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Aug 2018 SAT--apparently a repeat of the Oct 2017 International SAT, so some people had seen the test already. College Board has not said that it will invalidate all scores; currently, College Board is saying that it will invalidate only the scores of those they determine cheated. I've heard a bunch of anecdotal comments about people who knew people who had seen the test before, even one person who announced at the end of the test that it was 'easy' and he'd 'taken that test before'. (The proctor asked him to stay behind!) A lot of my students are asking me if College Board will invalidate all scores. I find that difficult to imagine--too many plans (and lives, even) could be affected, disrupted, or even ruined. For example, a student has friends whose only chance to take the SAT (with little pressure) occurred in August--they are very high-achieving students planning to apply to top-ten universities, and their application plans are not allowing for a retake of the SAT Reasoning Test.

Been working on this for a couple of days. Hope it helps someone. I'm also open to feedback or questions, if you have any! Summary Summary: Here are the key points that I will cover. If you need more information, read on. Tenth grade is a pretty good time to start prepping for the SAT. It’s not too early or too late. Before you start, get your baseline SAT score. Work from official SAT tests. Practice, review, repeat. Keep track of your performance, scores, questions missed and questions that confused you. Expect to spend anywhere from 10 to 1,000 hours prepping. (Or more. Or less.) At the very least, be sure to take at least one practice test before the real thing! Hi there. Today I’d like to focus on one of the most common questions that I hear from parents who are contacting us for the first time: How to prepare for the SAT. It’s a very general question, and there are countless specific details that could change your approach. For example, some students will focus on an extracurricular more than on their SATs (such as a sport or an internship), while others may try to get the highest SAT score possible to maximize their chances at a few colleges they’ve selected. That said, the following should be a good starting point for starting to develop a good study plan during your SAT prep, and at the very least for some people, will help make sure you don’t get caught by surprise when the time comes to apply to college. When to start prepping for the SAT While it may sound like a pretty straightforward question with a clear answer, the optimal time to begin your SAT prep really depends on several important factors, including, for example, what colleges you plan to apply to and how much you need to improve your score. For example, someone who’s scored 980 on the PSAT and hopes for a 1300 is quite different from someone who has scored a 1400 on the PSAT and wants to raise her score to the 1500s. However, in a word, earlier is usually preferable to later, and you want to be sure to leave plenty of time to prepare comfortably. First, let me give some background on what I see here at TestMagic. If you averaged out the school grade during which most of our students start prepping for the SAT, you’d see that a good chunk of our students start in the middle of 10th grade. Of course we have plenty of students who start in 11th grade and a small number who start in 12th grade, and we also have a few students who start even earlier, such as in 9th grade. (Of in middle school--we have had a small number of students who want to take our course in middle school for a couple of reasons. The two main reasons for preparing for the SAT at such a young age are one, preparing to take the SAT for CTY, Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, and two, visiting from abroad for the summer and taking our course while here in San Francisco). But again, the most common age to start for our students is sometime in 10th grade. This is a nice time to start because it’s plenty early in case something comes up (Oh no! I need to study more trigonometry!) and starting in tenth grade also alleviates some of the pressure of junior year, when students typically feel the most stressed, especially near the end of the school year, when final exams, AP tests, SATs, ACTs, and SAT Subject tests all happen around the same time. Oh, every now and then we work with people who have only a couple of weeks to prepare, sometimes because they didn’t realize it was such a big deal to get ready for the test or because they’re too busy. It goes without saying that this situation is less than ideal. (But not hopeless!) SAT study plan First, I just want to say that there are a zillion variations of the plan that follows. I suggest you try what appeals to you, and add in whatever I’ve not mentioned that works for you. (Remember, every student is different, and what works for one person may not work for another.) Step 1: Establish your SAT baseline Your SAT baseline is your starting SAT score or current level. Knowing your starting score is vital for many reasons, but especially if you have a goal score or will be working with an SAT coach. Quick note: I suppose theoretically you could start your SAT prep without taking a diagnostic SAT—you would just do your prep, and when you take your first practice test, you would get a score. But a lot of people like to know their level so that they have a clearer goal. To get your baseline SAT score, simply take an official SAT under simulated conditions—download an official SAT, set aside about four hours in a quiet place, and time yourself for the test. Be careful about not getting distracted! Consider doing it with a friend to keep yourselves honest, so to speak, or go to a public library to take it. (TestMagic also administers practice tests onsite if you feel like you might get distracted at home.) In some cases, using your PSAT score will work almost as well to establish your baseline, especially if you’ve taken it recently. Finally, record your score somewhere, either on paper or in a spreadsheet. Now to the next step—the actual studying. The SAT study plan It goes without saying that the bulk of your SAT prep will consist of studying, reviewing, and practicing. Whether you’re self-studying or studying with a course or tutor changes the process and materials a bit, but in general, you’ll need the following: The official SAT tests (fundamental) A good SAT manual (helpful, if it’s well-written) A good dictionary (crucial; my favorite is the Merriam-Webster dictionary, but the American Heritage and Random House collegiate dictionaries are fine for test prep) Explanations of the questions on the official SAT (helpful) Video tutorials, such as those found on Khan Academy (helpful, but not vital) Nice tools—a pretty (physical) notebook or computer document, a nice mechanical pencil, a nice eraser, a graphing calculator, snacks, a water bottle, headphones, etc. Your basic study plan involves a combination of learning the material on the SAT (with books and videos), reviewing, taking practice tests, and reviewing those. A sample plan of study would be something like this: 4 hours: Take your diagnostic SAT 2-4 hours: Review diagnostic SAT; find areas to improve 2-10 hours: Review SAT concepts in your manual or from the test. For example, study vocabulary, practice combinations and permutations, review punctuation rules, and so on. 2-10 hours: Study SAT concepts again. Repeat two to six times. 4 hours: Take your next practice SAT to see how you’ve improved. That is the basic cycle of improving your SAT score. We’ll begin the discussion of materials in a bit. (I will do more in-depth reviews in the future) Variations of SAT prep I started teaching in 1991, and one thing I learned right away—teachers need to employ a variety of techniques in the classroom. Here are some variations on studying that I’ve successfully used: Take the test untimed. This is actually an extremely helpful technique, and I highly recommend that at least in the beginning of your SAT prep, you take a couple or several tests with no time limit. Why? Simple—it’s important to know which questions you’re capable of answering regardless of time limit. For example, if you can get through a tricky math problem in ten minutes, then you should work on improving your speed. But if you can’t do it at all because you haven’t studied that material in school yet, then you would need to work on building your foundation for the test. Instead of taking a full-length test in one go, try taking each section one by one. Some people can’t concentrate for four hours straight. Or if they can, they certainly don’t enjoy it. If you find that you can’t sustain your concentration and mental energy for four hours, consider taking the test a section at a time. (But of course, you need, at some point, to get used to taking the SAT under realistic conditions.) And here’s a radical notion: During school, starting in middle school, pay extra attention in class, especially your English, History, and Math classes. Take notes, look up words you don’t know, and review everything. Do that for a couple of years, and you’ll be really well prepared for the SAT. And your grades should improve as well! What materials to use There are a lot of great materials available, but unfortunately, there are probably more materials that we sometimes call “score harmers”, i.e., material that was hastily thrown together just to sell books and contains inaccurate information. (The big publishers are most guilty of this, though now in the age of the Internet, they’ve gotten better in this regard.) Of course, the official SAT tests are vital. You can’t prep without them. For books, videos, courses, tutors, online courses, etc., check reviews online. From my experience, most teachers genuinely want to help their students, so don't fear reaching out to people to ask questions or gauge the fit with the tutor you might work with. I know this section on materials is a bit short, but at some point in the future, I’ll review some of the better known options to review them.

Which is the sat coaching center in Hyderabad??? I have been to Manhattan Review, Princeton Review, these are just big names minting money by taking uncountable number of students wasting their precious time. They follow very generic pattern and do not give individual attention at all whether the students score good or not, they don't even bother. Is there any good SAT coaching center in Hyderabad or Secunderabad which provides individual attention? Please help!!

Hello, it’s Diego from Spain here and with the aim of contributing to the ed tech industry and provide tools to improve the way of studying at my company, “TestMe Inc.”, I’ve developed an app that will help you to master SAT or ACT standardized tests. Test Me! is a multiple-choice test prep app which has many other cool features like Khan Academy video search and it includes exclusive content created by leaders in the sector of tutoring. It incorporates 60 tests up to the moment but many more are going to be added shortly. It’s a free app with no ads that I’d like you to check out and in case you do it would be very kind of you (and useful for us) to leave some comments that not only might encourage other users to try our app out but will also help us to improve it. Many thanks :) Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.testMe.testMe iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/es/app/testme-inc/id1250945413?mt=8

I'm having trouble with the question below. I would like to know the right answer and why it's correct. I'm not too confident with any question that has a "had" in it nor past perfect tense. Thanks a lot of the help. http://www.www.urch.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=7017&stc=1

Think carefully about the tissue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. “Everyone makes hundreds of simple, spontaneous decisions daily. When the issues are not morally complex and the stakes are small, our normal instincts are sufficient. The problem comes when we don’t distinguish between minor and potentially major issues that demand a much more careful approach. But even with significant consideration, it can be very difficult to choose between two options that seem equally valuable.” Adapted from Michael Josephson, Making Ethical Decisions Assignment: What two options are the most difficult to choose between? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations. Everyone of us needs to make tons of decisions throughout our lives. Most of the decisions are easy to make, while a few of them require much more careful considerations. Choosing the university major is definitely the hardest decision to make, as very often people are faced with two options – the major that interests them but provides a less bright future, and the one that has a better future prospect yet is less interesting. The reasons for this are that people are concerned about money, social status and their own abilities. First, the major that we are interested in may require a larger sum of tuition but less financially rewarding in the long term than other option. Consider my own situation, I was wondering whether to study biochemistry or medicine (which is offered as an undergraduate course in my country) during my college application. Becoming a scientist and conducting research is my childhood dream, but being a doctor can enjoy a higher job security and salary. Besides, to study science in the best place in the world – the US, requires more than $50k a year, which is a couple times more expensive than to study medicine. This sad reality makes me wonder if I should pursue my dream as a scientist. Second, one option of college major may lead to a career that has a higher social status than the one people really interested in. Take studying law and literature as an example, the former is usually more respected by people, because professionals are usually perceived to be more successful. Those who study literature might be looked down by society, unless they become Nobel Laureates in the future. Given the potential low social status, people may find it hard to decide whether to do the things they enjoy or go and seek a higher social status, which is the concern of many people. Third, people may be uncertain of their abilities in more advanced study if they choose the major they are interested in. What we study in high schools is just introductory stuff, while the materials covered in college or even grad schools may require more natural talent. For instance, students who become fascinated by physics and aspire to become physicists after studying Newton’s Laws in high school may re-consider their ambitions again after they discover that many undergraduates fail to comprehend the more advanced theories in college. They doubt their own abilities may not be sufficient to handle the major they really like. Most people are told to choose the fields that are interested and passionate to study, but in reality the decision does not depend on one’s interests only. Therefore, when faced with the options of interests versus future prospects when applying for college, many people find that making the appropriate decision, which can have profound impacts on their latter lives, very difficult.

Assignment; Honesty is important, of course, but deception can actually make it easier for people to get along. In a recent study, for example, on out of every four of the lies told by participants was told solely for the benefit of another person. in fact, most lies are harmless social untruths in which people pretend to like someone or something more than they actually do ("your muffins are the best!"). Adapted from Allison Kornet "The Truth About Lying" Is deception ever justified? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. support you position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations. Essay; Deception is sometimes justified. People shouldn’t be satisfied with themselves when they play this card every time they can, but it is true that sometimes it is required. It shouldn’t be used fallowing a mean purpose as human ethic dictates; Actually it dictates that lies shouldn’t even exist in our thoughts. However people deceive, ignoring with that action this principle. The best relationships are based in always telling the truth. That can get us strong commintment towards friends or causes, so strong that we would be willing to lie to protect them. Lying in order to cover a friend or an important cause is often considered as a good action depending on the scenario. Jose Marti, the most remarkable character in Cuban History, said that there are some things that in order to realize them you have to keep them in the shadows. Moreover, probably he had to lie one or two times to carry on with the Cuban revolution after all, but no one would dare to say that he was a mean man just because of that. The feeling of guiltiness when you lie must not be lost. If that happen people get used to the shortcuts that a lie can provide, and therefore become ‘addict’ to it. Yes, lying deliberately can get those who don’t know when it’s better to say the truth in a hole very hard to come out . Like a friend I have that is always customizing his stories making them so glorious that seem out of this world. At the end we always discover that those stories are lies, and he is trying to make us think that he is amazing. Ultimately we just stopped believing what he said; whether it is true or not. Now, it is so hard to trust in whatever came out of his mouth. There is the difference between using deception because it’s necessary and for a major good, or because you like it. I would like to believe that I will always say the truth, unless there is a life or death matter on the table that requires me to lie. That is how, in my thought, humanity must behave. * English is not my native language. Thanks!!

Hi, We are looking for SAT Teachers in Hyderabad. Does anyone know who is interested has taught or interested in teaching SAT content Please contact Raj at 91-8008002626. regards RAJ

Anna-Maria asserted that she learned little from the presentation, but not so much because the lecturer was abstruse as because he was -------; that is, the lecturer was perfectly -------, but he simply would not commit to any one stance. (A) equivocal . . intelligible (B) exhausting . . understandable © ambiguous . . comprehensive (D) facile . . reasonable (E) recondite . . entertaining Answer: Any questions? Ask away. :)