<p>Honestly, do Princeton Review courses really work?</p>
<p>I am a 750+ scorer in math, and around the same in Writing(Grammar). But I have only gotten over a 600 in Critical Reading ONCE!</p>
<p>I’m afraid this score is going to kill my chances at a top school, and I am considering taking a Princeton Review courses. Do you guys think these classes work? Has anyone actually taken them? Any other other suggestions would be appreciated. Please Reply!</p>
<p>Bump…
Please Answer! I need help.</p>
<p>i don’t recommend you to take the course. don’t waste your time and money.</p>
<p>it’s hard to teach critical reading. you can learn much from searching this forum for verbal strategies and look for other strategies about the web or prepbooks. improve your vocabulary. take many OFFICIAL PRACTICE TESTS (like from 10reals). learn the idiosyncrasies of the test. read books that have a lot of sat vocab (ie scarlet letter). i read that book and for some reason i feel more fluent with reading text with more complex sentences with hard words! it’s also a good book.</p>
<p>The course did help, but mainly through practice tests and repetition of ETS-like problems. If you’re disciplined enough, get some prep books and 11 Practice Tests for the New SAT. I’m assuming that you’re taking the new one (out of 2400).</p>
<p>Yes, its the new one, of course. I’m working on memorizing vocabulary and learning the grammar section’s idiosyncracies, which seems like the same test over and over again, I find it really simple. Math is not a problem either…</p>
<p>But reading is a problem (especially since I’ve been in the US for only 4 years and English is my second language) and I think if these courses do work, I would benefit from taking them. Thanks for your comments.</p>
<p>same problem. 800M 600V,
i just wanna say this to princeton review courses:" suck on this <3"
i hated it, it’s not going to help you. they say many things b4 you pay and after you pay, they just don’t help anymore. I learned nothing from them. You can learn more by buying the study guide!!! don’t waste your Money. I didn’t go up at all at PR course. At the end, the instructor told me to not try to get a high score, and try to do the least questions possible to maximize my score, she predicted a 1280 for me (i got like 1100s and 2 1200s in the course) of course, i did what a sane person would do, i gave her the finger. and the next day, long behold, i did exactly the opposite, not that well, but better than the course!!! i got 1340</p>
<p>Personally, I believe that the Princeton Review Course helped me a great deal.
I started with around a 670 in verbal and a 590 in verbal = MEH!!! 1260 = NOT ACCEPTABLE!
However, I worked diligently through the summer and when game day came (the real SAT) i performed somewhat well (670 math 740 verbal) i’m more proud of my PSAT’s which were Math 76, Grammar 70 Verbal 73 :)</p>
<p>The funny thing is, is that I CANNOt really pinpoint a certain topic or trick that helped me to score higher, but more or less, it is how much effort you put into it. I believe it was the practice that helped the most.</p>
<p>I highly recommend, as long as you can afford the money (no offense intended) to take the course.</p>
<p>A few general tips for improving verbal though…</p>
<ol>
<li>Read widely, and being comprehensive, none of that skimming crap. Read to understand. Someone recommended detective stories, since they kinda force you to pay attention.</li>
<li>Read editorials. A princeton review teacher told me this one.</li>
<li>Study vocab DILIGENTLY. I cannot stress how important vocabulary is in order to reach the higher echleons of the scoring ladder.</li>
</ol>
<p>Now can you math geniuses help me with math? :)</p>
<p>The thing that seperates a 670 in math to a 800 are the hard questions (which would be around 7 or 9). To prepare, do only the hard problems in the 10 reals for math (level 4 or 5 difficulty). Do hundreds of those and you’ll know the perfect technique when it comes to the real thing.</p>
<p>i’m pretty much the same way 
i’ve been doing practice reals and i get mid-high 700s on math, and my psat writing was 72, but my freaking critical reading sucks. :</p>
<p>Thanks for your help. I think i’ve reached a decision after reading all your posts…</p>
<p>I am planning to take the course form the end of January to the beggining of March. It will be an effort for my parents, but I talked to them about the importance of this exam and they understand. BUT I am not going to take the test until May, that way I will get sometime to apply the startegies I learn in the course on the 10 Real SATs Book (or whatever the new one is called) and to learn more vocabulary. I agree that repetition of ETS-like problems will be the best way to boost my critical reading score, and that is what I plan to do, but I’m thinking this course may help me out. Hopefully by then my CR score will be at least a 650, I’ll be happy with that.</p>
<p>I think this makes sense. Thanks for your comments guys.</p>
<p>^As long as you study diligently through it, pay attention in class, and do your homework, I think you won’t be dissappointed. Good luck!</p>