Sophomore PSAT score - need advice

Nerdyparent
Sat, 20 Dec 2014 14:31:38 +0000

@Ennnnn In a nutshell, here’s what I did (mainly culled from reading many posts here on CC):

1) I bought about 8 old actual PSAT’s off Amazon and had her do about 1 per week for the last 8 weeks leading up to the test
2) I got an iphone Vocab app called Knowji and had her go through the words a couple of times in the months leading up to the test
3) I also had her do Blue Book SAT sections approx 2 per day over the summer on Mon-Fri to simultaneously prep for the SAT; during school (on weekends she wasn’t doing PSAT’s) I just had her do 2 SAT sections per weekend - either a Math/CR or Math/Writing section on weekends from the Blue Book / SAT Online Course since doing whole SATs on weekends during school wasn’t practical (for us, anyway). Practicing with ACTUAL old tests is the key.
4) I had her read Erica Meltzer’s Grammar book over the summer - she got perfect 80/800 on both PSAT/SAT writing sections mainly because of this book. For the SAT essay, I just had her read “writing a 12 essay” a couple of times and had her do just 2 practice essays (SAT sec 1) the month before the test (not worth wasting too much time on this IMHO since Grammar knowledge is king >> Essay, and no essay on the PSAT- at least not the pre-2016 PSAT).
5) I got the Keller’s New Math SAT Game Plan and had her read that over summer. It seems to me that math is the least forgiving because if you miss two or three questions you are already in the lower 70’s/700’s. Keller wrote a great section about the back door method which I think was a very valuable tip. This book is a hidden gem.
6) For Reading, which IMHO is the hardest section to raise one’s score on, I relied on 2 books:
Over spring break, I had her read through Kreiger’s Critical Reading Book and did one chapter per day out of a pink book called Feinstein’s Programmed College Vocabulary (a thin & expensive but worthwhile book - I found this book myself through Amazon searches and went out on a limb and had her read it - I think it helped). After that it was pretty much doing practice CR sections from old PSAT’'s and SAT’s.

Hope this helps. With the new changes in the PSAT/SAT I am not sure what we can expect.
Obviously, getting new materials that will simulate the new PSAT/SAT to practice on may be the biggest challenge 2016 test takers face - so much of what we did to prep will likely no longer apply to next year.
Also, before you accuse me of being an overbearing dad, my daughter asked me to help make her a study plan. She was a good sport about it and had a good attitude, and fortunately her hard work paid off.

-NP