<p>some of you who have managed to go from 2100’s to 2300’s…</p>
<p>how did you do that? </p>
<p>tips? advice? studying techniques? suggestions?</p>
<p>sounds like what I’m trying to do right now</p>
<p>how long should one expect to study for to see this increase?</p>
<p>Wow these are my exact scores (2140, 2300)!
I guess I was meant to answer this question.<br>
I’ll give a timeline. </p>
<ol>
<li>First test in April.<br></li>
<li>Did nothing in May, June, or July.<br></li>
<li>Three-week prep class in August. One hour per evening, Mon-Fri.<br></li>
<li>Crammed with Barrons and Grubers the week before the test.<br></li>
<li>Last test in October.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>My problem was pretty much only with CR. It alone increased by 140 points.</p>
<p>a778999, could you say how exactly you got your CR up 140 pts… I’m desperate in CR!!</p>
<p>a778999, I also have the gruber book, but which section did you use most specifically?</p>
<p>Actually, a good breakfast and more sleep might be all that you need. SAT scores have around a 60 point range for each section that they consider to be equal. a 2140 to a 2300 would in fact be in that range, so by their counts, it’s nothing to do with knowing more or studying more, you’re within the 2100-2300 range of ‘knowledge’ and a 2300 = more luck when guessing or something =P.
Also the higher your scores are the less they’re affected by studying. There’s a diminishing returns effect. 2130 is still above 700 in each section, and that = only getting 1-3 wrong in each section. In a 4 hour exam where you’ll be answering hundreds of questions, that’s like the level of improvement you need to be able to type a 1000 word essay with no typos first run through =P</p>
<p>Ok, my little bit of advice now. Get some past papers and do as many of the CR questions as possible. Get like the 10 REal SATS book. You can even skip to the last few questions and only do the hardest ones. THere are two ways to get to the right answer in the SATS:
- Spend weeks memorising all the vocab.
- Learn to use gut feeling.
Once you get used to the questions you should be able to look at words, use pointers such as context, your experience with question style, and generally be able to work out which is the right answer. There are words I don’t know on the SATs, but it’s pointless flicking through 200 pages of Kaplan vocab for the 10,20 I don’t in case it pops up. Use words which sound the same, roots etc. to work out the meaning.</p>
<p>e.g vilify - sounds like say, Villain - so probably negative. And then use in context of question. Ok, I’ll make one up.</p>
<p>Governor Glynn was non-chalant about the scandal, claiming it was obviously <strong><em>, and attributed it to his opponents attempts to </em></strong> him before the elections.</p>
<p>1) verifiable:censure
2) candourous: alleviate
3) mendacious:villify
4) falsehood: promote
5) fallacious: succour</p>
<p>Geez=.=‘’ how does collegeboard up with this…harder than I thought. Anyway I’ll go through how I would look at this. Ok, you have the word Scandal, so obviously the first word is something negative. He’s also non-chalant about because it is, obviously, a? The word here should mean something like Lie. He isn’t worried about it because it’s obvious it’s a lie. The second word, his opponents, opponents means his enemy, so they must attempt to harm him in some way. So first word means Lie, second is something harmful. Now Let’s go through the choices.
- verifiable:censure
Ok Censure is definitely something bad, but look at the first word, verifiable. You can link it to - verify, checking something is true. Another way you can make links to other words is by say, Harry Potter Veritaserum - Truth Potion. So verifiable means something true. So you can cross of no. 1 - candourous: alleviate
Have you ever heard the phrase he spoke with candour? Well if the lies had anything positive going for it he wouldn’t be so non-plussed now would he. If you didn’t get it at that part, alleviate = positive- from french lever to raise, or in english again, lever, something used to raise something.=P so double confirmation that this is wrong. - falsehood: promote
Ok Falsehood means lie, so would fit. But ‘promote’ means to help. And this is meant to mimic a later SAT question, so falsehood seems too easy no? cross out for promote. - fallacious: succour
Now this would be a red herring.
Fallacious, you can draw parallels to False. So that fits the bill. Now Succour, might sound like Sucker =P So can be construed to be negative.
This one’s trickier. Now the -cour ending makes it look as if is french based word. Now Sucker is really a modern usage isn’t it? You can draw parallels to the French word succure.
The answer should be. - mendacious:vilify
Well vilify = villain so serves the bill.
mendacious hmm, well you should already have crosses out 3 choices, now it’s 50/50 whether you pick 5 or 3. Now first, I find acious is a rather negative suffix with, audacious, fallacious, capracious. Acious usually means holding ‘too much’ of something. Being in the state of having too much of something isn’t good. Ok…sounds wrong, but word’s beginning with ‘men’ aren’t usually that great =P Menopause, menstruation, menial, mental, mendicant, menace.</p>
<p>Now hopefully, you’ll notice that question 5 is meant to be a red herring. A word this late in the SAT, that obviously sounds like a modern colloquial? hmm…</p>
<p>So this shows a combination by which you can deduce an answer knowing few of the words. Determine whether the correct word is negative or positive and guess a simple answer. You can link to more famous words that look similar, Veritaserum - verifiable. Use the position of the question to cross off the too obvious answers. And if you’re stumped try to think of words that sound similar and see if they’re negative or positive.</p>
<p>Ok hope that was helpful. Proficiency in a language isn’t about knowing everything about it, it’s about beign able to use what you do know well enough that people assume you know it all =P</p>
<p>Many people just get better at taking tests from junior to senior year… if your high school courseload contains intensive reading, it is likely that your CR score will go up… intensive writing and grammar tests… your Writing score goes up.
SAT is not equivalent to IQ in the sense that your score isn’t relative to how you do compared to people your age, but rather how you do compared to people around the country.</p>
<p>I just did all the practice questions including test in CR in the Grubers book. The night before, I got a 680 on their mock test and a 740 on the real thing. The important thing I realized was to specifically look in the passage for the answer to every question. I didn’t do much memorizing vocab.</p>
<p>when you say the Barrons book, do you mean the Barrons CR Workbook?</p>
<p>I went from 2130 (670M, 730CR, 730W) to 2340 (740M, 800CR, 800W) by doing 10 practice tests worth of math questions (from the 11 real SATs book) and helping my ESL friend out with studying for CR…I mostly subscribe to the good sleep/breakfast idea, though…</p>