Odyssey Think SAT

Is denim "in" at this time?

I sympathize with you but I really believe you're approaching all this the wrong way. It's not your fault because the SAT is a mystery to most of us. We all have preconceptions about the SAT, some of which are right and some of which are wrong. The misperceptions- the beliefs that are actually myth- can hurt us. A surprising number of parents of high performing kids, I have found, know very little about the SAT and college admissions as well. Considering the fact you are virtually a straight-A student in pre-calc as a junior, I believe your relatively low SAT section scores are because you're mystified by the test. If true, you are a prime candidate for very, very quick gains on all sections. This is not true for all student profiles. You're smart but you don't understand the test enough. Get on the ball and have your parents find an instructor who does understand the test. If you get a good one, one day you may look back at it as a defining moment and critical turning point in your life. In less than a month (which is all you got), you can go 3 sessions a week for 2 to 3 hours per session and get an entire SAT course in. You can continue with some refresher and tuning sessions during the summer. It will be so mundane by then that it'll be no stress at all during your summer of relaxation. You can do all the SAT work your parents want you to do and have a lot of time to enjoy your summer. Some of your comments seem contradictory to me. You need a much higher score than you've got, yet you don't want a tutor. You're tearing your heart out trying to prep on your own for the June test but you still haven't gotten significant improvements. There is every reason to believe you will not get the improvements you need on your own by June. You don't want to prep over the summer but you acknowledge you'll probably take the SAT again next October. If you don't get a big improvement (and there is every reason to believe you won't by June doing it on your own), your parents are going to make you prep during the summer. Here's the only consistent solution: get a private tutor NOW!:)

LOL. But this is YOUR site.:blush: I suppose self-promotion is fine as long as you do it honestly. From what I've seen, you've been pretty honest. That other company that came in here that I will not mention by name was brutally dishonest. We can have good, productive discussion on various methods, which is just fine and what I, you, and others did regarding their endorsement of the skim method. I didn't attack them for that. But that 300-pt average gain was ridiculous and completely purposeful misrepresentation on their part.

Why don't you postpone until October?

I've heard of another essay topic about progress with current ideas versus with new ideas. So sounds like there were different essay topics.

You may have little choice but to get a private tutor. A good one can get you huge gains in a short amount of time. A bad one can be a complete waste of money.

Babypurin, how do you compare the reading comp for March and May tests? About the same? Or was the May reading comp harder?

Thanks again. Maybe once you get the full score report with all the breakdowns, you should call Erin and Test Magic for further tuning. You really are at the cusp of a Caltech kind of score. Considering your borderline unweighted GPA, imagine what that would do for your applications! Just as an example, a former student of mine took Kaplan 3 times a few years ago. This is when Kaplan had the policy that you could retake the course as many times as you wanted. His Kaplan practice tests were all around the low 600's for math and verbal on the old SAT, even though the course had not changed such that the practice tests were all the same. His real SAT scores during that time were low to mid 1200's as well, and his unweighted GPA was only 3.4. Not once on any practice test or real test did he break into the 700's on either section. Because he was somewhat saturated with SAT prep, we were able to get him to the low to mid 1400's in only 16 hours of private tutoring, which is highly unusual (NOTE: USUALLY with test prep savvy students, despite what one might think, you can not significantly decrease the hours because of the need to (1) untrain and retrain the thinking from scratch and (2) properly diagnose FROM SCRATCH what the student knows and doesn't know). The only way we got him to the 1400's was because he listened and did the work (some students will not). He bought into my system and he loved the science behind it. For this kid, roughly 1/3 of our attack was on diagnosing and fixing his psychology. There are many personality nuances that we're familiar with that can be detrimental to the SAT score, and he just happened to have one of the deadliest: wishy-washy-ness! It turned out he (a) was advanced in vocab, reading, and math, BUT he wasn't as advanced as he thought, (b) liked to go super fast and do math in his head because in school it was a competition thing to see who is more "intelligent," and © gave up on difficult questions that required more detail analysis. Remember, these aspects have nothing to do with intelligence or knowledge. We knew on an average day, he would get a low to mid 700 on math and verbal, respectively, because we diagnosed him precisely. He came out with a 680 math and 760 verbal (total of 1440). His math was on the lower range but we knew that could happen on a less-than-ideal day. His verbal was an ideal day, so his final combined score was simply an average day. The best schools he was able to get into were UCI and UCSB. He is now a sophomore at UCSB studying neuroscience of all things! If you can get Erin's help and squeak into the 1500's on math and critical reading, I believe you have an outside shot at UCSD. Even right now, I think you have a strong shot at UCI and UCSB. Are these some of your target schools?

So you're saying you got a TOTAL of 8 wrong on the entire section? In other words, you got all the sentence completions right and all your 8 misses on the reading comp? Or was it 8 misses on reading comp PLUS some more misses on sentence completions? The more I ask, the more confusing the language gets. LOL. Just to make it simpler, could you just repost your RAW SCORE for critical reading that got you the 690?

Good question. Erin might be better to answer that. I don't know the ACT that well. But I can say something in general. You know your reading speed isn't good enough. Are the top ACT scorers skimming or reading every word (and actually finishing on time)? I would imagine the latter. Could it just mean that you need to TRAIN to improve your reading speed? I had to do this for both SAT and GRE, because I'm a slow reader to this day. So I trained coming up to my test and improved my reading speed to finish on time. Obviously, if you are out of time for training, don't have the time in your schedule, or are simply not willing to put in the time, then you may have no choice but to skim. You'll have to work it all out.

Hey, you could be a great spokesperson for the skim method! No but seriously, you didn't really skim SKIM, right? I suspect you're a good reader so when you say skim, you probably mean you read fast. LOL. Princeton Review (and Eureka) should elaborate on the term "skim." They don't really mean skim SKIM, which is a guaranteed formula for disaster. They mean read fast and don't worry about the details. Kaplan wants you to read up front BUT don't worry about the details, which could actually be the same method as the skim method! Erin's approach is fundamentally different from the above because he mentioned the importance of reading every word CAREFULLY. I agree completely. We have brain game and memory techniques that will allow you to process details quickly and automatically while retaining or even improving reading speed.

We talk openly about the various methods that are out there. Many students these days are not naive coming in, have heard all kinds of things, and are confused as to which is "better" or "the best." Sometimes students will sit there afraid to mention another method they've heard of or learned, afraid to mention the other company. In our course, we discuss the phenomenon that anything that is unanswered actually stays with us at the unconscious level and weights us down as a negative emotional anchor (e.g., when you see an SAT-type word while reading a magazine or newspaper but are too lazy to check a dictionary asap until you eventually forget the word). So WE INITIATE discussion of various techniques at the beginning of Day 1 on reading comp. We encourage students to bring up techniques they've heard of, then we ask where they've heard of them. Kaplan and Princeton Review will explicitly tell instructors to not mention the names and methods of other companies. We say "don't worry, it's ok to mention the names of other companies." Instead of knocking the other companies, we describe in a watered-down, easy-to-understand way what goes on in the brain (just like I did in a post above). We state explicity that each of the various methods can work effectively but, based on what science knows about the workings of the brain, Odyssey Test Prep has chosen and developed a method of making roadmaps up front. We acknowledge that it can be more difficult in the beginning but if you train, it becomes automatic. We emphasize that it is a complete system of reading better, analyzing question stems, analyzing answer choices, AND researching (after you get to the questions) the passage better. We state that we will push them to master all 4 aspects but eventually they can tailor the 4 aspects to themselves, essentially creating their own personalized method. We tell students that in the end, they can borrow the system in its entirety, modify it, or even reject it. BUT NOT in the beginning of our course. In order to evaluate a method, a beginner on that method must give it an honest go, right? Imagine a student who, at the END, decides he/she would like to transition into the "skim the passage and get to the questions" method or the hybrid method (which goes back and forth from question to passage) or even a combination method. Then that's up to the student. Regardless, we would feel very confident that such students would now be able to employ those methods EVEN MORE EFFECTIVELY because our instruction pushed the envelope of what their brains could process from the passage, even if it's skimmed up front or read intermittently. Thus, our approach to reading comp is more WHOLISTIC, more complete, and more flexible, and in that sense it is more ideal and less of a compromise.

Thanks a lot for the scores. But there seems to be a discrepancy with your critical reading score. Could you double check that one? Seems like if you had no omissions, it would take 8 wrong (which has a 2-pt penalty) to get a 57 raw score.

Awesome. Thanks for letting us know. Could you please let us know each of your raw scores (math, critical reading, grammar multiple-choice)? I'm trying to determine the scoring scale at the high end, which is exactly where you're at. Thanks.

Again, as I mentioned in the post before, you should have spent more time researching the NEW SAT as well as the HUMAN BRAIN. You are arguing a position that simply does NOT fit the test or the human brain. Your reading comp method already tells me that you do not understand the NEW SAT. Your method, which is the same method used by Princeton Review and one that I'm very very familiar with utilizing as well as it can be utilized, is a compromise, and that is a fact that is inarguable. The only people who would argue it are people who do not sufficiently understand the new SAT. This is the second time you've mentioned vocab-in-context questions, which mystifies me. Why are you so focused on that question type? Please go count the number of vocab-in-context questions on the new SAT. There are only 3 to 5 of them out of 48 reading comp questions! As a test-taker, I would not be disproportionately concerned about those questions. I'd be more concerned about the detail and inference questions, some of which are viciously difficult when combined with a difficult passage. Many of these detail and inference questions are specific yet require one to consider the overall context of the paragraph and/or the overall passage. If you skim or read in bits and pieces, you will not be able to acquire the big picture for the difficult passages, which is a majority. You will not be able to connect the paragraphs and the ideas in the paragraphs cohesively. You clearly do not understand how the human memory system works. Aside from the intricacies of differentiating short-term memory (STM) from long-term memory (LTM), trust me when I say that the method of creating a good roadmap UP FRONT while reading the passage has more to do with LTM than STM and therefore is not held in a choke-hold by Miller's Law. A simple example that should convince you is the observation that people can go into a 2-hour movie and come out with "incredible" memory for details. This is because, if you understand how the memory system works, it's really not that incredible. Even if you didn't understand human memory, you could observe the phenomenon (everyone reading this post can relate, right?), study it by breaking it down, and design a method that takes advantage of the same process. This is what I have done. Even someone without knowledge of human memory could do it. This is applied science. Applying science to dispel myths (because we all have them) and devising ways to reach any number of goals, in this case mastering the SAT. This is what science can do for human beings. Yet your lack of science and lack of understanding for the SAT and human brain have caused you to propagate myth. If you had simply agreed that skimming the passage is not an ideal method, but it could be an EASY method for the average student to make ADEQUATE gains, then that would have been ok. BUT you came back and tried to argue that skimming is an ideal method, which a person educated on the new SAT simply can not make. Focusing on making a strong roadmap up front is not as easy in the BEGINNING of training. That's why you work on it. When you do, what happens is your brain builds circuits that are automatic at a superordinate or more general level. One example is when one learns how to drive stick shift. In the beginning, it's impossible because there are literally hundreds of brain processes going on simultaneously. Yet just about everybody's brain eventually internalizes, masters, and unconsciously automates those hundreds of processes. A second example is how anyone can master the logic games on LSAT and the old GRE by mapping out the characters/elements and the detail rules. These games were initially devised to tax the human brain in terms of Miller's Law (LSAT games will go up to 13 characters). Years ago it was thought that logic games were a purer measure of the construct "g" or general innate intelligence (whatever that was) than math and verbal/critical reading because they were so detail intensive (in a Miller's Law sort of way) that people could not learn general patterns OR retain details from them. This was precisely the reason they were included in some graduate admissions tests. One could do the SAME logic game and its questions a second time immediately after doing them the first time and still not remember a single answer or answer choice for that matter. We now understand that although our brains can not retain the details, we can learn and retain a general process of mapping the characters and the rules that stays away from Miller's Law and can be utilized for virtually any kind of logic game. And this is what is behind just about every LSAT program whether or not they know it (since most test prep companies just absorb the methods from other companies and create their own amalgam). Everyone is able to QUICKLY use a general process of mapping to master logic games...IF you practice. Now take the examples I've given and connect them to reading comp. It's very very similar as far as what is going on in the brain. In fact, I can make a scientifically supported statement that ALL fluent readers unconsciously and automatically utilize roadmapping UP FRONT WHILE THEY READ. Some of these readers will even deny making a roadmap, which is a product of their being so automatic with the process that it's unconscious AND not being students of the brain. Many of these people actually think they were born with high verbal intelligence and/or incredible memories! They do not understand that there was a long path to get to the way they have come to read in the present AND the way they now read just happens to be consistent with how the memory system is designed to work. PLEASE stop making claims that are untrue. First, please stop pushing the skim method as an ideal method. It is not. Second, please stop manipulating the public with claims of a 300-point average increase, which is totally bogus on a number of levels that I have outlined in a post above. Your first fault is merely the result of lack of research and knowledge. Your second fault is much much more egregious, as you know without any doubt, and therefore unacceptable. This forum is for helping each other, not for manipulative self-promotion.

Why do you take me and the other people in here for idiots? The new SAT was just given on March 12 for the first time. Where did you get your data for the 300-point average increase? There is no data...yet. Well actually students received their score reports a week ago but your website claiming an average increase of 300 points was up long ago. Even if you used tests from the Official Study Guide, exact scoring scales for EACH test are not given. So does that mean you're using before (baseline) and after scores solely from your simulated NEW SAT practice tests? If so, that's not a valid method. How did you create the scoring scales? Through actual distributions from hundreds of thousands of new SAT students? Of course not. REGARDLESS, I guarantee you that your company did NOT see an average increase of 300 points even from your practice tests. Here's a statement from your website: "The New SAT Standard Program consists of 15, 90-minute lessons and, based on historical analysis, is expected to have an average increase of over 300 points!" Yes, I believe your background is in marketing, but it's in unethical marketing and purposeful misrepresentation. What is your "historical" analysis? Above, you assert that the average score increase IS in fact 300. Why then would your website qualify things with the word "expected" to have a 300-point increase? I'll tell you where you got your data from: from virtual space. You never had the data from the new SAT because it just came out. Your "historical analysis" is from the old SAT, for which you presumably were claiming a 200-point increase. Then you figured the new test with the Writing section is 1/3 more test so you extrapolated an additional 100 points. This scenario is consistent with your CAREFULLY chosen, manipulative phrasing on your website. BTW, a claim of an average increase of 200 points on the OLD SAT would have been bogus as well for 2 very solid reasons. First, unless you hand-selected each of your students to be from a certain favorable region (e.g., Irvine) AND then further selected only the ones who were already high performers in high school AND who were highly motivated for the SAT, you had ZERO chance of getting students an average increase of 200 points on the old SAT or 300 points on the new SAT. Let's go further. High performers who are TOO high will hit a ceiling effect where they may not even have room for a 200 or 300 point gain. In addition, gains are more difficult up in that area of perfection, as you should know. Therefore, you would have to handpick high performers who are low on the SAT coming in! Obviously, you don't handpick your students, but you can handpick your data. Or just make the numbers up because they sound good. Second, your private SAT program for the new SAT has ONLY 22.5 instructional hours. My experience dissecting the new SAT and working with students on the new SAT clearly indicates 22.5 instructional hours is NOT ENOUGH for private tutoring. Not enough for what? NOT ENOUGH for even a 200-point average score increase on the NEW SAT, much less 300. Your hours are insufficient by a large margin, which means your instructors could not compensate regardless of how incredible 100% of your instructors might be (even though a single Kaplan or Princeton Review center would have around 5 out of 40 who are barely just decent). Then, is your private tutoring program that good? No matter how good, it can NOT compensate for only 22.5 instructional hours. Plus, I guarantee you that your private tutoring program isn't close to the private tutoring system I created for Odyssey Test Prep. Finally, even if your old SAT private program had 22.5 instructional hours, it would not be enough to attain an average score increase of 200 points on the OLD test. It seems you should have spent more time dissecting the SAT and less time on marketing. This industry needs more scholars and SAT experts and fewer business people. I have cited some strong evidence that clearly indicates, at least for me, that your claims are preposterous. I have a suggestion, an idea. Why don't you send me and/or Erin (the owner of Test Magic who runs this forum) the phone numbers for every single student of yours who took the March 12 SAT and let us collect the data for you? Would you be willing to do this?

Eureka, thank you for such a timely response, which shows everyone here that your desire is truly to participate in this forum rather than just to advertise. Warm welcomes or not are earned.

I know the system that I have designed is better than the systems of Kaplan, Princeton Review, Ivy West (hardly the standard for private tutoring), Elite, ACI Institute, and Alpha Academy (the last 3 have quite a reputation among the Asian community). What this means is that I can take a student who is ALREADY high level and I can get him/her higher faster than any of the companies mentioned. Just as importantly, I can take a lower performing student and get that student higher faster than any of the companies mentioned. It won't matter what any company prints as its average score increase. Trust me, I know how companies deal with that issue. No company would publish TRUE averages based on ALL students who go through their program(s) UNLESS 100% of their students are high performers who are highly motivated. They SELECT convenient data. I cut through all that garbage by simply getting higher scores faster over and over and over with students who come to us after a lack of success with those companies regardless of the nonsense those companies claim. Of course, every company deals with disgruntled students from other companies, so crossover students may not be conclusive testimony...unless you get crossover students better success over and over and over. At any rate, students and parents who have never had test prep before and come to us first are critical in an unadulterated, PURE, QUALITATIVE way because invariably they have heard of at least one of the other more popular companies. With these folks, I must convince them UP FRONT (before any test prep) that what we do is qualitatively better than any other SAT program around our area. I can do this 100% of the time. Still, I do NOT advertise my company as the PREMIER or the BEST unless I am ready to back it up. I show it either qualitatively up front and/or qualitatively through the experience of our SAT program. Above, you said: "It really is the best". I bet if Eureka's creator or best instructor were to get together with me in a demonstration of PRIVATE TUTORING systems in front of an audience of randomly selected naive students, test prep saturated students, and parents, 100% of them will be convinced that the private tutoring system that I created that is taught by Odyssey Test Prep is superior to Eureka's. Yes, 100% buy-in on our (1) math system, (2) critical reading system, (3) multiple-choice grammar system, and (4) essay writing system. Would you or Eureka like to set up such a demonstration? I have been participating in this forum for a while now, and never before have I tried to advertise or sell myself. Why is it that you or whoever from your company comes in here and immediately makes such definitive and superlative statements while you advertise yourself so egregiously? It's unacceptable. That's exactly how NOT to do business.

I'm sure there are some really good ones in NY, perhaps independent private tutors. Flip open the Yellow Pages and make calls and ask good questions. I bet you they're out there.

Babypurin, did you also take Princeton Review or did you just hear about it from friends? Kaplan may give more materials but aside from the Official Study Guide, which you can buy at bookstores for only $20, their lesson book is very poor. The entire math is grossly insufficient, the grammar review is brushed through and incomplete, and barely 1 hour is given to essay writing. Kaplan does have better simulated SAT questions than Princeton Review, that is for sure, both in their lesson book and in their practice tests. Princeton Review's current REGULAR course gives you 35 instructional hours plus 4 practice tests while Kaplan's current course gives you only 20 instructional hours plus 4 practice tests. When former Princeton Review students run into me, they report that the last 2 sessions are pretty much sacrificed; either they have a pizza party and socialize or they conduct class outside on the grass, fielding questions if there are any. If this is true, then you can virtually deduct 7 hours (their classes are 3.5 hours) from 35 for a true total of 28 instructional hours, still far more than Kaplan. Babypurin, we're in southern California and there might be regional differences. Have you heard of Princeton Review in New York pretty much kicking back and having fun and socializing during the last 2 sessions? BTW, since I started with Kaplan in the 90's, they had never had a money back guarantee until now. Managers used to do anything under their discretion to appease irate parents short of money back, such as some free private tutoring hours or offering the chance to take the course over. Managers were instructed to do anything but offer a money back unless absolutely necessary. Besides, a money back guarantee was never a printed policy...until now. If you and Knok were in southern California, how could you possibly pass up on Odyssey Test Prep's "ThinkSAT_Program!" ??!!! ;)

Kaplan changed it in the beginning or middle of 2004.

Yes, Higher Score Guarantee (HSG) only requires you to have SOME gain. If you have ANY sort of gain from baseline (a previous real SAT score or a Kaplan diagnostic) to the real SAT, then you are not eligible for the money back guarantee.

Babypurin, what exactly were the publications that Kaplan gave you? What do you mean by Kaplan's 10 SAT's? And when you say the CollegeBoard's 8 SAT's, are you talking about the Official SAT Study Guide, which has 8 tests? Here in southern California, Kaplan gives every student the Official SAT Study Guide along with the Kaplan lesson book. Here Kaplan does not give students any other tests except for the 4 diagnostic exams.

Glad to help, Fei Fei.

You want an ideal score so skimming or going to the questions first or going back and forth from questions to the reading would be risky. The new SAT doesn't have harder passages. It has harder questions. For the old SAT, you could miss 10 (assuming no blanks) and get a 700 Verbal. Since 2003, the reading passages started getting harder. I have seen 3 perfect 1600 score reports but none got all the verbal questions right. One got a minus-1, one got a minus-2, and one got a minus-3. Their misses were ALL on reading comprehension. So for the old SAT, with my high scorers, we would plan going into the reading comp, at least initially, for a minus-4. Students at this level could usually get no worse than minus-2 on the 19 sentence completions and no worse than a minus-3 on the 19 analogies. That would be total of minus-9, which would get them around a 710 or 720 Verbal (assuming no blanks) on the old SAT. For the new SAT, the 1 practice test with an exact scoring scale that the testmaker has released indicates a minus-6 to be 700. Because there are more difficult questions on the new SAT reading comp, my advanced students are finding it hard to even target a minus-4. At least initially, it seems a minus-6 is more realistic, and they have to become extremely proficient just to get to the minus-4 level. If you can't consistently get better than a minus-6, then you have to score perfect on the 19 sentence completions. However, the new sentence completions are also a little bit harder. There are still 19, but around 2 of them are purposely engineered to be a bit harder than in the old SAT, according to my analysis, which you will not find in any test prep company materials anywhere. If you're really good, you'll still get perfect on sentence completions, but if you used to squeak out of them with a minus-1 or minus-2, then expect possibly 1 or 2 MORE misses on sentence completions for the new SAT. In the latter case, you'll be lucky to even have a minus-4 allowable on the reading comp, which we already know is tougher than ever to get. The key to the new SAT, then, is to do whatever it takes to get your sentence completions PERFECT, and train all you can on the reading comp to get no worse than minus-4 just to maintain some breathing space above the 700 line. Your 630 on the old SAT is around a minus-17 (assuming no blanks). In order to estimate what that might be on the new SAT, throw out the analogies and determine how many sentence completions and reading comp you missed. Add around 1 or 2 MORE misses to your sentence completions and around 2 or 3 or 4 MORE misses to your reading comp and you'll have a rough transformation for the new SAT. Buy the Official SAT Study Guide and try a few of the tests. See if you can hit your targets using your skimming method. I'd be surprised if you could. At any rate, your 1420 on the old SAT is a good score. However, you better make sure every school you're interested in will actually take the old SAT.