@kassh4 , D said hers is solar powered. I sure hope she’s right!
Any SAT reports? S said that Reading seemed unusually difficult to him, but no Math stumpers. The wait begins.
S18 felt better about reading than the first go round. Math was about the same as last time, he questioned 3. Moving that to back burner now as he will turn his focus to ACT reviewing.
My DD said the reading was fine but got stumped on some math problems. On the PSAT she had a huge CR and M split. This was her first SAT. I’m thinking she she take a break from test prep for midterms and then start ACT prep.
S said every section felt easier than any of the practice tests he’s done. He thinks a bit of adrenaline and a bit of caffeine helped him focus. He finished all of the sections with time to spare. He thinks this should be the best score he’s ever gotten (compared to practice tests, anyway).
I’m really hoping that this is an accurate read for him. He put a lot of effort into his prep, and he would very much like to be one and done.
He said there were 2 or so on the Writing where he “wouldn’t have written it that way, but the target passage was definitely wrong and all of the other answers had glaring grammatical errors in them.”
He said the math was a lot more straight forward, with not a lot of geometry and no questions like “Here are three triangles. What is the air speed of an unladen swallow?”
He used the Meltzer books for CR / W, PWN the SAT for math, and only real blue book tests for practice testing.
@DiotimaDM, Thanks for your S’s report. I am planning on using that same exact prep for D when the time comes. So your endorsement means a lot.
Hi, can you elaborate on the Meltzer and PWN books? I’m trying to help my D18 with her Math SAT prep.
We’re also trying to figure out where she should apply. We live near Frederick Maryland and she wants to be within 2 hours or so from home (yeah!). Any ideas?
She got a 710 on the R/W part of the PSAT, but a 630 on the Math. She is working in Khan Academy to bring up the Math, but it doesn’t seem to be coming up much. She was going to take the January SAT test but wanted more time to prep. Not sure if she should take a class?
She is getting an A in AP Calculus AB so she can do the Math but she says she feels rushed during the test.
Her GPA is around 3.97 unweighted, 4.6 weighted (has had only one B).Honors and AP classes.
She wants to go to the University of Maryland (we’re instate). She is a varsity tennis player, National Honor Society, played on two Unified sports teams (helping Special Ed students), was a class officer, has had a summer job, is on Robotics team etc.
Also thinking of applying to UMBC, Loyola of Maryland, Frostburg State as a safety. She wants to go somewhere that has Engineering and lots of other majors as she is interested in so many things, lol.
Hoping her Math SAT won’t limit her choices.
These two books Meltzer books:
www.amazon.com/3rd-Ultimate-Guide-SAT-Grammar/dp/1511944137/
www.amazon.com/Critical-Reader-2nd-Erica-Meltzer/dp/1515182061/
and PWN
www.amazon.com/PWN-SAT-Guide-Mike-McClenathan/dp/1523963573/
Both authors have very helpful blogs, google for them - I can’t post a link to a blog here.
Thanks!
I’m wondering if any of you are planning to have your kids’ wisdom teeth removed before they go to college. It’s a strange question. It’s only recently come to my attention that this is something people do.
@crazy4info , my D18 had hers removed last summer. She recently got her braces off and don’t want those teeth messed up!
I just bought the PWN book. I may even get a tutor to go through some with her.
Does anyone understand well how PSAT score correlates to SAT? The score report seems to suggest that your PSAT score is scaled the same and that your PSAT score is your likely predicted SAT score. But how does this make sense if max PSAT is 1520 vs 1600 on SAT?
Thanks if you can satisfy my idle curiosity! Very few kids take the SAT around here. DS is taking in March for first and likely only time. He has taken PSAT and ACT only so far.
S spent most of his prep time taking official practice tests, correcting his mistakes and doing a general conceptual review if he discovered any content weaknesses. This approach took him from an initial 1210 (670 CR/W, 540 M) to the 1400-1420 range (700-740 CR/W, 680-700 M), where he plateaued.
S was initially resistant to using prep books, but he also knows that he needs to score 2250 or above so he acquiesced.
Meltzer and PWN both have tables in the back that list the concepts that are being tested for every question on the official practice tests. We used to tables to target specific chapters in all three books. Example: Colons, commas and dashes, and sentence combining in the Melzer writing book, and Circles, Radians and a Little More Trig in the PWN book. (The PWN book also offers access to a password protected section of the PWN website that shows how to do certain problems and has other helpful stuff.)
Using the tables to target weak areas was a huge time saver because by the time the books arrived, S only had three weeks before his test. He divided his time roughly equally between CR/W and Math, and his final practice test came up to 780 CR, 760W, 730 Math.
We were a tad dismayed by the Math score at first. He came up by a large amount in the No Calc section (-4 vs an average of -10), but he got one more wrong than usual on the Calculator section (-7). He’d finished the test late at night, and Calc Math was the final section. He said he was tired during that part. He tried it again the next day and got a 770.
With the caveat that these are all practice tests, not the real thing, S went from 1210 to 1500 (2270) or 1540 (2320) if we accept the retake on that final Math section.
S says that the single most helpful chapter in the CR/W books was The Big Picture in the Meltzer Reading book. It reframed every single question on the test for him. Once you see the big picture stuff, tons of answers are just instantly wrong even if the question isn’t a big picture type question.
He liked the PWN book because it was funny. 
It was much more granular than the Meltzer books, but ultimately, to him, more helpful. This is not at all a knock on Metlzer. S was higher in CR/W than he was in Math to start.
Anyhow, S credits those three books for boosting him over his plateau. Obviously, we don’t know his real scores yet, and there’s always a chance that he didn’t do anywhere near as well as he thought.
@LOUKYDAD The short answer is: no one seems to know. PSAT scores are based on percentages, not total correct answers, so you can’t just add 40 to the PSAT to get the SAT equivalent. Why they did this is beyond me.
My D took the SAT and PSAT a few weeks apart, and they correlated very strongly, with the second test 40 points higher. (It’s logical that she’d score a little better on the second test, after having the practice from the first.)
@DiotimaDM four wrong on non-calc math and seven wrong on calc math ends up a 730? Our son took a practice SAT through Princeton Review and got the exact same number wrong on both sections and got a 620.
@homerdog It was Practice Test 4. https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/scoring-sat-practice-test-4.pdf
S took his initial practice test at a Princeton Review session, missed 25 combined on the Math section and scored a 540. I’m not sure if PR uses official practice tests or not, but -25 would have been a 600 on Practice Test 4, and 590 on Practice Test 3.
At the top of the range, you typically lose 10 points for every question missed, with the caveat that some curves will let you miss one and still get an 800. Once you drop into the 730 and below range, roughly speaking, the curve is more forgiving. Example, on Test 3, -8 and -9 both give a score of 710.
Test 4 was one of the harder ones where Math is concerned. You could miss up to 3 and still get a 790, and -8 was worth a 750.
Thanks, @DiotimaDM ! Does anyone know when more official tests will be released? Working with just four is a bummer.
@DiotimaDM , that you for your detailed report!!!