<p>Hey guys, I am really just frustrated with my sat critical reading score, this is the third time I took it and my score went from 520 to 560 to 530. I have tried everything, I have done princeton private tutoring, I have done other tutoring, I have done the blue book exams as well as the online exams and additionally the princeton review 11 practice test exams and my score is completely abysmal, I want to go to Cornell and Columbia and honestly my reading score is holding me back, I have a 710 in math and a 610 in writing. I am desperate and as a last measure I am going to take the January Sat, can someone please help me, give me some techniques(I have a great deal of time constraints), guide me in the right direction, advise me what to do, I will greatly appreciate it.</p>
<p>Which part of CR are you struggling with most? Is it the sentence completions or the passages?</p>
<p>Thank you for replying, I am having major difficulty with the passages, for the sentence completion, I had the direct hits to study with.</p>
<p>This guide helped me make the push from mid-600’s CR to an 800: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/750399-how-attack-sat-critical-reading-section-effectively.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/750399-how-attack-sat-critical-reading-section-effectively.html</a></p>
<p>An 1850 is going to make it difficult to get into any of those schools you mentioned.</p>
<p>Honestly I have all my other bases covered, I have a 4.0 gpa, I have great ECs, and I am on the Varsity Team but the sat score (1880) primarily the critical reading is holding me back, I read that thread that you posted and I tried that on the second on where I got a 560, I dont know what to do</p>
<p>What kinda ECs?</p>
<p>volunteering in hospital for 2 years, shadowing physician, this particular physician for 460 hours, researching, soup kitchen, library, there is alot more but I don’t feel like typing, the point is that everything else is good besides the SAT and this is why I need to raise the score so I have a good chance to get accepted at the universities listed.</p>
<p>Increasing one’s Critical Reading score is extraordinarily difficult and after getting the same approximate score in each attempt despite the lengths you have gone to to get a better score should convince you of that. Math scores can be improved over a matter of a couple of months by learning the algebraic and geometric formulas that appear on every itteration of the test and doing a large number of practice problems. Writing scores can be improved just by learning basic rules of grammer, spelling and punctuation.</p>
<p>Critical Reading on the other hand tests your ability to be able to read and understand fairly difficult passages for high school students and then be able to correctly select the answer that differs only subtly from the incorrect answers. The ability to do this can not be learned in a few weeks or even months. In fact, to a large extent, it is a capability that you are born with. The skills that you are not born with that are tested for on the CR section of the SAT are the result of many years of intensive reading of advanced materials.</p>
<p>I am sure you will read many testimonials from people who said they had a huge increase in their CR scores after reading a certain book, taking a certain course or using some special method. While I can not say it has never happened I would be very skeptical of these highly unlikely stories. Go to the College Board website and look at the actual figures on how much improvement you can expect in CR by repeating the test.</p>
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<p>But it certainly doesn’t hurt to try. Try various methods and something will click and help you make a significant increase in your score.</p>
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<p>Many of these people just aren’t preparing efficaciously. Many just go to a prep course and don’t really get anything out of it. While I do agree that CR is probably the hardest section to increase one’s score in, familiarity with how the test-writers phrases their answers, which is obtained through taking practice tests, will invariably lead to an increase in score. I say this as someone who started off with a 640 and ended with a 740. Now I don’ think I all of sudden became a better reader but instead I just become more familiar with how the SAT tests reading.</p>
<p>For me the Vocab in Context and Tone are the easiest, but then interpretation questions always bring my score down, if you took the December test, there was an architecture passage with basically all the interpretation questions that the SAT can ask you, I did horrible on this passage partly because of the interpretation nature of the question, partly because I could not comprehend the passage and partly because I thought that the section would be an experimental, how can I improve specifically on these interpretation questions that sap my score considerably.</p>
<p>Comprehending difficult written passages and and having the understanding and insight to correctly answer interpretation questions are simply not skills that can be acquired in a few months of study, if ever.</p>
<p>i got a 600 on the CR section in Dec and i did horrible on the architecture section as well, that was probably the hardest section I have ever seen during all of the practice tests I have worked with so that’s not a fair representation of the usual passage you will see.</p>
<p>Can someone give me some techniques and tips on what most commonly appears on the reading section</p>
<p>There is no way of predicting the topics of passages on the reading section and even if there were it would probably not do you much good. The whole idea is to see how well, in a limited period of time, you can read a passage on material that is probably not familiar to you and understand it well enough to correctly answer nuanced questions about it to show that you can truly read and understand the material.</p>
<p>This is what college is all about. Whether you can succeed or fail in college will depend largely on how well you can understand written material that is new to you but has to be learned in time to take the test. This is why CR is on the test and colleges put considerable weight on how well you do on this section.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, when it comes to reading and understanding written material there is no way to game the system. There are no techniques or tricks that can be used to beat this section of the test if you were not born with and then further developed over your entire life an ability to read new material and truly understand it.</p>