taking the sat's soon. any advise?

RoyalMarine

hi there. im hoping to go to college in america and i need to take the sat's.

has anyone taken them before? ive done a lot of research into them and ive taken about 9 of the practice tests online.
im booked to do my exams on the 1st of december.

anyone done them lately that could give me some advise?
is there any books that cover whats on the exams?

i just want to be fully prepared for them because i finished my leaving cert about 5 years ago and i cant remember everything i learned!

well any help is great!

michelle72

Hey,

I did sort of the opposite thing you did; I'm an American who went through the trouble of taking the SAT Is, IIs, and APs only to find that I wanted to go to school abroad and that few schools would recognize the results. I should be able to give you some advice on them, anyway...

You'll probably have to order these online, but there are a ton of good SAT practice books. Princeton Review is a good brand. They have a bunch of tips and full length practice tests that even give you the percentile you'll fall in at the end. You probably know this already, but with the SATs you start out with a 200 (actually, with last year's addition of the essay section they changed the highest possible score from a 1600 to a 2400) and then you gain points for each question you answer correctly. Each correct answer is one point, each unanswered question is none, and each wrong answer is a fraction of a point off; most instructors say that it isn't worth it to guess unless you can eliminate for sure at least one, preferable two possible answers for this reason. Except for in the extremes on the SAT Is each correct point is a +10 to your score; on the SAT IIs it can vary a little more and it often takes fewer correct points to get a perfect 800.

Are you only taking the regular SATs? If so, all you have to worry about is basic math (no calculus but the occasional limit question), writing, vocabulary, and grammar. For the English section, there are plenty of sites that have lists of commonly used SAT words and if you're still feeling dubious it helps to look over prefixes, suffixes, and common Latin roots for clues on tough words you might get. Math is math, but I thought that there was an awful lot of geometry on mine, which might have been a good surprise if I hadn't taken geometry so long ago. For the essay section, I was given these tips: make sure you write a rough outline first but don't take more than 5 minutes to do so, make sure your writing is formal, don't throw in cliches for any reason at all (watch out for this in the conclusion and intro), and your intro and conclusion only have to be a few lines as long as they're good. I wrote my intro last (to make sure it reflected the conclusions I drew) and just wrote a little note about that; this is fine, I still got a perfect score. The score is based on the scorings of two to three people: each of two graders gives it a whole number score of up to a six; if one grader gives you a 5 and the other a six, that's fine, but if they disagree by more than two points than a third scorer is called in and the closest of the two are used to determine your score. To help improve your score and make it sound like you really know what you're talking about, throw in historical or literary references that are related to your topic and help prove your point rather than just giving your opinion without providing any evidence in each of your supporting paragraphs (you can only do two and do a bit larger of an intro and conclusion if it goes better with the topic). Give yourself a couple minutes to look for spelling and grammar mistakes. They gave me a really crap topic about whether or not I thought scientific advancement must come at the cost of neglecting other factors like politics, the environment, employment etc. and a lot of my friends had some topic about a moment in which they had to make a decision that defined their character.

Are you planning on taking the SAT IIs or APs too? The APs are probably unnecessary regardless (they're mostly just icing on the cake if you're applying to top tier schools and are hell to sit through, so you'd probably be able to show whatever scores you've already accumulated in lieu of them because they're rarely required), but if you want to apply to most of the better schools in the US then they usually require two SAT II scores (the best of the Ivy Leagues require three). It'll be helpful before you take any tests to see what range of scores you need (and if you need anything but the SAT Is) to get to apply to your target schools; a branch of the college board website, myroad.com, has school profiles with the average SAT scores and other credentials of each school. Most college's websites have this information hidden somewhere as well. Also, it's important to note that the biggest difference I found between applying to schools from home and schools abroad was the emphasis placed on extra curriculars; while they don't really matter for the basic schools in the United States, your social and/or athletic involvements are very heavily considered on applications. If you do any community service or have been involved in one activity for a significant amount of time then make sure to highlight that. You'll also need two letters of recommendation and will have to write some essays for each school. Most schools (again, except the lowest tier) use the Common Application (they have a website) as their general app and then have their own supplement; these can almost always be submitted online. My college counselor said that it was a good idea to apply to 7-10 schools; it sucks and it takes forever, but the many essay/AP/SAT cocktail worked well for me on the schools that I applied to in the US.

Sorry this post got so long, the College Board has owned my soul for the last two years... if you have any other questions I won't write such a long-winded response to those.