etc., I kind of expected an 800</p>
<p>Writing - 730 - quite satisfied with this, though could probably improve 10 on essay as I wasn't 100% sure on what to do</p>
<p>Critical Reading - 670 - a decent score, not sure if it's good enough</p>
<p>I guess my question is two-fold: do I take the SAT again, and if so, will prepping a little bit (I refuse to do anything crazy) improve my scores somewhat noticeably?</p>
<p>Supposedly your score goes up as you take more exams. Taking practice exams from the blue book would let you get that effect without paying for actual exams. So if you don’t really feel like studying extensively, just take a practice test every weekend or so and see if you get any better.</p>
<p>If you’re posting on here, I’m guessing you’re not happy with your scores. If you’re not happy with your scores, there’s no harm in trying again.</p>
<p>I think since you are now familiar with the test having taken it once that you could score 800s in math and writing the second time around just by your first test-taking experience. You don’t necessarily need to dedicate study time if you want to get an 11 or a 12 on the essay. There was likely no problem with the examples you used on the June SAT if you got a 10. Next time just try to use more reasoning in your argument.</p>
<p>I would focus on critical reading. I assume that 670 means that you got 9 wrong and omitted 1 (I got the same thing in June). This might mean that in each section you got, roughly, 1 vocabulary question wrong and 2 passage-based questions wrong. The first thing you need to do is to do critical reading practice sections (if you don’t want to buy a book, just use one of the many practice tests distributed online by the College Board over the years; here’s a link to a thread with several links of them: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/757034-college-board-sat-test-links.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/757034-college-board-sat-test-links.html</a>). Keep doing these sections until you get an 800 in one of them. This will boost your confidence. If vocabulary is a problem, just buy one of the Direct Hits books (there are 2 editions containing a combined total of 400 words, but I reckon you wouldn’t like that). </p>
<p>Overall, it seems like you don’t need to do much. Just take a few practice sections (or tests).</p>
<p>So, to answer your question–you should take the SAT again, and it is quite reasonable that you could pull off something like 800/800/740 in reading (4 wrong, or 5 omits) with very minimal studying. That would be a 200 point increase. I think you can do it since you didn’t study the first time. Just open up one of those links and do a section!</p>