my scores are in the mid 600s for SAT RW section, but I particularly suck at the reading part of it. someone please link me to some help or recommend some good books to get me into the 700s. Thank you sm!
I was in a similar situation. What i found useful is to really focus on the writing part and nail the 400 points that come from it. Read up on grammar rules and you can easily get 36+.
Try doing reading sections untimed. As many times as needed to feel Ike you are understanding it better. The SAT wants the best answer, not just a right answer. Why are other answers not the best choice? Beware of convoluted wording or wordy sentences. Beware of strongly worded answers. Example, if an answer choice uses a word like furious, was there anything in the essay implying furiousness? Maybe something implied annoyance, but not fury. Strong words are often a red flag.
Start timing yourself gradually as you feel more confident about understanding the questions. This won’t work a week before the test, by the way. Start this about six weeks out, or more. It takes time to learn stuff. Cramming for,the SAT or Act doesn’t work.
Can you apply to test optional schools only?
Try Erica Meltzer’s guide to SAT Reading. After you go through her book, spend some time analyzing the Reading sections of the six official SAT and two official PSAT tests. If you can definitively prove that one of the answer choices is right and that the rest are wrong for every single Reading question, you’ll have a very good basic understanding of the questions. Unfortunately, you’ll have to practice with imperfect unofficial tests in order to get timed practice of your new skills.
Somebody that scores 650 in reading does not necessarily need to apply to test optional schools. They are plenty of very good colleges that 650 in reading is considered a decent score.
^ @am9799, I was thinking the exact same thing. @londondad , anyone with mid 600s in RW has plenty of options. Test optional is not exactly sound advice.
^ I disagree. If he has a very high
GPA, relatively low test scores by comparison and great ECs, a 1300 SAT (not sure what the math score is)
might make it hard to get into a top 50 school (if that’s where he wants to go). My son had somewhat similar stats last year and was rejected by all his top 50 school choices except 2 UCs and 2 that are test optional. His SAT definitely held him back.
Reading during your free time every day for a few months can tremendously sharpen your comprehension. There are no tricks in the prep books around that.
@gmkoon Great point. I fully agree. Also, the more that students can read a variety of books (fiction/nonfiction and classics/modern) the better they will be prepared for different types of reading passages on the SAT.
Some more advice on this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20174675#Comment_20174675
@londondad You can get into a 40-70 school with a 1300 SAT and those are very reputable schools still (not including LAC’s)
@Lindagaf I kind of think of it differently. The SAT wants the right answer, not the best answer. They only give you one really right answer and this answer is not always the best answer to the question but its always a right one.
I think you can improve your reading sections score relatively easily by studying the types of questions being asked and what it expects you do to in discerning the answers. Writing improvements just takes a load of practice.
@GMKoon Definitely agree. I’ve started to read lots of news articles and I’ve noticed how it really helped my reading comprehension.
Every time you do a practise put a ? next to anything you’re at all unsure of and go through each question to understand exactly where you went wrong - then redo the test a week or so later and see if you internalised your mistakes
Try doing untimed practises - it’s so much easier to concentrate when you’re not panicking about timings, and allows you to build up skills and strategies and work on timing later
@in4655 - He will get into some schools in that range but not all (Villanova and Tulane for example might be a tough admit depending on where he is from and the quality of the rest of his application).
Also, I inferred from OP’s initial post that he is aiming higher than 40 - 70 (not to mention that he has a UVA logo on the thread (#24 ranked school!)
@londondad That depends, whether he lives in Virginia or not if he’d need to improve his score.
^ actually, whether he is from Fairfax or Roanoke!
Anyway, the issue is somewhat academic as the OP has left the building!