Who to trust: Kaplan's review books or TPR

[joethemole]

so is testmasters the only way to find answer explainations for the Collegeboard book?

[Selayan]

I have studied words too and it helped a little bit, but the words you study are never on the damn test. The reading can be boring sometimes, and too difficult to comprehend. Or the reason for it being difficult is because its so strange and boring passages. I guess my reading score varies with each test. As I have seen on my practice tests, my reading score went up, then down, then average, then up again, but it was because how interested I was in the reading.

[joethemole]

nvm found it

[shuttupjessmah]

Originally Posted by Selayan

As I have seen on my practice tests, my reading score went up, then down, then average, then up again, but it was because how interested I was in the reading.

haha... my score, too! Of course, we're supposed to adapt and do well on all passages anyway. Too bad my Reading score isn't going to improve... stupid reading...

[babypurin]

Originally Posted by shuttupjessmah

haha... my score, too! Of course, we're supposed to adapt and do well on all passages anyway. Too bad my Reading score isn't going to improve... stupid reading...

The Reading section is the hardest section to improve because it is the least predictable. With the wide variety of passages that the CollegeBoard uses, it makes it nearly impossible to focus on a certain on one type of reading-passage type (unlike the ACT - which seems to focus on 4 different styles of reading).

The only way to benefit studying the Critical Reading section is to take as many practice tests as possible (sounds obvious, but a lot of people don't study the Critical Reading section!).

Regarding, vocabulary...the best way to attack the vocab section is to study word roots - don't study wordlists unless you have a very limited vocabulary - by studying word roots you can learn several new words, just from a four letter prefix or suffix - trust me a good portion of the SAT vocab section is based on whether you can decipher a prefix or not.

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I mentioned the Vocab for Selyan most especially, as Princeton Review is definitely going to stress the cramming of vocab words in just a few weeks - not only will you forget them quicker, but will you spend precious time on things that only make up 25% of the CR score.

[joethemole]

ya i completely agree with all the above posts regarding CR. the reading part is just soo damn hard to try and perfect. like my best result so far is 4-6 wrongs on the entire CR test, but i just did another set, and got 10 wrongs =(

as for vocab, damn, if i remembered half of the kaplan's wordlist (not the just 'hit parade' or whatever 'exclusive list', i'm talking the whole package) i tried to memorize LAST summer, i would ace this SOB so badly. but the damn ETS had to ****ing give us a new SAT, which takes away the point of memorizing wordlists. Now i usually get 1-2 wrong on sent comp in a complete CR set.

[babypurin]

Originally Posted by joethemole

ya i completely agree with all the above posts regarding CR. the reading part is just soo damn hard to try and perfect. like my best result so far is 4-6 wrongs on the entire CR test, but i just did another set, and got 10 wrongs =(

as for vocab, damn, if i remembered half of the kaplan's wordlist (not the just 'hit parade' or whatever 'exclusive list', i'm talking the whole package) i tried to memorize LAST summer, i would ace this SOB so badly. but the damn ETS had to ****ing give us a new SAT, which takes away the point of memorizing wordlists. Now i usually get 1-2 wrong on sent comp in a complete CR set.

If you can keep up your practicing throughout the summer and September, a 700+ score wouldn't be too impossible. Just remember to keep reading other age-appropriate novels to give you an eclectic variety of genres.