Since January 2006, all of my students' scores improved from the PSAT / initial SAT to the current SAT with combined Reading / Math / Writing scaled score increases ranging from 40 to 570 points.
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SAT Prep
Students who learn how to effectively recognize and eliminate obvious incorrect answer choices on the Reading, Writing, and Sentence Completion sections have a chance to improve their combined SAT score by 200-500+ scaled points.
Sample SAT Reading Question:
It can be most reasonably inferred from the passage that (A) similar folk beliefs are based on identical logic and reasoning (B) modern cephalopods will one day be believed to have been caused by lightning (C) all modern cephalopods have bullet-shaped inner shells (D) belemnites are considerably larger than ordinary pieces of gravel (E) during extremely violent storms, stones can occasionally fall from the sky
In the above example:
“Identical” makes (A) too extreme.
“Will one day be believed” makes (B) too speculative
“All” makes (C) too extreme.
“Fall from the sky” makes (E) farfetched.
Even if the test-taker is unsure of (D), elimination strategies have rendered the other choices invalid.
During individualized SAT/ACT prep sessions, I use my 10+ years of teaching / test-prep experience to:
1) Help students fill Sentence Completion holes, thus purging erroneous choices through a systematic process of deduction.
2) Help students distinguish from among the 6-7 recurrent types of Reading questions, and quickly identify key words that expose well-disguised inaccurate answer choices (see 'Sample SAT Reading Question' above).
3) Help students pick numbers (Math questions with variables) and work backwards (great for multiple-choice tests) to decipher questions that would ordinarily require long forgotten algebraic formulae.
Though it is advantageous to have taken Algebra II and writing/reading-intensive secondary Language Arts and Social Studies classes, the SAT/ACT is more about commitment, hyper-focusing, and, well, how good you are at taking the SAT/ACT. In other words, the SAT/ACT is 50% what you’ve learned (over the past 10 years), and 50% what you’ve practiced (over the past 10 weeks)!
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