Consider this book the SAT guide 2.0. You’ve taken the SAT or PSAT and found that you didn’t get the score you wanted. You may have read other SAT prep books—the one-size-fits-all kind—and found that they didn’t help. You may also have taken expensive SAT prep courses but found they took a cookie-cutter approach and that your scores didn’t budge.
Now, you need a fresh approach—one that considers your specific learning style and that zeroes in specifically on what’s in your way of getting the score you want. You need ideas about how to boost your scores on certain kinds of questions and that doesn’t waste your time with needless drills.
In short, this book is intended to get you unstuck fast—and it’s organized for quick reference so that you don’t need to repeat endless drills. You want results, and you don’t have lots of time to waste. Use this book the way you would a manual for your car, your computer, your X-Box, or your iPod. Turn to the section that you need to find tried-and-true strategies that have worked with other test takers who were stuck, got unstuck, and scored high as a result.
For example, you may need help with questions on the critical reading section that ask you about the author’s tone, but you may be getting questions right that ask you about what an unusual word means in context. You don’t need to exhaustively review all kinds of questions on the Critical Reading section. Practicing endless numbers of questions is not necessarily going to help you, though it of course pays to familiarize yourself with the test. The point is that no matter how MANY questions you do, you still may not get kind this kind of question right because you’re not taking an approach that works for you. Instead of repeatedly hitting your head against the wall, turn to the section on author’s tone questions and find strategies used by former test takers who struggled with this type of question but then figured out a way to get them right. Use these new strategies in your review classes or as you work to practice the SAT.
If ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If you are doing well on a certain section--for example, area questions in geometry, don’t review this section. What you’re doing is working well. Use this book to give you strategies to get unstuck in areas that are giving you trouble. Every student has sections on which he or she does better, so if you are scoring at a level at which you’re happy on these sections, don’t bother taking a new approach. Spend your time working on sections that aren’t going as well.
