<p>you are very bad</p>
<p>could somebody gather all of xiggi's tips and put it into a pdf or a word doc please? its hard to follow =</p>
<p>I am an old and tired woman, made more tired by struggling through all 29 pages of this thread in search of advice for my hs sophomore who is embarking on his PSAT/SAT/SATII odyssey.</p>
<p>I second the request that some (obsessed) thread-gardener do a bit of weeding and a bit of cultivating and compress this thread into a manageable compendium.</p>
<p>Could one section be a simple glossary of acronyms? My head was swimming in alphabet soup by the 17th page...</p>
<p>As one of the uninitiated -- I've hung around CC awhile and I understand xiggi to be an erudite and common-sense poster, but neither I nor many other readers of this thread are perhaps sufficidently in the "loop" to follow the political ping-pong or to understand the players without a scorecard. Could some objective party provide a "biography" of xiggi, grammatix spelled backwards, PeteSAT, TanMan, Montrose, etc.? It's a bit difficult to understand who is speaking from what point of view -- student, tutor, publisher, parent?</p>
<p>Like others, I waited patiently to learn xiggi's scores. "Experts" typically have credentials. Not scoring a perfect or near-perfect SAT would not rule xiggi out as an expert for me -- some of the most successful teachers are those who themselves struggled in school. </p>
<p>Perhaps xiggi scored a perfect SAT; or perhaps xiggi was frustrated with his/her? results and that motivated him/her to dissect and conquer the test and discover the best prep. Either approach would be fine with me, but xiggi's reluctance to say ANYTHING about his/her scores does, for me, undermine the credibility I WANT to assign him/her/whomever. "Who IS xiggi", cries Dagney...
Ya know?</p>
<p>One thing I was hoping to find on this thread was more information about the SAT subject tests, in particular, World History, since I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that many students taking that test may be taking their first subject test and haven't even taken the SAT yet -- APWH seems to be a popular subject for sophomores, so for them, taking that test can be their virgin voyage into the test-taking jungle.</p>
<p>I know there is an "inner circle" of CC'ers who all know the secret handshakes and identities and hierarchy, etc., but for those of us who are not privy to what the men/women behind the curtain are doing and who they really are, the yellow-brick-road can lead us to strange detours and dead-end cliffs. If I only had a brain, maybe I could figure it all out, I guess, but while I search for mine, could someone provide the Cliff Notes version of this thread?</p>
<p>Sorry for the mixed metaphors. </p>
<p>By the way, one suggestion for parents: have any of you considered taking the SAT tests themselves to see what it's like? Each of our children have different strengths and are developmentally different as far as approaching the irony/tricks, etc of the test; thus I believe that taking it yourself can help you know what kind of prep will best help your student.</p>
<p>I didn't take the math because I can barely do long division, but I took the verbal section and would agree with those who said that pure vocabulary questions are not to be found -- there was much more of what I guess you would call "reasoning".</p>
<p>And Xiggi's comment about the fatigue factor is well taken. Of course our kids are much more used to test-taking and sitting in class all day, but I found the relentlessness of concentrating on passage after boring passage was a test in itself. Oh, and since I'm advocating disclosure, I will share that I scored a 780 on the verbal and a "perfect" essay according to the computer scoring on CB. Maybe I'll take an online math course and see if I can eventually make it into a decent college...</p>
<p>Dizzymom, for information on US History, you should check out the forum on SAT Subject Tests, rather than this forum.
I actually just started posting a couple of days ago, I don't know anything about the secret handshakes or hierarchies, either.
I thought it would be absurd self-promotion (and both time-consuming and off-topic) to post my resume and credentials.
Of course, I'd be happy to answer specific questions via private message.</p>
<p>Montrose, I was referring to World History, but I imagine your advice applies for that as well. I ended up on this thread via a search and then got lost in the weeds...</p>
<p>I can understand your reluctance to provide a CV, especially if you are new to the forum. There generally seem to be a couple of sage and dignified folks whose opinions go more or less unchallenged who could give a "who's on first" assessment of the players, but maybe they're still bogged down on page three or so of the thread...it's a bit of a read!</p>
<p>I haven't been on this part of CC in a while because of school, but now that I'm back home, I'll try to clear some things up. (I haven't read through the thread thoroughly in a while, so this is based on what I remember and a quick read of the thread)</p>
<p>A Who's Who of This Thread
[ul]
[li]Xiggi:[/b</a>] Sophomore at Claremont McKenna. I've first came on CC over three years ago, and Xiggi had already established a "name" for himself among the likes of Serene and Fairyofwind (some posters from a few years ago).[/li][li]Xitammarg:** Mike Barrett - Author/Publisher of the Grammatix prep book (acethesat.com); Former Kaplan tutor[/li][li]PeteSAT: Pete Edwards - Private tutor and author of Maximum SAT from LA; Former PR tutor[/li][li]Godot: Private tutor in Buffalo; Former PR and Kaplan tutor[/li][li]risingstars-markg: Mark Greenstein - Private tutor from West Hartford, CT[/li][li]gcf101: Private SAT tutor[/li][li]montrose9272: From what I gather, he/she is a SAT tutor, though I don't think he's stated that explicitly (maybe I missed it?). (To montrose: even if you don't want to post a CV, some idea of your background might be helpful to understand where you're coming from. Are you a private tutor? Tutor for a big company? Author? etc)[/li][li]tanman:<a href="me!">/b</a> I'm a freshman at Johns Hopkins. I've been around CC for a while now, gathering information, trying to keep track of useful old posts, compiling Blue Book answers, and more recently, focusing on answering questions about JHU. (I'm a guy)[/li][li]Others:** I'm sure I've accidently left off some posters who have contributed a lot and made some mistakes in the "bios", so this list is definitely not comprehensive. A lot of the posters on the first few pages are parents since this thread was started in the Parents' Forum almost a year ago; the rest are probably mostly students. I think I've identified all the tutors who have identified themselves as such.[/li][/ul]</p>
<p>SAT scores: My score, Xiggi scores and the scores of many others who post on CC are around (probably hidden somewhere deep in the archives). If you're really interested in finding out, feel free to dig around.</p>
<p>"Cliffs Notes" version of this thread: If I have some time, I'll give it a shot. The first half of this thread is essentially Xiggi discussing his method, with comments and criticism from PeteSAT, Godot, xitammarg and others. The second half kind of degenerates into people posting different SAT questions, with some bits of advice stuffed in there.</p>
<p>Thank you for your very insightful posts! Would explain what you mean by top-down organization and biserial correlations? Thank you!</p>
<p>Montrose - Since the May 05 test was not disclosed how do you know that it became the January 06 test? Thanks.</p>
<p>Sunnyboy,
Sorry for the jargon. I didn't mean "top-down" in any technical sense. I simply meant that each form of a paper-and-pencil test such as the SAT is designed to fit into many parameters. This includes the number of questions at each level of difficulty for each question type for each section and for the test as a whole, the set of skills (as defined by the test designer) that are coded to each question, and how many questions will test one or more of these skills, the type and number of distractor answers for each question based on level of difficulty, the number of questions that fall into each of the content subtests/supercategories/categories/subcategories, and a whole mess of statistical characteristics that each test item and the entire test must have. Unless you've written a number of tests, you can't really understand the big picture.
Biserial correlation is one of the statistical parameters for each question (and the mean of those is important for the test as a whole. It is, put simply, the degree to which a question's level of difficulty behaves appropriately with regards to a tester's final score. Imagine drawing a bell curve for each question on an experimental section (one with untested questions, not an equating section from a former exam), and checking to see if the right folks were getting a question right, based on it's position in the section (early=easy, late=hard).
If a question is first on a section, testers of which levels (200, 300, ....700, 800) ought to be getting it right?
If a question is last?
Most rational people question the <em>validity</em> of the SAT. No rational person would question its <em>reliability</em>. This is why the statistical properties of the questions/sections/test as a whole are of such paramount importance.
Without reliability, no college is going to subscribe to the SAT.
It's this reliability that allows the astute to pass on design characteristics that have been formed into strategies.</p>
<p>Sunnyboy,
Obviously, no test that has been released will be repeated. But a test that has appeared a couple of times in non-disclosed months (and then reused in its entirety as well as on some unscored equating sections) will eventually cycle into a disclosed month, after which it is "retired". This happens regularly with the Reasoning Test, and extremely regularly with the Subject Tests. Basically, a test will often start its life in an unpopular month, then go to a popular month, and then go to a QAS month, though it can of course happen in more or fewer steps.
But the multiple-choice portion will be paired up with a set of new essay prompts.
So, if you were to take any of these tests repeatedly over say, at least 2 years or even 12 or so (but hey, who would want to do that?), you'd start to see the pattern. Of course, at that point, you would be actually able to tell which section is experimental, too. Not really a viable plan for most people. Oh, except for those who plan to write dozens of books and tests, develop a slew of test preparation programs, or perhaps tutor many thousands of students, train a few thousand teachers, and certify those in charge of training thousands more teachers. Or anyone whose advice should be trusted, since it wasn't just gathered from a book they picked up at Barnes and Noble one afternoon, or some lore passed on as rumor from someone else.
It's so hard to think critically about information on standardized tests, especially when one is desperate for it.</p>
<p>tite so in a nutshell what ur saying is this: save up $800-1000 bucks and take the SAT every single test date starting from your freshman or soph year and one time or another you will get the same test.</p>
<p>-I think im gonna get my brother to start doing that now- hes in 7th grade.</p>
<p>Well, obviously I wouldn't recommend that:-) It's just so you can see how little the test really changes over time. Tests are reused, new tests are based on old ones, etc.</p>
<p>Tanman -- THANKS!</p>
<p>Tanman (and all)-
I didn't mean to be secretive. I just wasn't sure how much would be appropriate or prudent to disclose on this board; I'm new here. Anyway, here's a brief summary of my current job (I've had a few other interesting ones), so you know where I'm coming from.
I am a premium tutor for a couple dozen different standardized tests (and some academic subjects), and have been teaching and tutoring for at least the past 18 years. I have trained a few thousand teachers and tutors in the same strategies for those tests. I have certified a select group of people to train new teachers in those strategies (since I wrote the materials, I'm adamant that they be taught correctly). I used to run the operations for two states for a major test prep company, and started three offices abroad for that same company. I recently turned down a job to run three companies in the UAE, with 12 offices in 7 countries. I am the author or co-author of 8 books on admissions testing. I researched, designed, and developed the most popular retail test prep course in the country for the SAT Reasoning and also for the SAT Math Subject Tests. I've developed online and print content for many of the other tests, as well. So I've written the equivalent of many other books in terms of course materials and support documents. I've also designed and calibrated dozens of tests, set the essay grading benchmarks for anchor essays used to train essay graders, etc, etc. I've worked on so many bizarre research and development projects that I can't remember even a fraction of them. Sleep, who needs it?
I guess anything else y'all want to know about me (rather than the tests) ought to come via PM.</p>
<p>Where can we get released SAT's like the ones in January, May or October every year?</p>
<p>I've got all of them. Any reputable tutor will have them. Otherwise, get them from your pals or their older siblings.</p>
<p>Have you folks taken....?
1) The test in the registration bulletin. It's last March's exam.
2) The tests from the online course at collegeboard.com. There are 6. I think one is free, it may be the same as last March's, or it might be the prototype they gave three years ago. I forget.
3) Any tests from old versions of 10 REAL SAT's...most of the content is still valid...after all, the blue Official SAT Study Guide for the New SAT is more than 80% extracted from those books (CR and Math, which are more important anyway)
4) PSAT's?
5) 11 Practice Tests by PR?</p>
<p>I actually have a doc. form of the advices from the early 13 or so pages (this document is about 39 pages long, but has plenty of useful advices from various people including xiggi):
<a href="http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=6BF9477E07D0451F%5B/url%5D">http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=6BF9477E07D0451F</a></p>
<p>and I just went through the document to cut the "conversations" between xiggi, grammatix, PeteSAT, etc... I THINK this is from xiggi only (not positive though) 15 pages doc.:<a href="http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=E959A0965E6C8F31%5B/url%5D">http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=E959A0965E6C8F31</a></p>
<p>hope that helped! :)</p>
<p>does anyone know of any good book or website that would help me raise my verbal score? my vocabulary is kinda (540 V) limited but my math is great (780). help is appreciated. thanks</p>
<p>grammatix or rocketreview as recommended by xiggi himself</p>