My sophomore scored a perfect 760 on the math section of the Fall 2025 PSAT but only a 650 in EBRW. If I recall he was also perfect in the part that tested language conventions. He said time constraints/length of passages was the challenge. Any advice on how to target this skill for the national merit qualifying exam next year? Would SAT prep be equivalent? I suspect ACT will be easier for him, but will likely take both and would like to give him PSAT strategy skills for a shot at NMSF next year. Thanks.
Read, read, read. The New Yorker (fiction and non-fiction- their arts, political coverage, science articles are terrific). Wall Street Journal, NY Times, novels, sci fi, non-fiction.
What are his interests? If he loves sports, there are journalists and sports writers who are terrific– not the “score box” type of writing, but analytical and biographical writing using broad and sophisticated vocabulary and complex sentence structure. If he’s into politics- the same. Whatever his interests are, there are going to be strong writers, journalists, critics who cover that area and by continuing to read high quality writing his speed, language skills, and ability to spot errors in syntax will increase signficantly.
There was an article earlier this year in the New Yorker about why it is so difficult to create synthetic human blood. I have recommended it to about a dozen HS kids who wanted to find a way to increase their EBRW scores- as just an example of interesting writing which doesn’t come from a textbook or isn’t assigned by a teacher. They all loved it. But there are great writers everywhere…. this was just an article that struck me as something a HS kid would say “blech, not interested” and then become captivated, that’s how strong the writing was.
1 Like
Thank you. Haven’t heard this before but love it.
My kid got perfect scores on Reading and Writing on both the SAT and the PSAT/NMSQT. He enjoys math a lot more than English, but he ended up doing better on the Reading and Writing sections on both tests. His SAT/PSAT prep consisted of doing the seven past SATs released by the College Board and going over the questions that he missed during the summer between sophomore and junior year. He took the SAT during September of junior year, and the PSAT/NMSQT during October of junior year. He has always read a ton, from comic books to fiction to cookbooks to books on astrophysics, for fun. I do a lot of reading and writing, and I frequently look up new words in the dictionary. Over the years, I have talked to him about various new and interesting words, so that may have helped improve his vocabulary as well. The Reading and Writing score counts twice as much as the math score for the NMSQT selection index, so it will really help if your kid can improve that RW section.
1 Like
Thank you! This makes sense to me.