SATs today

[discovery1]

In an hour and a half I will be taking my second SAT I. In case you don't know what these are they are achievement test that can get you into college. SO, anyone else taking SATs today?

[Lehesu]

Not quite yet, but I am not too worried. I recieved an 800 on verbal in last PSAT and got the same on this year's practice PSAT. The math section seems easier on this new SAT so that should help my grade.

[Skomatth]

Already took the SAT 1. I took SAT II Writing and Math IC (yes IC I'm a whimp :) today though. I think I did pretty well.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

No more SAT's for me ahaha

[Teutonic Knight]

No more SAT's for me ahaha

If you don't mind me asking, how did you do?

I'm taking my very first PSAT on the 20th and I'm a little nervous about it, and I don't know why. Of course I always get extremely nervous before tests though...

Any advice from veterans?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I did well.

The first psat is just a practice, nothing to worry about there. The next one (psat/nmsqt) determines whether you are national merit or not so it can be important.

There is of course the obvious of getting a good nights sleep and eating well before the exam. But the most important is to take some practice ones and learn how to pace yourself, wear a watch. The more questions you answer the better since despite what you say there isn't really a penalty for guessing. You get -.25 for each one wrong, but if you guess on 5 you will get 1 right and 4 wrong and that will come out to be zero. So I always answered all the questions. Also you can guess on two in the verbal section and not get penalized at all if you miss them.

Oh, and I swear by the Kaplan prep books, my SAT went up 130 points after going through the math and the verbal books

It's important to go through the practice books so that you understand what they want you to do on the question, this is especially important for the math. Each question is testing a specific skill, you need to be able to read the question and know which skill they are looking for or else you will waste time and possible get it wrong.

Reading the questions carefully is very important, I missed quite a few in the practice exams by misreading the question.

If you hit a hard question skip it and come back later, that one is common sense.

If one of the very first questions in a section seems real hard you are doing something wrong, try rereading it, the early questions should be easier. Likewise if one of the last questions seems real easy they probably fooled you.

[Teutonic Knight]

I did well.

The first psat is just a practice, nothing to worry about there. The next one (psat/nmsqt) determines whether you are national merit or not so it can be important.

There is of course the obvious of getting a good nights sleep and eating well before the exam. But the most important is to take some practice ones and learn how to pace yourself, wear a watch. The more questions you answer the better since despite what you say there isn't really a penalty for guessing. You get -.25 for each one wrong, but if you guess on 5 you will get 1 right and 4 wrong and that will come out to be zero. So I always answered all the questions. Also you can guess on two in the verbal section and not get penalized at all if you miss them.

Oh, and I swear by the Kaplan prep books, my SAT went up 130 points after going through the math and the verbal books

It's important to go through the practice books so that you understand what they want you to do on the question, this is especially important for the math. Each question is testing a specific skill, you need to be able to read the question and know which skill they are looking for or else you will waste time and possible get it wrong.

Reading the questions carefully is very important, I missed quite a few in the practice exams by misreading the question.

If you hit a hard question skip it and come back later, that one is common sense.

If one of the very first questions in a section seems real hard you are doing something wrong, try rereading it, the early questions should be easier. Likewise if one of the last questions seems real easy they probably fooled you.

Thanks!

I've been using the Princeton Review's "How to crack the SAT" and it makes sense to me. Of course I feel I've covered the test material pretty well in school by itself.

[Steppe Merc]

I'm gonna take SATs later in the year. I'm worried about the new test though...

[Sasaki Kojiro]

oooooh that's right, they took out the analogies and put in an essay portion didn't they. That has to hurt, the analogies were the easiest part and your screwed on the essay if you have sloppy handwriting.

[IrishMike]

Sloppy handwriting! Well I am a dead man for sure then.

[Skomatth]

The essay on the SAT II was really easy. If the new section is the same as the Writing test it shouldn't be a problem. I only got 20 minutes and whipped out 4 paragraphs :) The topic was "A great decision was made when..." I just pulled the APUSH card and wrote about the Emancipation Proclamation. The Kaplan book has a bunch of practice prompts which I used to practice writing something in 20 minutes. princetonreview.com now is also going to offer to grade your essays.

Practice does you a whole lot of good I think, especially if you can do some several weeks before and then lay off the week before the test. Dont get discouraged by the practice tests either, I did 300 points better on the SAT than on the practice tests. Of course I did take the practice about 3am :)

On a related note, where are you guys applying to college?

For me:

Earlham
Ohio-Wesleyan
Wooster
Allegheny
Uni of Richmond
Will and Mary
American (in DC)
Haverford
Marlboro

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I got a 50% on the satII essay...and got all the multiple choice right. I'm figuring I got someone who just couldn't read it very well and took off a bunch. The actual question was real easy though.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I could take the SAT one more time, but I did pretty well on the last one, so I think I'll just skip it.

I'm just glad I won't have to take the SATII. No analogies and an essay?! You poor blokes.

Of course, I've got some 4 AP tests in the spring. I'm not too worried, as last year I had five and passed them all!

Crazed Rabbit

[discovery1]

Took it not bad, but I won't know how I did for a few weeks. I'm taking Writing(again) Math IIC(maybe, my counseler said to drop it after getting a 750 on IC and a 5 on cal AP AB) and physics in November. What colleges will I be applying to?

USC
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
Purdue(working on app right now in fact)
Caltech(a 'why not' school)
Georgia Tech
Berkely
MIT(yet another 'why not')
maybe more, probably not though.

[Teutonic Knight]

oooooh that's right, they took out the analogies and put in an essay portion didn't they. That has to hurt, the analogies were the easiest part and your screwed on the essay if you have sloppy handwriting.

I'm terrible at analogies but I'm great at essays, go figure.

They also took out Quantitative Comparisons in math and replaced it with Algebra II.