just practice doing SAT verbal sections over and over again, studying your errors and memorizing all vocab words or concepts you don't know. rinse and repeat until you get the score you want.

It's hard man. Verbal is so hard to raise

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HS junior took Sept SAT. It was his first time.

Score was 1380 (760 Math/620 verbal). He’s disappointed and wants to raise scores. He did prep class this summer about 8 hrs/week. Taking AP Lang now.

Any recommendations for raising test scores? Especially looking for advice from those who have raised scores and how they did it.

Thanks!

Get an SAT prep book like Barron's and if he wants to, he can spend an hour or so every Saturday and Sunday plus days off and do the practice questions. This will make a significant difference -- but only if he really commits to it. The self prep (again, only on non school days) will make a difference. Schedule the test again for next July.

Khan Academy is also very helpful.

This is PP, I want to add that my son went from 1470 in beginning of Junior year, to 1540 in July before senior year doing this.

Anonymous wrote:HS junior took Sept SAT. It was his first time.

Score was 1380 (760 Math/620 verbal). He’s disappointed and wants to raise scores. He did prep class this summer about 8 hrs/week. Taking AP Lang now.

Any recommendations for raising test scores? Especially looking for advice from those who have raised scores and how they did it.

Thanks!

Get an SAT prep book like Barron's and if he wants to, he can spend an hour or so every Saturday and Sunday plus days off and do the practice questions. This will make a significant difference -- but only if he really commits to it. The self prep (again, only on non school days) will make a difference. Schedule the test again for next July.

Khan Academy is also very helpful.

Math is something you can study for and even game. Tutors are very useful here.

But for the English portion, not so much.

The best prep is being a good reader. And I mean books. Back in my day, for AP English we had to read five books during the summer before class even started - Albert Camus, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison.

I'm pretty sure if you read their books today, the SAT scores would jump by a 100-200 points. And all you need to do is read the books.

Anonymous wrote:1v1 private tutor. We have used Princeton Review and Compass. Both via Zoom weekly. Most recent child went from 1370 to 1450 to 1500 over a year of work. It was a grind.

One-on-one tutoring is the answer. We also used Compass via Zoom. They had DD take a diagnostic test that showed her weaker areas, and the tutor focused on teaching her those skills.

High Level
Plan to take(retake) all the available blue book tests.

Strategy
Take Test1
Review the mistakes and make a document
Take Test2
Review the mistakes and compare if any specific area needs improvement

Once you have identified the problem areas, do practice tests using Khan Academy.

Take Test3
Review. Ideally there should be an improvement