<p>yep. I've been getting around 650s on my CR for the last few months, and today I got a 560. </p>
<p>I don't feel the "brackets" do anything to me because most of the answers are after the brackets. Also, I'm prone to over-analyzing the information and searching for the "symbolism" of each noun (yea.. my english teacher pretty much forced us to overanalyze and now it's stuck on me ;/). This is basically how my brain operates when I go through a passage: I read it. I bracket all the sentence reference. Then when I come across the brackets i read the question and read the choices. And almost everytime I get it wrong. </p>
<p>How can I can improve to just a 700?</p>
<p>(p.s. I don't miss anymore SC, which I'm so glad. Thanks to all the people who recommended me those really useful links. Thank you so much!)</p>
<p>Simply remember that every answer will be supported by the passage. If your symbolism doesn’t have any textual support, and it’s simply something you projected onto the text, ignore it. The SAT won’t test you on symbolism, only on what’s directly written in the text.</p>
<p>Well… sometimes when I read the answer choice, it is worded really funny… Which makes me not understand it…</p>
<p>Tips?</p>
<p>schach - the problem with what you said is people like me and OP don’t necessarily see the connection in the passage quick enough so we occationally fall for the a logical answer that is not supported by the text. I have a max 630 CR and I usually miss between 3 and 6 per section. How do you recommend going about finding it in the passage and still keep time in mind.</p>
<p>Don’t overthink the answer choices. I know exactly what you mean: some answer choices are worded funny and don’t make any sense at a glance and that gave me problems, but I started really “looking” at the choice and taking it in literally and it helped a lot.</p>
<p>Cortana: Well I read something that doesn’t make sense, it’s natural for me to overthink and come up with a more “normal teenage-slag” language. How to you formulate something without overthinking?</p>
<p>@Caruso707: DUDE! We are basically on the same spot of the CR section! Let’s help each other on questions or something?</p>
<p>Cortana is right. Don’t try to justify choices and tell yourself why something could be right. Try to eliminate things based on why they are wrong. Using the given text, if any part of an answer is wrong, that answer is wrong. Find the answer that cannot be disproven by the text.</p>
<p>@dorkyelmo - I am okay with that. Let me know.</p>
<p>Okay. I understand about supporting your answer with the text. I don’t understand how to decipher oddly-written answer choices</p>
<p>Here is a question from the October 2011 SAT I got wrong. I looked at it for a good ~5 minutes and still couldn’t decipher it so I randomly guessed one of the 3 choices I narrowed down to.</p>
<ol>
<li>Which statement would the author of Passage 2 most likely make about the approach advocated in lines 28-33, Passage 1 (“First … facilities”)?</li>
</ol>
<p>A. It was once impractical but is now worth pursuing.</p>
<p>B. It now needs to be extended beyond the production of electricity.</p>
<p>C It involved more environmental risk than was justified.</p>
<p>D. It has been tried and thus far found wanting.</p>
<p>E. It underestimated the financial costs.</p>
<p>The correct answer is D, however I couldn’t figure out what it means during the test. Looking at it now, I understand the first part “it has been tried” but I didn’t understand “thus far found wanting.” Looking at it, you see that “thus far found” means that since it has been tried, we now realize what it is (in this passage it was the use of green energy sources) but I couldn’t figure out what “wanting” means. Taking a step back, knowing that “wanting” means that you are in desire of something, so if green energy sources are wanted and desired by humans, that means that green energy sources are uncommon and absent in quantity. In passage II, the author states “Unlike the usual green alternatives- water, wind, solar, and biomass - nuclear energy is here, now, in industrial quantities.” The “unlike” indicates that only small quantities of green energy alternatives exist, so they are found “wanting” and D is the clear answer. </p>
<p>I’ll look for more tough answer choices for more examples but I hope that helps.</p>
<p>I can’t give you any help for that one, since I don’t have the passage, but I could help you out with Qs you got wrong in the BB, if you want to post them. </p>
<p>One thing I’d suggest is to play devil’s advocate w/ the potential answers. If you’re stuck between two or three, go back to the passage and see which one is LEAST supported, rather than try to justify all the potential answers.</p>
<p>@cortana431: That actually helped cleared up some problems. I’ll definitely anazlyze it again. Please post more if you could. I’m still a bit confused.</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation as well :)</p>
<p>P.S. Just wondering if this method will work:</p>
<p>This spring break I plan everyday to time myself a critical reading section and review all right and wrong answers using eagle94’s method. Will that raise my score from a low 600 to a mid 700? If not, how can I?</p>
<p>@Dorkyelmo - Every bit of practice will help as long as you know what you are doing wrong. Also, I have heard that, contrary to popular belief, you should read the whole passage before answering questions. I can see how that would be extremely beneficial, but I want to know if anyone else does this? If so, do you usually have enough time?</p>
<p>Yeah, I would say to read the whole passage, but to spend as little time as possible on the questions. It seems counterintuitive, but spending the time on the passages really helps. My first sat I got a 570. I just took it again Saturday, and I’m guessing that I got between 700-730. Just practice. During my February break I did about 3 tests a day. Also the direct hits volumes 1&2 helped. Good luck!</p>
<p>Thank you all! Definitely will try reading the passage w/o the line reference.</p>
<p>If your range is 500s to 600’s, it’s vocab, plain and simple. Honestly, there are only two situations in which your CR score is predictable and stable: when you don’t know the vocab and when you know ALL the vocab. The latter, of course, is preferable.</p>
<p>I’m having the same problem with CR I score 600’s, but last week I got a 570. Before reading the passage I usually mark up the passage with line references, but I think I’ll try to read the whole passage first and then do all the questions and see if that method helps</p>