What is the most effective way to cram for the SAT?

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
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<p>So I have about a day and a half to study for the December SAT. Although I told myself I would study for months, Senioritis kicked in a bit early this year and I find myself in a rather daunting situation. What is the most effective way to prepare for the SAT within a 36-hour period?</p>

<p>I received a 2040 on the March SAT. Many incredibly stupid and careless mistakes were made, and I hope to do better this time around. Here is my expected projection for Saturday's SAT as of now (w/o studying):</p>

<p>-Math: 700-720; The Math sections continues to infuriate me, as whenever I look back over the test to see what I missed, I find I should have scored a near-perfect score (Typically, there is one multiple-choice or grid-in that I either didn't know how to do or did wrong with an incorrect method). The other 2-4 MC problems I missed were because I am retarded and am unable to follow simple directions. I'll do the entire problem correctly, but then not read the last couple of words detailing what the answer should be. For example, if the problem is to be solved by calculating the value of 2x, I will solve for x and then hastily put it as the answer, neglecting to realize that the original question sought the value of 2x. I have taken 2 practice math sections this morning, and received the same results: stupid careless errors as a result of reading too fast. Unfortunately, the math section - although the easiest IMO - takes me the longest of all sections and I generally only have a minute or two to look back over my answers. TL;DR - Should be missing 0-1 problems on math section, but misread many easy questions and solve for the wrong variable/mistype numbers on calculator/etc. </p>

<p>-Critical Reading: 640-690; For some god awful reason, I cannot score well on CR. It is impossible. Even after reading over my answers, the correct answers, and the reasons behind the correct answers from the March SAT, I still do not understand how I can do better. I simply do not agree with the answers CB deems "correct". I feel as if the "correct" answers are more of a matter of opinion than anything else (although, obviously this isn't the case as many people consistently do well on CR). Maybe my mindset is wrong or something, idk. If the question is asking what the author is saying, I will say what I feel is the most textually supported or implied, yet I still get it wrong and do not agree with the "correct" answer or the reasoning behind it. There is generally only 1 question that I can look back on and find I made a mistake, even after given the correct answer. I also struggle with the sentence completion questions, as my SAT vocab isn't all that great. However, unlike the reading comprehension part, I can obviously look back at my mistakes and say "oh, acumen doesn't mean ____, that's where I went wrong". TL;DR - don't agree with the correct answers given on the reading comprehension q's I miss, SAT vocab isn't all that great either.</p>

<p>-Writing: 680-740; The Writing section is a little bit interesting to me, as I am very good at somethings and very bad at others. The questions about which underlined word makes the sentence incorrect are the most difficult questions on the SAT for me, as I have a hard time looking at a sentence and picking out which word is used wrong. Although I tend to do better on these questions than I think, I find them to be the ones I am most unsure about. In fact, I think luck has a lot more to do with my correct answers on these types of problems than anything else. There must be some online guide, CC post, etc that can teach me the SAT rules of grammar in an hour or so. On the other hand, I find the essay to be the easiest section of the SAT hands-down (followed closely by math). I scored a 12 on my March SAT essay by supporting my claims with completely fabricated historical events, literary figures, etc. I also scored a 12 on my essay the first time I took the SAT over a year ago, so I'm pretty confident I'll score between a 10 and 12 this time around.
TL;DR - Not so great at MC, but do very well on the essay.</p>

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<p>Does anyone have any advice on the best way to improve my SAT scores based off of the descriptions above within a day and a half? My biggest problems are vocab (should I memorize one of those SAT word lists), writing multiple choice (the sentence usually looks completely correct to me), and careless mistakes on math. I feel as if my math scores have the biggest room for improvement in such a short period of time, as the problem is not that I don't understand the actual math itself but rather that I read problems incorrectly in my haste to finish - unfortunately, with little time to spare to double check my answers anyways.</p>

<p>Also, I realize I am an idiot for waiting up until 2 days before the test to start studying, and that 1.5 days is not nearly enough time to fully understand all of the concepts within the SAT.</p>

<p>Thanks for any advice</p>

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<p>CR : Study Direct Hits. (Ofcourse not for this test )
Writing : Read Silverturtle’s guide.
Math : Exactly the smae problem occurs with me :frowning: and also the same score :D</p>

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<p>Do some CR sections for practice. You’re not going to make any vast improvements in either section over the next couple of days.</p>

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<p>instead of typing this ridiculously long post, you should be studying. please keep in mind that NO prep strategy will achieve any significant results with only a day of practice (50 point bonus at best). that in mind, take a look at silverturtle’s guide. its writing section is by far the best i have every seen in any prep book.</p>

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<p>I’d say your best strategy at this point would be to not procrastinate over if I do this or that on what can happen to your score. Just go for it and do anything you feel that could possibly help you. You know your weaknesses.</p>

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<p>Yo Caldud I see ur going to UCLA! GRATS man! your life story is the most inspiring i have seen in a long time</p>

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<p>marist you are in almost the same exact situation I was in about a month back, and I’m still in this situation to a smaller extent. I’m taking the SATs this saturday and I didn’t get the hang of anything until about two weeks ago; however, I was taking practice tests infrequently for the past month. Here’s how I solved my problems:
-Math - I was getting 1-2 wrong per section because I was hasty. What you should do is underline key parts to the question. For example, you said that you would solve for x and then not find 2x as the question asks. Underline the part where the question says ‘solve for 2 x.’ An alternative would be reading the question over once you complete it. I’m not sure how you’d be able to do this if you can barely finish. For me I’m finishing with 5-9 minutes to spare so I easily have time to do this and its extremely helpful. Give it a shot, but watch your time and rely less on your calculator and more on your mind. Calculators are rarely needed in these sections.</p>

<p>Critical Reading - it’s all about getting into the proper mindset. I hated it when people told me that the only way to solve critical reading questions was through doing tons and tons of passages. But it turns out that they’re right. There are a few tricks, but they won’t help as much as simply forcing yourself to enjoy the passage. Skim through the questions before you begin and underline the sentences and phrases that are cited in the questions. </p>

<p>Writing - This is the easiest one to do because if you read a lot or do grammar practice in school you’ll get it down flat. Look at some study guides made by CC members or just look up general grammatical rules on Google. Most of the problems are subject-verb and pronoun-noun disagreements. Once you get the hang of those you’ll be doing much better. </p>

<p>If you can, stay home tomorrow and just take a bunch of practice tests. Don’t stress yourself out at night - it’ll ruin your sleep and you’ll be really stressed out tomorrow. The scores you’re getting now are really good. Keep in mind as well that a lot of schools don’t even look at the writing sections. I think you should’ve studied throughout the past week or two and you would’ve been in a better situation, but make due with what you have. All the best.</p>

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<p>OK so I’m back from about 7 hours of studying for CR and I have some VERY exciting, if not questionable news. </p>

<p>Earlier this morning I took a Critical Reading section from one of the Princeton Review’s books and scored a “610-650”, to see where I stood before beginning to study. Naturally, this score scared the **** out of me and I got to work. Studied vocab for about an hour, and actually retained around 75% of maybe 100ish words I didn’t know or wasn’t comfortable with (from one of those SAT vocab lists). Afterward, I read several guides on CC pertaining to Critical Reading improvement by members such as silverturtle, AcademicHacker, Xiggi, and Masochist. I’d say this took me about another hour. For the next two hours I did practice problems in an old PR “Cracking the SAT” book for passage-based question. Sick of the Princeton Review’s countless errors and BS ‘explanations’ that I just couldn’t wrap my head around, I decided to test how far I’d come by taking a CR practice section from the College Board itself. It was the 2009-2010 SAT I believe. Anyways I took it within the time allotted, just as I would the real SAT, and began matching my answers to the one’s provided. To be completely honest, I thought I did pretty terribly, and expected a score similar to the one I had received this morning. However, BOY was I wrong. I missed 5/67, and omitted 0 to get a raw score of 60.75, which was then rounded up to a 61 as directed by the scoring instructions. According to the same chart provided with the test, a 61 equates to 740. </p>

<p>So I was like *** and double checked everything. And then triple checked. And then quadrupe checked. And lo and behold, I really did score a 740. How the flying f*** is that even possible? Naturally, I am very suspicious of this score. However, the only two things that I can think of that would lead to this ~120 point jump are: 1) I was unfathomably lucky and somehow managed to cheat the laws of probability and statistics. Or 2) The tests in the PR book are much harder than those on the actual SAT.</p>

<p>Anyways…so is this legit? I can’t really think of anyways it wouldn’t be. Ideas anyone?</p>

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<p>Zosilo - yeah I did just that
gensis - take that! haha no but seriously, i’m going to take another 2 CR sections tomorrow from the 2008-2009 and 2010-2011 SAT’s to see where I stand.
guruofgreatness - yeah i’m definitely going to do that for the math section. it should really help, i just need to finish faster so i have time to do it.</p>

<p>Also, these excessively long posts are a result of a largely elevated dosage of Adderall coursing through my veins at the moment so I apologize for the verboseness (sat word yay!).</p>

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<p>I’ve only done like 2 PR reading sections in my life, and of those, I thought that usually between 2 close answers, either could be right and I questioned it. On the Collegeboard ones (I’ve taken tons) I’ve never had to question the answer. At least that’s my experience D: I’m praying I’ll get all the Sentence Completions on Saturday…</p>

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<p>To me:
3 months ago, I thought that Barron’s tests are the hardest ; Pr’s tests are easier than the real ones. But after having done all of them, I have changed my mind.
Pr’s tests are harder than those of CB but the way they asks is really close to actual tests; therefore they are a good source to practice.
And my PR’s scores are usually lower than CB’s ones (I’m talking about 11 practice tests, not cracking the sat as the latter is useless)</p>

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<p>OK so I just studied math for 2 hrs and took the math section of the 2008-2009 SAT and got an 800…***!!!</p>

<p>Is there hope? Wouldn’t the 2008-2009 CB Official SAT practice test be, theoretically, the best predictor of my December SAT score since it was an actual SAT at some point? God, I’m so effing confused. Well…off to take the writing section!</p>

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<p>cramming direct hits right now for cr heheh</p>

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<p>im about to take a full practice test. That will get me in test mode for tomorrow</p>