Thoughts on SAT prep?

None ^ | 06 June 2017 | Self

[Labyrinthos]

Kaplan and/or Princeton Review.

Please ignore all the a-holes questioning why your son even wants to go to college or insisting that a good study guide is all that is needed to do well. Some people have to go to college to achieve certain career goals — law, medicine, engineering, teaching, barista. And some people learn better with an inactive course, as opposed to staring at a book. I took review courses for the SAT and LSAT back in the mid-70’s to early 80’s and I have absolutely no doubt that they improved my score. At the very least, I learned test-taking techniques and took practice exams under test conditions that helped develop my test-taking skills.

[taxcontrol]

Thanks, I have learned to ignore the nay sayers.

My oldest daughter has mild Aspergers and has been told many times that she will not succeed in life (even by her GS leader). In 3rd grade, she was failing “Everyday Math” with a 30 F. She graduated HS with a 3.5 GPA. Currently, She is in her last semester of her associates and will transfer to one of the top schools in the US for wild life biology which is her passion. Not it has not been easy, but hard work can make up for a lot of ability.

Likewise, my son is one of the top musicians for saxophone and guitar and has already exceeded any HS level education in those areas. We have to pay for private tutors for him to learn anything. When he gets a fire under him, he can outperform just about everyone in his class regardless of the topic. He has only recently lit the fire for college so we will see where it takes him.

Thanks again for the support

[Labyrinthos]

He’s not going to be a doctor. A doctor needs to be a 4.0 student and 600 points higher on the SAT. He should focus on what he really wants to do.

Total BS. He does not need to have a 4.0 GPA in highs school and a 1550 on the SAT to become a doctor. Medical schools (and other professional grad schools) don't care about high school grades. However, your son will need to get into the best college he can get into, have a college GPA in the 3.6 to 4.0, earn top grades in his core pre-med classes, and score well on the MCAT. If your son does not do well on the SAT, then he should seriously consider the many excellent college where the SAT is optional in the admissions process. Here is the current list: http://fairtest.org/university/optional

[stig]

SAT test taking.
First make sure you are getting a chance to answer all the questions. You have like 1.5 min or less to answer each question. If you are stuck on a problem leave it and go on. No use wasting time on a problem you now have a good chance of getting wrong.

For math: practice without a calculator. Learn to find the tricks. If there seems to be an insurmountable amount of calculations requiring a calculator you probably missed some simple algebra that simplifies the problem.

Study geometry these are usually the harder problems and a little geometry can go along way to solving the problem. Many times in the geometry problems you will get to a point that you say if I knew that those 2 sides were equal I could solve the problem. Assume they are equal, (there is likely a theorem that you can’t remember that would prove it to you), solve the problem.

Finally if you have no idea what the math problem is about make sure the pythagorean theorem won’t help you out!!!! I can’t stress this enough they love to hide the Pythagorean theorem anywhere they can.

[grayhog]

Hi - we just went through this with my oldest (reports to West Point July 3rd :) )

In our experience the best improvement strategy is the get the blue book and do all 10 practice exams. She did 1 each week over the summer between sophomore and junior year, and it made a huge difference. Do the exams, mark the questions you weren’t sure about, then review how to do them. Repeat.

[Tamatoa]

I’ll look for her book once I get home. I’ll ask if she will use it again if not I’ll send it your way. It really helped that she scored 1300 on her PSAT as a sophomore without studying. Kids learn differently and absorb information differently. The new SAT tests are not the same like the one we took when in HS. So a new SAT book is required.

[samtheman]

Oops. It’s not me looking for a book.

[nicollo]

I run an academic support service, and we work w/ kids on on SAT prep all the time.

We use the College Board “official” practice tests:
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/practice/full-length-practice-tests

The student should work on printed out version w/ bubble sheets, and should engage it regularly, scaling up the amount of work so that there’s a solid and consistent combination of student independent practice and tutor/parent feedback. I’d recommend, for example, starting with test no. 1 and working on approx. 20 questions (i.e. first two sub-sections) from each section, Reading, Writing, Math w/o Calc, and Math w/ Calc.

Then provide your student w/ feedback by reviewing student thought process on each question by re-working each question with the student thinking out loud. The idea is to figure out the current student approach to the material and apply strategies for improvement.

I’d work on at least 2-5 full tests this way, perhaps scaling up the amount of material gradually and focusing on errors, especially to identify patterns, before launching into full blown, sit-down, timed practice, with at least 2 of those.

You as a parent can provide the feedback w/o paying for a tutor, as you can review the explanations before working on student results.

I’ve seen 50-200 pt improvement, depending on student developmental and core language/math skills.

Good luck!!

[Tamatoa]

Lol

Thanks

[combat_boots]

Is there anything at the Khan academy or Lynda.com?