<p>i need to improve my essay writing and my critical reading (vocab is ok, but short/long passage needs A LOT of work)…</p>
<p>My issue for essay is coming up with solid ideas quickly…</p>
<p>any tips on those? </p>
<p>@College123college I actually find it easier to write essays for the SAT, because you can express your opinion more easily, rather than in school (well my school) where you are forced to use 3rd person, and not include “I” etc…</p>
<p>If you have had a lot of personal stories (be it humorous, frightening, or whatever), it’s easy to gather up evidence to support your agreement/disagreement on a prompt :)</p>
<p>For those of you who score/have scored around 700-800 on CR, do you guys ever guess answers in Sentence Completion, or do you ACTUALLY KNOW the words and get the answers right?</p>
<p>@SATManiac98 Knowing the roots does help with the origin/meaning ^-^</p>
<p>Any rising seniors? I feel like everyone here is a rising junior. </p>
<p>@music202 I’m a rising senior trying to attempt a 2200+ on this coming October SAT. </p>
<p>@SATManiac98 Awesome! I’m trying to attempt a 2000 or higher and I’m good. What did you get on your first time?</p>
<p>Soo do you guys have any advice for math? I got the pwn the sat math book but I don’t really understand it. I’m getting the same exact math score every single time I take a practice test. Any advice?</p>
<p>@music202 Review the places where you are getting it wrong such as: Geometry, Arithmetics, blah blah
you may have forgotten most of the stuff as a rising senior, since most of this was practiced in 9th/10th :p</p>
<p>@music202 My first time (taken last October in 2013) was only an 1800. My splits were 430 CR (worst!), 620 W (63 MC subscore, 8 essay), and 750 M (ran out of time so I had to guess on 3, and 2 of them were incorrect. math curve was 800/770/750/… pretty harsh). </p>
<p>I will be taking SAT for the 2nd time this October, hoping to acclaim a 2200+, with the splits of 800 M, 800 W (80 MC subscore, 10+ essay), and 600+ CR. I think I don’t always actively read in CR passages, and some “last-few” SC questions from each section (questions 4-5, 7-8, 5-6 respectively) involve luck with vocab. How focused do you really have to be in the passages? I’ve heard that you don’t need to know every single detail in passages.</p>
<p>@Phongtheha I don’t really have specific time allotments, and I feel like that would be detrimental for many (I know I would spend more time calculating how much time I have left than answering actual questions 
) But if you’re struggling on timing for CR, I would recommend going through and underlining the line references from the questions in the passage before you read, then just answer these questions as you go and save your bubbling for the end. I’ve been doing this and slowly bringing my score up on the BB practice tests, but everyone is different; I always end up with at least 5 min to spare on CR. For me, math is another story entirely!!!</p>
<p>@medicsz ive heard that you should only use personal examples for 1 example MAX… how do you come up with 2 other solid ideas, quickly (25 minutes to write the whole thing!)?</p>
<p>I wanted to ask quickly: are there any rising sophomores out there who want to take the old SAT before they change it? </p>
<p>My personal reason is that I don’t want to be the guinea pig for the new SAT. It might be better or worse, who knows. Plus there a lot of SAT review material for the old SAT and not a whole lot for the new one, so it seems best to just take it now instead of later.</p>
<p>I see that a good majority of the people posting here are juniors/seniors. I just kind of feel alone being a sophomore. :(</p>
<p>@lanflan Wow! Sometimes I just dont understand how on this Earth can people have that time to spare on CR. I guess it is becuz im international. Btw do you guys read the entire passage or JUST the place (some sentences up and down) that has the reference lines?
For instance, if a paragraph has a line ref 5-6, you only read from 1-7 and skip the rest that doesnt have reference? And if a paragraph doesn’t have any line reference, you skip that entire paragraph?</p>
<p>Btw. I guess it all comes down to luck! For both SC and Passages. I have memorized 3000+ words but sometimes there are still words that I dont know. Also, sometimes there are passages that are very easy to understand, in this case I do have some 1-2 mins to spare. On the other hand, sometimes there are passages that are ridiculously crazy, I have to come back to the text and reread 4-5 times to just grasp what it means! Not to mention to answer the questions.</p>
<p>My score range now is 600-670. Desperate to get that 700
@szluck13 I personally think that you should take the ACT instead of deciding whether to take the old or the new SAT. Because just like the Writing section, when the new SAT comes out, its totally new. Therefore colleges might not totally trust the test since they need time to experiment its credibility. Thus it will not be weighed as it should be. I think the safest way for you is to take the ACT.</p>
<p>@szluck13 I’m a rising sophomore and I’m taking the sat before the new one comes out. I’d rather not have only few resources to study for the new one and I personally like the sat over the act so I’m planning to take the PSAT this fall, sat in spring. One junior fall and one in January before it changes in march 2016. I’m hoping three will be enough.</p>
<p>There really is no template to which you should write your essay on the SAT, but you can say that it’s worked out best for the people who HAVE used it as only one example.</p>
<p>But in reality if you lack the motivation (eh not motivation: more of a you just aren’t a reader type of person), using your own personal experiences throughout the essay or even MAKING UP some of the personal experiences will help you find a way to support your reasoning easily.</p>
<p>Take the “Is deception every justified?” prompt from the SAT BB for example:
You can use real personal experiences for an example or two to support your claim that deception is justified, and if you run out of any other experiences that support the reason… rather than repeating similar situations that help you get to that point, you can make up an ‘experience of your own’ which will further prove your point.</p>
<p>I hope that helped!</p>
<p>@Phongtheha wow, you’re an international and you’re scoring that high? that’s impressive!</p>
<p>I read the whole passage because I can, but sometimes if I’m lazy at the end of the test I’ll just look at the question and then look for the answer in the passage without reading the whole thing, it works out ok I think because the SAT relies on direct evidence; obviously, reading the whole passage would still be best</p>
<p>@SATMania hi there! I’ve been consistently scoring in the high 700’s in blue book CR (and actually earned an 800 for the first time on a practice test today!)</p>
<p>I ALWAYS guess on vocal because 99% of the time you can do some combination of eliminating words, looking at the greek or latin roots, or relating some of the words to the media/other words you know. If there’re all truly 1-syllable words that you’ve never heard of and can’t break down at all then guess, but I’ve found that I get a lot of them right in which I just try and figure out which word SOUNDS like it would be something negative, etc.</p>
<p>I do genuinely know a lot of the words from vocal work at my school and studying flash cards (most books take their words from the Blue Book so I do end up knowing them) but I’ve still been correctly guessing on 2-3 questions per test</p>
<p>@medicsz There ARE templates for the SAT. By referring to different sources, I developed the template of my own, which can be used for most questions CB throws into me. In fact, I believe having a template is the key factor if you want a score above 10. I got 12 two times on my previous real SATs thanks to my template.</p>
<p>@College123college Don’t “literally” use personal examples! Instead, transform your personal experiences into FAKE Literary (historical) examples by creating “scholarly” names of books/historical events! However, like I have said, you should still prepare real examples from literature and history for your own sake as you will feel more confident on the real test.</p>
<p>I got 2 wrong, 3 omit and still got the same score as my 3w/3o. -_- How discouraging.</p>