<p>Guys, I took the SAT this May and got 1860 (730 Math 540 Critical Reading 590 Writing). I did not prepare much other than doing 5 or so practice tests from the Blue Book. As you can see my Math score is pretty high while the other two are reasonably low. When I re-take it this October, I want to bring up my Critical Reading score to at least 650 and Writing to about 680-700, which I think are realistic goals since I made quite some silly mistakes in these sections (Incomplete Essay and omitted 10 CR questions without noticing). And hopefully not make any silly mistakes in Math this time and aim for something in the high 700s (I've always found at least 52/54 questions to be a piece of cake). Overall, I want a score in the 2050-2200 range.</p>
<p>I need some help from you perfect-scorers in telling me what's the best things I can do in the 2 months or so I have for preparation. What's the best thing I can do to raise my score in my weakest section? Any kind of advice or tips will be helpful.</p>
<p>This is exactly what I need too. I managed to get 750 in math, 550 in CR, & 600 in Writing. So pretty much I’m on the same boat and I need some insights as well.</p>
<p>1) math–work as fast as you can without sacrificing accuracy, dont make stupid mistakes, you know what to do
2) CR: make sure every time you take a practice test to go over your answers thoroughly. there are so many people who think they are done reviewing a test once they “realize” what they did wrong. you have to think as if you went back in time and think to yourself what thought processes you made and really pinpoint a habit or tendency that you are falling into. there are relatively few traps that CB sets up for CR–you just have to make sure you really understand what you missed and never make that mistake again. however i do think the main problem for you is that you are not understanding the passages and/or the questions/answer choices. when you read the passages, you MUST focus. if you dont get something, don’t move on. obviously this will cause you to lose time at first but thats why you take practice tests. after a while you will improve and will understand the passage well. whats equally important is that when you read the question you understand exactly what it is asking (obviously, but sometimes people skim them and burn). the answer choices are deliberately misleading; some use exact phrasing to throw you off, some use “hard” vocabulary but don’t really make sense, and some are “correct” but are either too abstract/general or too specific (kinda hard to explain). as you take tests you will notice that the CB is fairly unoriginal in their questions/answer choices. </p>
<p>if you are missing vocab questions, use direct hits or some CONDENSED word list (NOT like some 3200 list). its a waste of time really but if your vocab is seriously bad then it is necessary. really, taking tests entails looking up ALL words you dont know, so vocab should be fairly covered…</p>
<p>since you only have 2 months, i dont think you should read the newspaper or anything, but if you DO read something for another purpose, you can practice reading critically. when you read you must practice understanding thoroughly and be esp. aware of TONE and IMPLICATIONS. these are the hardest part of the CR passages (imo). </p>
<p>writing–grammar rules, esp. tenses and idioms. essay is fairly doable if you have some sort of template and practice. STUDY examples.</p>
<p>Hmmm. Thanks no_audio. I’ll definitely follow the advice. I normally understand what the passage is trying to say quite well. My main problem, like you said, is falling in the college board traps. A lot of the times two choices seem correct. Another problem is that the BB book doesn’t have answer explanations which makes quite a lot of things unclear, unlike Barrons. I would rate my vocab as just okay. For example I can do the first 4 SC quite easily but for the last 2 or 3 I have no idea. What are some good word lists?</p>
<p>@Jubilant: well I thought that instead of getting the answers I don’t know wrong I decided to omit them and at the end I thought I must have omitted 6 or 7 at most which would have been good if my other answers were correct. Turned out I had omitted 10 and 16 others were incorrect :(</p>
<p>The absolute BEST thing to do is take loads of practice tests.</p>
<p>It may be time consuming, but you’ll better understand the format of the test as well as the style of the questions. At first, I was ranging in the 1700s but, after taking all eight of the practice tests in “College Boards Official SAT study guide” I have now been getting 2100-2300 on ALL of my tests. </p>
<p>Take the tests under “real” testing conditions. I went to Borders, used the book for free [w/o writing in it of course], took a test every Saturday timing myself and managed to boost my scores A LOT.</p>
<p>After you’ve taken the test, review your mistakes and look at the answers explained.</p>
<p>Also, if you’re interested in finding more practice tests, try Sparknotes [sign up for a free account …they have three tests in the SAT testing center]</p>
<p>As far as improving crtical reading, check out “Barrons SAT 2400” and look through its C.R. strategies…they really helped me. :)</p>
<p>Are the Sparknotes tests good? I have already done about 5 or 6 of the official ones but not under good conditions and not reviewing the mistakes properly so I kinda ruined them for myself. I don’t want to do so for the rest and want to do them at the end so for the mean time is it good to do the sparknote ones?</p>
<p>well why dont you exhaust CB resources first:</p>
<p>1)rest of your BB
2)3 new tests in BB2
3)2 new tests online (official 07-08, 08-09)
4) old QAS (like 30 of those…)
5) 6 PSAT QAS
6) 10RS (certain sections…lol)</p>
<p>Bump. Any other advice people can give me? I’ve started to see an improvement in CR. I did the exercises at the beginning of the BB (the one with 31 questions) and managed to get 26 correct. One of the best and most helpful observations I made is that don’t, under any conditions, answer the questions according to your own opinion. Read what the passage has to say. I also think I’m starting to get familiar with the traps.</p>
<p>Oh, and is the book called “10 Real SATs” any good? And what about doing PSATs? How are they compared to the actual thing in terms of difficulty. I mainly want to practice CR questions.</p>
<p>Learn grammar rules, I scored around 630 but if you study the rules religiously you can get in the 700s (btw I got the 630 only with basic rules: verb agreement, pronouns) The harder topics such as idiom phrases and parallelism is a weak point for me so I know that this is what I need to study. I have the same problem with you in math I got a 750 and found out I got number 8 wrong. So I would just say be careful and read the question closely. For critical reading, I scored a 550. I think that vocab is a big deal but practice long passages as well.</p>
<p>Two months might not be enough time to do all of this, but I am trying to take the November test after doing my best to raise my Writing and Critical Reading scores. Since I am a Junior, I will have time to take it again later in the year.</p>