Hello guys, this may not be a matter of urgency as I still have like four months to prepare for my 5th SAT trial, even though, I can’t stop overthinking, having those anxiety butterflies in my stomach, and not having a near to good night sleeps, so please tolerate me if that’s going to be a little bit long.
Last year, I’ve taken the old SAT for the first time during G10, and that was my uncounted trial or shortly does not apply for colleges. And I’ve received an 1390 out of 2400. I know the score was awful but I didn’t entirely study for the test. Next time I took a little bit of practice & got 1530 ending lastly with 1580 in the December trail. I’ve taken the new sat during May which is supposed to show up scores tomorrow & July, lastly I’m aiming to get an 1410/1600 in the new sat which translates according to the concordance table to 2000.
I’ve various problems that I’m going to share with you, seeking help if at any case someone was like me, but got to overcome this.
My foremost problem is the huge anxiety I’ve even now , 4 months before the test, no matter how much I did study (I didn’t honestly do much effort), or even at worst the night before the test which causes me really nervous & I would every time go to the test without sleeping the night before (which Is also a huge problem I need a solution for). In addition to, the during test anxiety, no matter how I’m doing -well or bad- in the test, I’ve this adrenaline keeps distracting me.
Moving on to the study system, which only applies in my country so you won’t feel weird about the following, but trust me it happens. Mostly, I’ve watched youtube videos, and asked some people who live in America, and according to what they say, the SAT score is not that big deal; It’s still important, but It won’t decide your future, maybe I’ve heard that It will redirect you to the top colleges rather than paying that huge deal of money for a college of same profession. This is entirely different in my country “Egypt”, the main & the only important thing to get to your desired college is your SAT score as it counts for 60% of the marks, and , in my country, if you got a decent score, you’ll get your 40% of GPA even if you failed all of the high school tests. The most awful thing about it, Is that when I read guides about how to tackle the sat, I found that they mostly agree that the “SAT” is the reflection of how well you’re doing in school, which is categorically true, but depressing for me, and for many others in my country, because in my school I’ve taken mostly A+ in all of my tests, but this doesn’t theme to reflect any good score on the SAT, as my school doesn’t offer a huge amount of subjects during the whole year. For example in Algebra 2 we only finished “Functions” topic during the whole year!?, then how shall I get a decent score with only one topic covered that would be included on the sat? I’ve not known that before 2 years & before joining that school. It’s a little bit awful
Moving to the problems I encounter in the test subjects itself, firstly “Reading” : I’ve tried the most techniques ever said in all websites & book guides, but they do not work, maybe because English isn’t my main language, and that doesn’t help me coming to the problems like words in context, rhetorical effect, the tone or the purpose. Even the vocabulary was very strange to me, so I’ve memorized most of the Gruber’s 3200 words and yet I mostly find like 200 unknown words on each passage, those words in which all prep books consider not hard or well known for the most people with native language like bulk or shrug, there’s no book that will include those on a test, and trust me trying to reason those words out doesn’t work. In addition, I’m a really slow reader and that really drops my performance during the test day as I’m really anxious and feeling that I’m really slow, so I speed it up, but end up not understanding the passage. I need a way to improve my reading speed with some of the complex passages, as I mostly when I speed read keep returning to the same line I’ve read & keep forgetting what the whole thing was about and according to that this is not my language I try translating what I’ve read in Arabic then trying to understand what the passage me , and my worst nightmare relies on the best evidence question which frustraes me as even If I’ve answered the previous question correctly I would end up thinking about the previous question & the correct question & getting lost every time I think of them.
Secondly the “Writing”, which is not a bigger matter, as I’m doing pretty well in home-practice, but I don’t know why I find relatively average score. My problem still persist the words in context or idioms or the words that give rhetorical effects are my worst weakness in the test, mostly because it’s not my main lang, and most of the time the 4 choices of the the words in context I’ve no idea what do they mean, and a little bit weak in the tenses chapter as I don’t know which tense shall I use in this situation.
Lastly the “Maths”, my highest scored subject, yet I need a huge improvements, I hate maths basically, but I’m decent at it, my problem is that those things which vary from graph questions to the modeling questions were never encountered by me in school, never. So I’ve to find a source to self-study them from A to Z. I feel like those questions on Khan Academy are useless but I keep taking them. I’ve some difficulties in translating abstract ( not for example 2 times a number = 7 plus the same number) word problems into an equation, in other words “Modeling”, in addition to the volume, triangle trigonometry problems, ratios & probability ( independent and dependent), and some other weakness into the questions that are somewhat related to physics as when throwing a ball the maximum height would be the x coordinate of the parabola, in addition to horrible misinterpretation of the percent problems that include the commission & interest rate (what the heck do those mean?) Those are my mostly weakness that I encounter through the test.
Finally to the study plan, I’ve a kind of busy study plan I’ve set for myself I’ve no Idea if that’s gonna work, but I wanna take your thoughts if that sound decent (note that I’ve to begin for A-Z, once again, even If it sounds dumb).
I will basically rely most on math as I’m weak and slowly progressing in English, so If I got a 800 or near I can even deliberately guess on the R/W sections, so I will begin with a daily chapter of “Precalculus book” (study only topics on the test) & I’ll take 120 questions daily on maths of khanacademy in addition to a look on a chapter from every test prep book I’ve got (I got many). The math schedule will be daily. But In the day I’ll be studying Biology for “SAT 2” I will not touch Reading or Writing & vice versa. In other words 1 day for Bio 1 day for R/W. and when I do I will only look for the khanacademy questions, lastly after a month and a half I will certainly have finished most of the study books & I’ll head to take the practice books in addition to khanacademy.
Hope someone reads this magazine article; I know It’s been long, but I’m just throwing my anxiety at you, and sorry for any grammar mistakes, I didn’t prepare what I wrote.