SAT study prep

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by marcuscarey, Jul 22, 2005.

Loading...
  1. marcuscarey

    marcuscarey New Member

    Board,

    A co-worker's son is getting ready for SAT soon. Any recommendations on how he should prep.

    Thanks in advance!
     
  2. Fortunato

    Fortunato Member

    My GMAT prep routine may be of use to your friend's child. I went out and purchased several GMAT guides, skimmed over all of them, and decided which approach to the test I thought would work best for my learning style. In my case, I liked the Princeton Review's guide the best, so I read that one through, doing the exercises along the way. After that, I did all the practice exams in all the books I bought, both on paper and on CD-ROM. That helped me get a feel for the test in terms of pacing myself and the testing environment (the GMAT is given on the computer, not sure how they administer the SAT these days).

    When preparing for standardized exams, the key is to know what types of questions will be on the exam and how to attack those specific types of questions. One of the ways at getting better at attacking the questions that will be on the exam is to see as many of them as possible. By the time I took my real GMAT, I had taken 15 practice exams. My first practice exam had a "score" of 680. On the real GMAT, I got a score of 750 on my first and only try. I'm reasonably sure that seeing so many practice questions is a large part of the reason I did so well.

    Best of luck to your friend's son!
     
  3. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    In major cities, organizations like Kaplan and Princeton Review offer SAT prep classes. Indeed, they offer prep classes for ACT, DCAT, GMAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, SAT, the whole alphabet soup of them. You might also look into private tutors. You don't say whether you're in a major urban area or a small rural area, but there are many private tutors that will offer their services online nowadays.

    Of course, the test prep books are good, too. If you the books can be had, new or used, at www.amazon.com or www.bn.com or www.bookfinder.com .

    Of course, the best prep for these tests is to be attentive in school and absorb a lot of factoids. Then you might be able to get away with going into an entrance examination cold turkey and still do fairly well. Of course, just because I did so cold turkey (and scored in the 93rd percentile on both the GRE Subject Test in History and the GRE Subject Test in Political Science) doesn't mean I would necessarily recommend anyone else going in cold turkey.

    Another hint: Get a good night's sleep before the exam.
     

Share This Page