Mindy

My son's PSAT in CR was 750. He decided on the march SAT CR to leave 6 out that he wasnt sure of and for additional unknown reasons his score dropped to 620. His confidence is shaken . Any advice on how to better prepare for the June SAT CR would be appreciated to regain his score. Thanks

RahoulVA

Learn vocab, and tons of it. Vocab can destroy you if you don't know them for sentence completions as well as passage questions. Some of the high level difficulty passage questions are hard simply because they have hard vocab. If he memorizes 15-20 words per day, he'll have over a thousand for the June SAT. If he gets 4 passage questions wrong per section and all the vocab right, he gets like a 670, so now what happens when he gets sentence completions wrong? If he got a 750, he can get passage questions, so I suggest to himn to prepare for what he can: vocab.

Quicksandslowly

I never leave a question blank because if I have a slight hint of the correct answer then I choose. Even if I guess and get it wrong, it won't significantly hurt me because I have a 20% to 50% chance of getting the question right if it's an educated guess.

One reason might be that if it's his first SAT test, then he might have been extremely nervous and thus resulting in a drop.

Vocabulary certainly helps and make sure he gets the March Q&A and look over the ones he got wrong and the ones he wasn't sure of but still got right and scrutinize every answer choice. Find out why an answer choice is wrong or right and learn to see Collegeboards pattern.

I can't give any additional advice as I am still in the low 700s on my CR but I hope that helps.

Wish your son best of luck.

Mindy

Thank you for your reply ,how do we obtain the March Q&A ?

Mindy

Thanks for your reply.What Vocab lists should he use?

GamaPasa

i only used sparknotes 1000 on my sat in march (got 780 on cr). i didn't know the words "esoteric" and "pedantic" on the sat but was able to guess correctly, and i did know "quixotic" which a lot of my friends didn't...

Quicksandslowly

You can obtain the March Q&A from the Collegeboard website. You will receive a copy of the test booklet along with the answers and some other thing. I can't remember but you have to pay like $20 or something for it.

As for vocabulary sparknotes is decent but there is no really "good" list.
I focus on memorizing the key words and then on roots, prefixes, and suffixes so I can decipher the meaning of words.

Also read Xiggi's Post on the main SAT Preparation page. It has some really good advice on studying for the SAT.

Cheers!

papakipari786

Question and Answer option is not offered in March

Nick017

One thing that I think could be an issue is that he is afraid to guess. I'm not sure if this was the problem, but omitting six is bad news if you're aiming for a 750, or even 700. He needs to be able to at least rule out two or three answers in a question, especially with vocab, and then guess. If you eliminate one, it is debatable about whetehr or not to guess, but if you eliminate two or more, you have to guess. Being afraid to guess, and then second guessing yourself, and then wasting time angsting about your guess... cut that out. Tell your son to get the right answer if he can, but if he can't, then quickly eliminate the clearly ridiculous answers and guess, and move ON. Omitting six is worse than getting two of them right and four of them wrong. Take a practice SAT with him and analyze his mistakes. It could be that he is just psyching himself out, while on the PSAT, he knew it didn't really matter, so he approached it calmly and calculatingly.

Quicksandslowly

Oh that's right I forgot that they don't offer it in March.
I am so sorry! But fear not, he can always do the same thing by taking a practice test and scrutinizing it!