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I have a number of questions and concerns that hopefully some people can help me out with.

First off I wanted to say that I am not pleased at all with my high school. It's a small high school of approximately 350 students and we don't offer any AP or honors classes - just CP (unless this would be considered honors?). Also in my class of about 80 students we have around six students including myself with a GPA of 4.0 as a result of our somewhat easy classes.

Ok now to get to my main question, how effective is studying for the SAT. I read once that the SAT was similar to an IQ test in that it measured intelligence more so than knowledge. I had previously assumed that anyone with a 1500+ on their SAT was a genius or near-genius ie half or most of this board.

I haven't taken the SAT, ACT, or the PSAT yet but I have taken a practice ACT (under similar conditions as I would expect on test day) and scored a 30 composite, so I would hope to score 28-29 or higher when I actually take the test. I am anticipating that if I took the SAT now I would score somewhere in the 1300-1350 range based on a practice test and the results of some other students at my school whom I feel I would compare to. I begin to wonder if this score is a product more of my intelligence or of my sub-standard school and my education.

Is it possible for me to get a 1400 or 1500 on the SAT (2100-2250 actually as I'll be taking the new SAT) and raise my expected score by over 100 points if I study intensely? I understand that increasing my vocabulary will bring my verbal score up but how can I best increase my critical reading skill - read some books, take practice tests? On the math part I understand the concepts but my errors are mainly simple things that I overlook. Can I make my errors nearly non-existant with more practice?

Thanks for any help

By Roy_06 (Roy_06) on Monday, October 04, 2004 - 05:53 pm: Edit

Any suggestions? Don't ignore me because I am an embarassment who expects a somewhat low score.

By Vtran31 (Vtran31) on Monday, October 04, 2004 - 05:57 pm: Edit

practice raised a practice score form a 1370 to a 1480. That's my range thoughand lots of factors. taking tests from 10 real SAT's will let you get used to the format and types of questions on the test. that helps a lot

By Vtran31 (Vtran31) on Monday, October 04, 2004 - 05:57 pm: Edit

P.S. my scores are from practice tests.

By Abogachkov (Abogachkov) on Monday, October 04, 2004 - 08:25 pm: Edit

(any information that I'm giving really only applies to the old SAt, I don't know much about the new one)

To address your points:

1. you learn to not make dumb math errors (obviously not 100%) as you take more practice tests. If i may suggest, buy a Math workbook - I used Kaplan. It helped me out alot.

2. You will succeed on analogies and sentence completions if you study vocab - i know that analogies are not on the new test. I would again suggest buying a Verbal workbook, which will give you plenty of practice.

3. I don't really know what to tell you about reading comprehension. At least on the old SAt, the reading comprehension sections asked some vocab questions, so studying will help you there a little. For me, reading through the Kaplan and Princeton Review SAT books (not the workbooks) helped me do better on the 'big picture' questions.

I hope I helped you out - good luck.

By Peach395 (Peach395) on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 08:26 am: Edit

Of course you can learn the SAT. The more you practice the better you'll do. Forget about your lousy high school and make it happen yourself. Get a bunch of practice tests and just plow through it. The best tests for practice are 10 Real SATs. The book book that explains the SAT and how to do each problem type the fastest is Cracking the SAT. Get both of those and you'll do just fine.