College Apps: Ask Me Anything - Page 8

On September 06 2010 01:20 theonemephisto wrote:
So I don't think I'm going to try to rate people's chances, but I do suggest going to College Confidential.

On September 08 2010 12:31 SkyLegenD wrote:
I took the SATs for the first time this Jan and got a 2250. Really wanna break ~2330. Do you have any specific strategies for those last 80 or so points? My biggest trouble is CR.

Thanks dude

On September 08 2010 16:47 theonemephisto wrote:

What were your composite scores?

But for me, the thing that helped the most was simply doing as many practice tests as I could. In particular, my routine was usually to pick a section or a subsection, for instance, math, or sentence completion, and simply do as many of those sections as I could. Get a book that has practice SAT tests, and do 10 sentence completions in a row, pausing after each to examine your mistakes and make sure you understand the grammar behind them. Repeat with math. Repeat with critical reading. Etc. Then take a full test or two and see how you do.

Of course, this also has the benefit of being able to be targeted very easily. If you rocked the math but sucked at writing, do all the grammar sections you can. Or whatever.

For vocab, all you can do is memorize a lot of words. If you have a significant amount of time (like, at least a couple months), Word Power Made Easy is an incredible book for learning more words/roots, but it does take a while to get through (we had to go through most of it sophomore year, and I saw many words from it I wouldn't have otherwise known). Word Power also is just a great book for life, it teaches you a lot.