<p>LOL, in no way is the SAT, PSAT, or ACT a measure of intelligence. The people who I know that got 2300+ on the SAT are dumb as dirt, cocky, and generally pretty **** people. Don’t stress out. Even if scores end up being your weak point, I am sure you will get into some great schools for your other strengths.</p>
<p>Math is easy, don’t let it trip you up.</p>
<p>One thing to know about math is, all the guidebooks you can get are almost entirely useless.</p>
<p>Instead, do mock PSATs, see what you’re having trouble on.</p>
<p>If its stupid mistakes, write neatly, and read the problem twice.</p>
<p>If you’re using the wrong formula, or using formulas incorrectly, that’s where your real problem lies. You’re not really taking the time to understand how all of the formulas are linked together and how they aren’t just things you have to memorize and spit out on a test. </p>
<p>The only way you can get over that is to do practice. There is another way, which would be to understand the proofs and derivations and connections between the theorems and formulas, but, that’s much more difficult and time consuming.</p>
<p>@test101 That’s far too general of a statement. The #1 of my grade just got a 2360 on his first try, last year’s #1 got a 2350 and went to Dartmouth. In my opinion, people can certainly improve their score a lot, but getting a 2300+ requires a lot of intelligence to begin with.</p>
<p>Chill out man, did I hit a nerve?</p>
<p>Show me where in my above post I came off as angry/annoyed, I think you’re having a bit of trouble understanding my tone.</p>
<p>Try the ACT, I seemed to always have problems with the SAT because of the tricks.
It’s good you recognized the problem and are saying you will do something about it - my friends who have low scores don’t even care to improve.
Also, you might be way too advanced on the math section that you might forget Algebra I you took awhile ago.
I took it back in the 6th and 7th grade, and so I did forget some of the concepts (as I was in pre-calculus when I took the SAT). Get those formulas down.
Don’t expect to ace the geometry sections until you finished your geometry course at school or learned it all yourself.
I freaked out about my meaningless PSAT score when I was a sophomore as well, but I improved the past 2 years and got into the college I want.</p>
<p>You should really, really relax-if you just study, you will be fine. I almost feel like these tests are made to be easy after lots of studying. I went from a 178 PSAT as a sophomore to a 2200 SAT as a junior to a 2380 SAT as a senior with ONE PRACTICE BOOK, and that’s it. I would recommend starting to do College Board’s practice tests the summer after your sophomore year and again the summer after your junior year if you’re gonna retake. Good luck.</p>
<p>You can also try to get help for your test anxiety. See if you can find a class or professional who can help you with it. I think if you solve that your scores will go up a lot. You seem like you are really smart and you can do this. Try talking to your guidance counselor and see what they can offer you for your test anxiety! Good luck! :)</p>
<p>dfree124, I don’t even really care. All of this secondary school ******** won’t matter a year from now. I was just providing what I’ve seen, and what a common trend has been.</p>
<p>I agree with test101, from my experience in college the people that do score high on the SAT end up a loot of times being average students in college, for example, the person with the highest SAT at my school got accepted into GA TECH but he ended up flunking out, but he was pretty smart! the ppl that throw up their SAT scores should be regarded as non factors because once they get in college they will realize NO ONE CARES. your SAT score isn’t going to stop you from getting a job and it wont neccesarily get you into Harvard or Ivy League either.</p>
<p>Aw, I feel sorry for you. It’s hard when something like this happens. However, I would like to echo everyone else here and say:
- The SAT by no means is a measure of intelligence. If you can do AP Calc easily, well, that says far more about your brainpower than any test can. I’m a sophomore girl who is also taking AP Calc, and I can say that by no means does it come easily to me. Calculus requires a different, more creative way of thinking and it often happens that people fly through geo/algebra, they totally suck at calc. Secondly, the PSAT is in october/november, right? You had about 2 months of geometry…finish geometry, study some algebra 2 topics over the summer, and I am sure that your scores will rise substantially.
- Colleges aren’t all about the SAT. Clearly, a person with multiple talents like yourself brings a lot more to a college than you might think. This is why we have holistic admissions, and I am sure that you will do great in the college app process regardless of how you might feel now.
- Test anxiety: I totally feel for you on this one. Sometimes there is material that I know inside out, but I mess up because I’m nervous. I’m serious, I got a 4/8 on a chem quiz which I knew how to do perfectly well. My advice to you regarding this is to sit back and relax a bit now, seeing that its winter break. Do stuff you like, don’t hole up studying SAT or whatever, hand out with friends. Before tests, make a review guide or something that finds the connections behind everything you learnt (calnewport.com has posts on this) so you assure yourself that you know the material. If you tense up, remind yourself that you know how to do it, you’ve done questions like it before and yeah. I’ll echo ballerinawriter about a professional or a class too.</p>
<p>Lastly, the SAT, like everyone said is more about learning how to answer SAT questions than actual math. I’ve heard Dr. Grubbers is a good start, but there are also many useful guides/uplifting stories in the SAT/ACT section which you should check out. </p>
<p>Wow, this has been a lengthy post. But anyways, you seem very smart so cheer up and I’m positive it’ll all work out in the end :)</p>
<p>@test I never argued that. I think the tests are huge pieces of crap, but you didn’t need to attack anything I said.</p>
<p>dont get discouraged.
i can tell you from personal experience that the SATs DO NOT measure your IQ. You could be really smart and not score well on SATs, while you could be average but know how to take the SATs and score really well.</p>
<p>I can tell you myself that when I took the SATs, I never studied for them, and I did ok, but not too well. The first two times when I took the SATs, I scored around the same as my PSAT scores from both my sophomore and junior year (around 1800). My parents wanted me to improve my SAT scores so the summer between my junior and senior year, I took SAT prep courses, for one month straight. And after a few SAT practice tests, I managed to bring up my score by a little over 200 points when I retook them for the third time last september.</p>
<p>The key to scoring well on the SATs comes down to how well you can tackle a test, rather than how smart you are. And you dont need to know calculus or old english to solve SAT problems, and if your a sophomore with a 145, you have ample amounts of time along with room for improvement.</p>
<p>Hope this helps :)</p>
<p>SATs require practice for most people. From my experience, the more practice tests I took, the more I got to know the test and its tricks; also, many questions have the same format, so once you read through enough questions, you’ll be able to see patterns. </p>
<p>I agree, don’t be discouraged…Some people have been pretty insensitive in their posts. You can pull your score up for sure. Last year, I scored a 189. CB told me I could only get like a 590 in Math. This year, I scored 40 points higher on my PSAT, and I got an 80 in Math. All it takes is practice.
Just a suggestion, I’d take the full SAT tests from the Blue book as preparation. It’ll over prepare you for the PSATs and prepare you ahead of time for the SATs.
Use this year’s disappointment as an incentive to do better next year.
Good luck :)</p>
<p>PSAT doesn’t matter. I got a score on the PSAT that put me in like the 1700 range on the SAT. </p>
<p>I got a 2260 on the SAT.</p>
<p>If you are worried there is some really great test prep that other people mentioned! I strongly recommend taking the online official SAT class! It brought my scores up 300 points! </p>
<p>And it’s really not the end of the world! Test scores are important, but not the end-all-be-all! People who tell you that you are inferior or stupid are just trolls trying to make themselves feel better by making others feel bad! Don’t get yourself all worked up about it!</p>
<p>First off, there is not that high of a correlation between SAT and IQ scores. Furthermore, IQ scores are not comprehensive indicators of intelligence because they do not consider multiple intelligences. e.g. linguistics and music. Musician is the only profession noticeable by morticians due to how much it develops the brain </p>
<p>Also, if calculus is easy for you, the way it ought to be for everyone because it is easy, then you are probably good at math. When you are doing the basic SAT math, do the problems seem easy and straightforward or do they seem complicated because you may be merely making simple mistakes while completely understanding the underlying concepts?</p>
<p>Thank you everyone!!! Dfree, lexieam, arcade fire, georgeyankees12, ecouter11 :), tongxiang77, Ned, ballerina writer, Tina, crfcaio, Engarde, nabian, thecollege1, Schill …everyone!!! All of your help means to much to me and really made my day. :)</p>
<p>And @michael - Well, I found another strange thing about me. I’m a very analytical person, and put a psychoanalytical emphasis in all of my writing. My teacher loved that and says that my philosophical/psychoanalytical abilities are far beyond that of her peer’s and professor’s abilities from her upper years of college (and she went to an excellent school-Bowdoin.) …I’m always thinking philosophically …very deeply about everything… So shouldn’t logical and abstract word problems come easily to me? …When it comes to math, I’m all about the formulas and all that. Word problems always confuse the hell out of me, and when there’s a time limit added to it, it only makes it worse, because then I definitely can’t think straight.
…SAT math shouldn’t be hard for me, even though I am more of a formulaic math person. You know what I’m saying? But I definitely agree with the multiple intelligence theory …(is that now a widely accepted and well known theory?) …I personally think that IQ tests are bogus.</p>
<p>Maybe I should just teach myself trig and take ACT math, because I heard that it’s more straightforward and formulaic. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Thanks :)</p>
<p>Ps: don’t judge my writing on here. I’m sort of in a hurry cause I gotta leave to pick someone up and this iPad keyboard is such a pain…</p>
<p>omg “Clinical depression”
am I the only one who doesn’t believe in this depression talk?</p>
<p>Crfcaio - why don’t you believe me? I don’t see anything that would make you think that I’m lying…because I’m not…I (probably) have Asperger’s syndrome (I haven’t exactly been diagnosed, but I have almost all of the symptoms), OCD, and MDD. It’s not a joke. Please don’t say that when you don’t know about it…you have no idea what a living hell it is for me.</p>