<p>Hey guys, I, like many others, have a big problem with taking the SAT. I am in all AP classes, 4.2 GPA, 3.6 or 3.7 unweighted; took the SAT once and obtained a lovely 1500. I don’t understand why I can get a 5 on the AP Calc exam, but not a friggen 700min on the SAT Math section.</p>
<p>I’ve only taken the SAT once, and I have heard that scores improve on average of about 100 after the first try. I have taken 2 classes since my first SAT also to try and improve my skillz. I truly struggle in almost all the sections, Math I fell for the tricks they give, Reading I’m very slow at, and day dream, writing I just didn’t expect on the SAT to be difficult, caught me off gaurd. I got an 11 on the essay though, not like it matters. </p>
<p>I have the blue book, an old white book, and 2 other sat books. How would you guys recommend my cramming until Saturday?</p>
<p>For reading you just have to budget your time. Don’t read the whole passage and answer the questions. A good strategy is to glance at the questions that refer to specific excerpts (they are ordered), read the parts of the passage containing them, and answer them. Then when you are done with those you can answer those generic “What is the main idea of the passage?”-type questions as you will have read the entire passage by then. There isn’t really a way to memorize a ton of vocab in a week. Studying Greek/Latin roots helps.</p>
<p>I found writing to be the easiest to improve – just review a few grammar rules (which you should already know), always keep an eye for those, and your score will jump to 700+. With an 11+, probably 750-800. I went from ~550 to 670 with about two hours of studying (then again, my essay writing isn’t the best).</p>
<p>For math – calculus and SAT math are essentially disjoint. All of the math questions can be solved in under 45 seconds with a good approach. Just don’t fall for tricks or make careless errors and you’ll be fine. You may want to look at some harder math questions such as AMC10 problems. I scored 800 on math but it was because I had a lot of AMC/AIME experience – that doesn’t occur in a week.</p>
<p>Lol after you reach number 4 on the AMC10 the difficulty level of the problems is already exponentially greater than that of any SAT problem you will ever encounter. Btw, do you attend MIT?</p>
<p>Just like your name. Just YOLO. On a serious note, there is no way you can cram for the SAT. People who say they do are either really great test takers or just extremely lucky. You can take an SAT exam every Monday but come Saturday, you won’t be prepared. Why? Because you built the stamina and habit on Mondays so on Saturdays you’ll feel groggy and tired. What I do for schedule-wise is the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>3 sections of Math (M-T)</li>
<li>3 sections of CR (W-Thurs)</li>
<li>3 sections of W (Friday only)</li>
<li>Also an essay every day. </li>
</ul>