How do you interpret your student’s SAT score? Anything over 500 is average, and anything over 600 is good. A perfect score on the essay is 12.
Studying for the test, and taking it again could be a GREAT idea that could save you $10,000 per year on college costs, depending on your situation.
Explain to your child that they don’t have to get “smarter” when studying for the SAT. She only needs to practice, and practice alone can increase her score. As she takes sample tests, the questions will become more and more familiar, until she starts to recognize the math questions and recognizing the kind of essay prompt they give. Practice will increase her speed with filling in the bubbles, and she’ll get to the place where she won’t even need to read the directions on each section. She is also familiar with the school testing environment now, and just knowing exactly where the bathroom is located can raise her score!
So to study… if you have extra money you might sign her up for a test preparation class in your local area. It’s MUCH cheaper to buy a $20 book from the bookstore and study at home. Take the book, and cut out one whole test at a time, separating the bubble answer sheet, so she can practice filling in the bubbles on a different piece of paper. Do one section of each test once a day, each day before going out to play. If morning is a “problem time” for your teenager, you might even consider doing it first thing in the morning, so the “morningness” of it seems familiar too. Have her do one section per day, timed. When the timer goes off, she can correct her own work. Have her only look up her wrong answers, and read the explanation for just those questions.
Easy, peasy, cheap tip for getting big scholarships. Think about it this way, if you get $10,000 in scholarship money, what is the hourly wage for all the study time? Pretty good! It’s a great investment in your time!
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Lois says:
Something I read (it may have been in the Princeton Review practice SAT book) said that taking it more than twice is counterproductive. And, a certain percentage of retakes actually score lower than the first time. I had my daughter take about 3 practice tests with a small group of kids on 3 different days. She took the actual test once, scored above avg. and we’ll call it good. The essay was on a horrid prompt, and I don’t think colleges even care how you do on the essay.
On a side note, she took the ACT twice. The first time she hadn’t practiced. Her score wasn’t high enough for admittance to a college for dual credits (they want HIGHER scores for homeschoolers!) She took it again (after practicing,) did a little better, but still missed the cut-off by one point! The SAT was much easier (for her), and she’s way above their criteria.
July 13th, 2012 at 12:49 pm