<p>I had a few questions on a practice psat i took:</p>
<p>Math: In a straight line, the distance between Rockfield and Nearburg is 18 miles; between Nearburg and Carbonville the distance in a straight line is 13.4 miles. What is the least possible distance, in miles, from Rockfield to Carbonville?</p>
<p>I know you’re supposed to make a triangle, but i thought you had to use the sum of any 2 sides being greater than the third. The answer is 4.6 miles, but shouldn’t it be like 4.61 miles or something? </p>
<p>Writing: Despite the claims by its devotees, sunbathing is not always healthful; prolonged exposure to it can sometimes cause skin cancer. No error</p>
<p>The answer is to it and i understand why, because it’s supposed to be prolonged exposure to the sun, but i thought ‘claims of its’ was incorrect. shouldn’t it be claims by its?</p>
<p>As for CR, i’m only having trouble with time. I usually finish a section right on time, or only with like a minute to spare. How did you guys work on timing? Was it just practice?</p>
<p>And, I’ve taken 3 CB psats so far, and have gotten 230, 223, 233. From your past experience, is this fairly accurate of your sat score? I’m planning on taking a psat a week until the real psats, but idk if i should take a practice sat one of these week. btw, i signed up to take the sat in oct.</p>
<p>also, a question about writing the essay: is it necessary to read the quote in the question? do any of you incorporate the quote into your essay?</p>
<p>For the writing question, I think the answer is “to it” because “it” is an ambiguous pronoun.</p>
<p>If time is a problem, you may just be reading the passages too closely. Don’t read to LEARN the passage, read just to get the basic idea. Also, don’t get hung up on any jargony terminology or lists that come up in the passage - you probably don’t have to understand it to answer the questions! The majority of the questions do give you a line reference and you’re going to be referring back to the passage anyway, so don’t spend much time on your first reading.</p>
<p>And for your question about the quote, I generally discourage my students from even bothering reading it. It can really just confuse you. And whatever you do, DON’T quote it in your essay! The readers hate it, it just wastes your time, and it’s pretty much a given that it won’t add anything to your essay. Good luck.</p>
<p>^ thanks. i’ve been wondering for a while whether to use the quote or not. i guess now i know not to! for the passages, i would read quickly until i got to one of the line references and then slow down to answer the question. but by the end, i’m barely making it in time. is there a way to go even faster without sacrificing accuracy? i usually spend a good 5 minutes on the sentence completion, idk if that’s too long or not.</p>
<p>So are you doing an initial read-through? Or going through the questions first then reading? Either approach could be fine, but you may want to try the other on a practice section if whatever you’re doing is slowing you down. They key is not to get bogged down in the reading. Also, try to be decisive. I know that’s easier said than done, but really, don’t spend too much time waffling between a couple of possible answers. That kind of hand-wringing will REALLY slow you down. Take your best guess then move on. Remember you’ve only got a about a minute and a half to devote to each question (and that includes reading time!)</p>
<p>As for sentence completions, you probably are spending a bit too long on them. The first three or four should take no time at all, so five minutes for 8-9 of them is a lot. Be sure you’ve got your vocab DOWN so you don’t have to do a lot of trying to decipher meaning. And again, don’t obsess. Narrow it down and guess if you’re not sure. I can give you suggestions for how to study vocab if you need one.</p>