By admin
“The potential benefits of test preparation are clear,” according to a new study from the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). Even a gain as small as ten points on the SAT can significantly impact an admissions decision at some schools, especially if you’re applying to a selective school.
The study also found that 21% of the schools admitted to having an SAT cutoff score and 24% had an ACT cutoff score — as in, ‘If you don’t get X on the test, you won’t get in, no matter what your grades are.’
It’s worth noting that both the College Board and the ACT folks encourage colleges to use the tests as part of a more holistic admissions process — and that the researchers seemed surprised by many of the results of the study. (The cutoff score information was a surprise to me.)
To read the whole study, click here.
By moiramuldoon
Use all the information in a problem.
That’s it — that’s the whole tip. In the SAT and the PSAT, there is no extra information in math problems. So if you solve the problem without using the fact that AB is congruent to BC or the fact that ABCD is a square, then you’ve got the wrong answer. You need to use all the information.
One way to be sure that you are using all the information is to cross out pieces as you use them. As you use each piece of information in your calculations, go back to the problem and softly cross out the information. (You don’t want the word to be unreadable, in case you come back to the problem….)
By moiramuldoon
Everyone always says that you should read a lot in order to do well on standardized tests. I can’t disagree—reading a lot helps on a lot of fronts, including the SAT. But many of my students have had much better luck with practicing *critical* reading skills. Think about it — is the name of the section on the test “Reading” or is it “Critical Reading?” (It’s critical reading…)
In order to become a great critical reader, you can practice asking questions as you read. You can read most anything – a newspaper article, a blog entry, the latest Pulitzer-prize-winning poetry – and ask yourself a few key questions in order to help raise your score. This whole process can take no more than fifteen minutes, and it’s great for raising scores, especially if you do it regularly – twice a week, for instance.
Here’s how to do it.
–Read an article. (Or blog entry or poem or what-have-you.)
–Identify a fact or a concrete image. (Any one will do.)
–Ask yourself WHAT the purpose of that fact/image is. What is its job in the article?
–Is the fact there to support a point that the author is trying to make? (This is often the case.)
–Consider what the author’s main point/thesis is. What is the author trying to get across?
–Does the fact or image support the main point?
Going through these steps will help you become a better critical reader. As you get started, choosing articles that are well-written is often a good idea because well-written articles will have more logic and order, so reading them critically is much easier. As you get good, you may realize that you can learn as much from badly-written stories as well-written ones (‘this fact has no point at all – why is it in here??’).
So, read something good. Determine the author’s main point. Choose a detail. Identify the detail’s job. Become a critical reader. Raise your SAT reading score.
By moiramuldoon
Learning what the dangling modifier is and how to fix it is a quick way to get more points on the writing section. There are usually several of these in the first two parts of the grammar/writing section, and students usually miss them.
Essentially, when a sentence starts off with a phrase that has an action or description in it, the subject of that phrase needs to come immediately after it. Here’s an example:
Having finished dinner, it was time for bed.
Yowzers — that’s not right. Look at the introductory phrase “having finished dinner.” Who or what has finished dinner? Well, we don’t know from the sentence, but we do know that the subject needs to be a person. Mary finished dinner, Bedilia finished dinner, someone finished dinner.
What we do know is that “It” did not finish dinner (how can an “it” eat dinner???), but “it” is the first word after the introductory phrase. That’s wrong. Plain old wrong. So we need to fix it.
Having finished dinner, Mary went to bed.
This works. We have introductory phrase with an action – finishing dinner. Who or what finished dinner? Mary. Is “Mary” the first word after the introductory phrase? Yup. OK, problem solved.
Let’s try another one.
Getting out of the shower, the doorbell rang.
We have an introductory phrase with an action or description: “Getting out of the shower.” We need a subject. Who or what was getting out of the shower? Well, the first word after the phrase is “the doorbell.” Was the doorbell getting out of the shower? No? Then the sentence is wrong. A fix might be:
Getting out of the shower, James heard the doorbell ring.
Who was getting out of the shower? James. Ah…the first word after that introductory phrase is the subject of it. Yay– that works.
FYI: Dangling modifiers can occur at the ends of sentences but nearly always happen at the beginning.
Want to learn more about this? (And who wouldn’t??) Check out the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL). It’s a fantastic resource for all grammar quandaries:
The main site:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
The dangling modifier page:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_dangmod.html
By moiramuldoon
I’ll be adding to this as I come across more helpful links, but here are some good ones for getting started…
PSAT: College Board’s website
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/psat/about.html
SAT: College Board’s website
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/about.html
ACT: Official website
http://www.act.org/
Comparing ACT and SAT scores
http://professionals.collegeboard.com/research/pdf/concordance_between_s_10502.pdf
SparkNotes – 1000 SAT words
http://img.sparknotes.com/content/testprep/pdf/sat.vocab.pdf
SAT essay prompts June 2007
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/09/20/sample_essay_questions_on_the_sat/
SAT essay prompts October 2008
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/after/essay_prompts.html