Anonymous
Post 09/29/2025 21:24     Subject: Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

The old paperback book "30 Days to a Better Vocabulary" works to boost verbal scores.
Anonymous
Post 09/29/2025 09:14     Subject: Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

Ignore the troll.
Anonymous
Post 09/29/2025 09:13     Subject: Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:This was my daughter. She’s happily at Colorado School of Mines. It’s a good engineering school and doesn’t have a lot of humanities gen ed requirements. She leaned into her strengths and looked at schools that matched her abilities and interests.


Typ verbal correlates with math unless you are an immigrant not exposed to education in English. If so, it’s a concern given how easy SAT math is ….


Math is so easy that that Eemnglish shore should be as high as the math? Thank you for your deep wisdom, guru.
Anonymous
Post 09/29/2025 09:12     Subject: Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

Anonymous wrote:Part of the problem may be that while he does read, he prefers science fiction type books (e.g. John Scalzi, Ender's Game series) that aren't particularly challenging. But getting him to switch genres has not been easy.


That's more and plenty advanced for SAT
Anonymous
Post 09/29/2025 08:55     Subject: Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

Part of the problem may be that while he does read, he prefers science fiction type books (e.g. John Scalzi, Ender's Game series) that aren't particularly challenging. But getting him to switch genres has not been easy.
Anonymous
Post 09/29/2025 08:54     Subject: Re:Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

im suspecting this kid also doesnt know grammar rules-easily get 40-50 points on just that


No, he did well on the grammar part, so unfortunately it will not be that easy to raise his score.
Anonymous
Post 09/29/2025 08:52     Subject: Re:Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:my kid raised from 690 to 760
it came down to just learning lists of vocab words
your son probably also needs to learn grammar rules if his score is that low
if he does the above two he can get to the 700s


What year was this? SAT has much less vocab now than in the past.

1550 this month
100 percent was about vocab=when you dont understand the true meaning of a word your inferences are wrong-it has nothing to do with IQ
im suspecting this kid also doesnt know grammar rules-easily get 40-50 points on just that
Anonymous
Post 09/29/2025 08:00     Subject: Re:Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

It should naturally go up after junior year english, look at taking again in March/April. Also look at YouTube videos of kids who got perfect scores. There are a few tricks/strategies that are helpful for verbal and there are a few types of questions that are on every SAT.
Anonymous
Post 09/29/2025 07:20     Subject: Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

Anonymous wrote:This was my daughter. She’s happily at Colorado School of Mines. It’s a good engineering school and doesn’t have a lot of humanities gen ed requirements. She leaned into her strengths and looked at schools that matched her abilities and interests.


Typ verbal correlates with math unless you are an immigrant not exposed to education in English. If so, it’s a concern given how easy SAT math is ….
Anonymous
Post 09/29/2025 07:11     Subject: Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

This was my daughter. She’s happily at Colorado School of Mines. It’s a good engineering school and doesn’t have a lot of humanities gen ed requirements. She leaned into her strengths and looked at schools that matched her abilities and interests.
Anonymous
Post 09/28/2025 23:15     Subject: Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

Focus on grammar and vocab.
Anonymous
Post 09/28/2025 22:23     Subject: Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

Anonymous wrote:My son has taken the SAT twice. Highest score for math was a 780, but despite having taken a prep class, verbal remains relatively low at 620. How badly do you think schools will look at this, assuming he wants to major in engineering?


What about practice tests? What types of questions is he getting wrong? Is he running out of time?

620 is 90%ile for a junior, good enough for engineering if you aren't extremely picky about where.
Anonymous
Post 09/28/2025 22:18     Subject: Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

Anonymous wrote:The best way to raise the verbal score is to read longform - whether long articles or books - for pleasure. The New Yorker is a good start, but I'd find some enjoyable quality books. I think fiction will be better for the purpose of the SAT. There's more complexity and usually a higher level of vocabulary.


Better to do Khan academy, which has SAT level articles and in depth discussion of SAT textual analysis.
Anonymous
Post 09/28/2025 22:17     Subject: Re:Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

Anonymous wrote:my kid raised from 690 to 760
it came down to just learning lists of vocab words
your son probably also needs to learn grammar rules if his score is that low
if he does the above two he can get to the 700s


What year was this? SAT has much less vocab now than in the past.
Anonymous
Post 09/28/2025 22:16     Subject: Engineering major - cannot get verbal SAT up

The best way to raise the verbal score is to read longform - whether long articles or books - for pleasure. The New Yorker is a good start, but I'd find some enjoyable quality books. I think fiction will be better for the purpose of the SAT. There's more complexity and usually a higher level of vocabulary.