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Written by Sid
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Tuesday, 08 June 2010 16:13 |
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Get your summer SAT* studying plans set with just the click of a button! A 90-day subscription is just $50 from now until Labor Day. Each subscription comes with a FREE copy of The Official SAT Study Guide! |
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SAT* Subscriptions Now Available! |
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Written by Sid
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Monday, 26 April 2010 17:35 |
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So far, we've offered SAT* question for just 99 cents each as well as various packages of questions. Today we move in a new direction while still remaining true to our roots. Now MyTestAnswers.com offers an SAT* subscription for just $30/month. So rather than paying hundreds of dollars for packages of questions, you can get access to all of our solutions for one low price. We felt this was the best way to one, give students another option to customize their preparation and two, control costs and not devolve into another company charging way too much for SAT* help. Enjoy and definitely give us feedback at
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Written by Sid
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Tuesday, 30 March 2010 16:04 |
...vital, integral, imperative, indispensable, necessary....
It’s really important. You can definitely learn some strategy to help you on the verbal section of this test but when it comes down to it, the more words you know, the easier things become. So, what’s the best way to improve your vocabulary?
There are 233 books available on Amazon.com that come up when you search for ‘SAT Vocabulary’. There’s everything from flashcards to books of lists to books about other books (more on this in a second). But if you want to give it a go yourself, here’s a plan.
The first thing to do is read. I know, I know, you don’t really want to read more than you already do in school but even magazines can help. Unfortunately, I’m not talking about Us Weekly, but Time, Newsweek & even Sports Illustrated are all relatively pain-free to read and have a lot of great SAT vocabulary words in them.
Another source for great SAT vocabulary words is the Twilight series of books. Now maybe we all prefer the movie versions of all books but last year a fellow named Brian Leaf decided to publish a book breaking down Twilight according to the SAT vocabulary in the book. He’s down the same for New Moon and I’m guessing there will be similar books published for the other part of the series.
But we’re trying to save money here, right? So, get yourself a stack of index cards or just cut up some scrap paper and as you come across a word you don’t know (whether it’s in Twilight, SI or whatever you’re reading), write it down on its own card or slip of paper, then go to a site like Merriam-Webster.com to get the definition.
After a little while, you’ll find you’ve accumulated a pretty good stack of words no matter what level your vocabulary is at the start of the process. Like any sort of preparation, you’ll never know EXACTLY what’s going to show up on your SAT test day but knowing more words will definitely improve your chances of improving your verbal score. |
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Written by Sid
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Tuesday, 23 March 2010 19:01 |
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Ok, let’s talk more about scoring, in particular let’s talk about guessing. Now like we said, you lose a fraction of a point for every wrong answer on the multiple-choice questions. So, since there’s a penalty, you shouldn’t just answer every question. It’s not like the chemistry test you took last week where a blank response is equal to a wrong answer. This means you should keep in mind...
It’s ok to leave blanks!
If you’re staring at a sentence completion question and every word in the answer choices looks like it’s from a foreign language, then save yourself the headache and move on to something more doable.
So, when should you guess? Well, if your chance of guessing correctly on any question are 1 in 5 or 20%. If you eliminate one choice, your chances go up to 1 in 4 or 25%. Eliminate 2 choices and you’re looking at 1 in 3 or 33%, and if you’re down to 2, that’s a 50-50 chance. There are some studies out there that have shown even bad guessers get about 1 out of 4 correct. What all this means is...
If you can eliminate ONE answer choice, you should guess.
Ideally, you won’t have to guess very often, but getting the one right is going to put you on the positive side of three other misses (1 - 1/4 - 1/4 - 1/4 = +1/4). So, don’t be afraid to do that. And next time we’ll talk more about how you can eliminate even more answer choices to improve your chances of getting more right answers. |
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Twas' the Night Before the SAT* |
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Written by Sid
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Thursday, 11 March 2010 22:22 |
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Great article with some tips for what to do the night before the SAT*:
http://www.isnare.com/?aid=446718&ca=Education
One point I'll add to #4: Go to bed at a reasonable hour. If you haven't gone to bed at 7 pm since kindergarten, don't do it now. You'll end up just lying there trying to sleep and even if you do, you probably wake up 4 hours before the test the next morning. Try to keep a normal schedule. Good luck! |
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Written by Sid
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Tuesday, 02 March 2010 21:03 |
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Let's talk about scoring today. Most people know that each section is scored from 200-800 and the highest possible score is 2400. The scores for each section are based on a pretty steady scale of raw scores. The raw score is calculated by giving you 1 point for every correct answer and then taking away 1/4 of a point for every wrong answer. However....
THERE IS NO PENALTY FOR WRONG ANSWERS ON THE GRID-IN QUESTIONS! So....
1. Fill something in for those questions, even if you're not positive you're doing the math correctly, get something in the blank and give yourself a chance.
Before we get to the next point, let's go over the layout of the test. Each section of questions goes from Easy to Medium to Hard. And every correct answer is worth the same 1 point. So....
2. Spend more time on the 'Easy' questions at the start of each section, make sure you get those right.
Keep in mind, though, this scale resets for each question type so within the 7 sentence completions at the start of a section, the first few will be easy, then maybe two medium and two hard before it's on to reading comprehension and it starts all over. The same goes on the math section with the grid-ins. The last problem solving questions in the first half of that section will be hard and the first few grid-ins will be easy.
One more thing to keep in mind, even though a question may be considered ‘easy’, ‘medium’, or ‘hard’ by the test writers, you may find some things easier than others. For instance, if you struggle with geometry but you’re an ace with probability, well then a hard probability question may be easier for you than a medium geometry question. So...
3. Keep in mind your own strengths and weaknesses and adjust accordingly.
Feel free to skip around and find things you’re good at especially as time starts to run out (remember they're all worth the same 1 point).
More on scoring and pacing later in the week. |
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Written by Sid
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Monday, 15 February 2010 06:37 |
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Hey there, welcome to the SAT* Blog on MyTestAnswers.com. At least once a week, we’re hoping to give you some insight into some SAT* strategy. Then at other times during the week, we’ll give you interesting news involving the SAT* or college admissions as well as some news about things going on the site. We also want to do the occasional mailbag edition. So, we need you to send us questions at
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