650 Writing to 800 Writing, How?

squatchmo
Wed, 26 Dec 2012 13:05:19 +0000

My son scored an 800 on the Writing section on the December SAT. I don’t know what the essay score was yet but he scored a 10 on his essay on the November SAT where he scored a 740. On the previous year’s PSAT he only scored a 58. We attribute the 800 to using Erica Meltzer’s, The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar. After working through the entire book, my son used the book to analyze Blue Book test errors. In the back of her book, she has a section that will match your missed answers with the grammar rules that you need to brush up on (very much like the PWN math guide). You can then review her explanations on that rule, which are excellent. She just came out with a practice test book (we received our 800 so I will not purchase this until my next child needs it). From reading her blog, I know she would be somewhat fanatical in attempting to match the official SAT questions. I would imagine having an explanation for each missed question might be more specific than the chart matching subjects to Blue Book problems in the Ultimate Guide. Using this approach, my son consistently only missed 2 to 3 questions per BB test after completing his first three practice test and reviewing the subjects he needed help with.

By increasing your essay score to an 11 or 12, you will increase your chances of an 800. But it appears that working on the multiple choice questions will be where you get the most bang for the buck. There is an excellent CC forum post called something like How to Score a 12 on the SAT Essay in 10 Days. I’ve seen some debate on whether two or three example paragraphs work better and I’m not sure it matters as much as filling in all the space. The difference between a 10 and an 11-12 is going to be level of detail and the luck of drawing a scorer who will give you the 6 over the five. I had my son do some practice essays and then revised them to show him how he could have made it just a bit better (the lawyer in me). If you can find someone to help you add that last bit of polish, I’m sure it would help.