<p>Hey,</p>
<p>I took a practice test with SparkNotes earlier today & did literally awful on it. : D You’re probably thinking I’m someone else complaining about a really high score… No. Haha. Luckily it’s a practice test. So, scores…</p>
<p>Writing 650
Critical Reading 530
Math 360</p>
<p>I’m quite pleased with my writing. (: I didn’t do any prep, I’m from the UK, I’m homeschooled using the unschool method & have basically been recovering from the bad time I had in school instead of anything else so I can understand why my math score is so low. But all the same… it’s awful : D </p>
<p>Anyway, I was wondering how high you reckon I’d be able to bring my score up in maths? I have a lot of time to work on it, being homeschooled with this method & I’m hoping that’ll help a lot.</p>
<p>So what do you reckon I’ll be able to bring them up to?</p>
<p>(No homeschool bashing or bashing my scores please? (: )</p>
<p>im sure u will do a lot better if u do the collegeboard practice test.
did u do the test on the computer?I think ppl usually have a hard time to concentrate if they do the test on the computer.(cuz it makes u feel dizzy~~~~thats what i felt before)</p>
<p>Hey,</p>
<p>Thanks for that. (: I’m going to print it off & try the CollegeBoard one tommorow. I did do the SparkNotes one on the computer so maybe that was a mistake. I don’t know if it was just me & my attention span but did you have trouble concentrating? I found myself scanning through any long passages of reading and missing the point of the whole thing because it wasn’t even getting into my head. I don’t know if that’s just my bad attention span & lack of longer tests in the past. Ah well : D I shall try the CollegeBoard one tommorow & let you know how I got onnnn.</p>
<p>I just realised the CollegeBoard one isn’t a free one. D: So I can’t do that one, sorryyy D: But I’ve gone mini-tests for the SAT from a couple of places & it was always my maths score that suffered. On the SparkNotes Mini-test I got Critical Reading 4/10, Writing 8/10 & Maths 2/10. The writing I don’t even have to put much thought into & I could probably bring that up easily. The critical reading, if I learn to actually concentrate and stop rushing I could probably bring up but the maths, I’m not sure about. Algebra is my worst subject… literally. The SparkNotes one won’t let you skip to the next section though (I like getting all the easy stuff out of the way then going back to everything I don’t understand) so maybe that’d be helpful if I could do that. I’m clutching at straws, can you tell? : D</p>
<p>Never, ever use SparkNotes tests as an indication of how well you’re going to do on the real thing. ; ) If you can get hold of it, try the College Board blue book with real sample SATs. If you can’t, I’m sure somebody can advise a better place to practice for free. Good luck!</p>
<p>Is that a bad place for a comparison to the SATs then? Haha! When my bank account’s set up I’ll more than likely get the sat study guide & such which I think has practice tests in it? Until then, I’ll have to find a free one that’s more likely to give me an idea what my score will be. : D Thanks so muchhh. (:</p>
<p>There two free sat tests from collegeboard. You can find it under sat preparation I think.</p>
<p>I think I’ve found them. I’m gonna print & attempt them soon. With the maths though, I didn’t use my calculator once? I had no idea when to use it because the algebra was destroying my brain. : D</p>
<p>Hi,</p>
<p>Have you taken any A Level or GCSE exams before? How did you do in Maths?</p>
<p>If you google search “SAT preparation booklet” you should find an 80 page pdf containing a full practice paper with answers.</p>
<p>I haven’t taken my GCSEs yet (I don’t start year 10 until September, technically but I’ll be staying homeschooled and doing a maths IGCSE in November, most likely) but I went over a GCSE paper from edexcel with my mum (homeschooled : D) and I knew the answers to basically every question and only had to work out the answer on paper to two of them. A couple I made a stupid mistake without thinking about but that was a foundation paper, not a higher paper. I haven’t been through a higher paper yet but I don’t think I’ll do anywhere near that well : D</p>
<p>I’ve been using HippoCampus the last couple of days for elementary algebra & while I’m not doing great on it, I’m getting better. I thinking my test score at the end of the first section was 76%. Which is pretty bad.</p>
<p>Unfortunately it seems the early hours of the morning are my best time for learning (lucky I picked this username, eh?) since I did the first section of the lesson at around 4am and scored 93% which was a lot better than the rest I did around 11am today (66%/53%/60%/53%). Maybe the first lesson was just really easy though, idk. I’m gonna recap all of it at around 1/2am though to see if that helps at all and hopefully that’ll help my maths score at least a little.</p>
<p>I don’t know if it’s just me that’s noticed this though but the American Ed system seems to be more remembering phrases whether that be vocabulary or associative, commutative, distributive properties in algebra. We stopped learning vocabulary when we were eight. Haha! I know that you don’t do it in school in america for much longer than we did if you do any longer at all so why are your tests based on it? It’s odd. =) Is that the intention? To either get people to increase their vocabulary or knowing people who read a lot will get a higher score/whatever?</p>
<p>=)</p>
<p>Ya you should try doing the blue book tests; they are a lot more accurate then sparknotes. Also, there are tons of questions on the collegeboard website.</p>
<p>Is that the collegeboard blue book thing that comes up first in google when you search “SAT preparation booklet” like Sci-Fry said? Sorry I missed that out of my last post, btw : D</p>
<p>But thanks for that, what that the one you meant Sci-Fry?</p>
<p>And I’ll go through some of that tommorow. Thanks for that =) I’m also thinking about a more reading-based homeschool curriculum now and even today I did things a lot more structured though it wasn’t literature-based so hopefully, my critical reading score’ll improve if I do try the more literature-based one. (:</p>
<p>So yes, thank you both of you =)</p>
<p>SparkNotes is definately COMPLETELY WRONG. I did the SAT Prep Booklet 2007-2008’s practice test, or at least the maths sections and I got a 520. I was starting to feel ridiculously stupid until I found out my score. (: But yes, I’m gonna do the rest of the College Board test later to find my writing & critical reading score. Imsohappymyscoreisn’tsoawfulanymore. It needs improving but I’m a lot happier now. =)</p>