Up Your Score 2001-2002: The Underground Guide to the SAT - Softcover

Colton, Michael; Berger, Larry; Mistry, Manek

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0761119884 ISBN 13: 9780761119883

Publisher: Workman Publishing Company, 2000

Synopsis

The strategy guide with attitude, Up Your Score is the only test-preparation book written for students by students. Smart, savvy, and serious-but funny, too-Up Your Score proves itself as the guide that tackles the SAT in terms of students will immediately relate to.
<>br>For the 2001-2002 edition, the book has been revised and updated by Joe Jewell, a new guest editor with a perfect 1600 under his belt. Presenting solid, practical information in a voice that's hip and knowing, the book covers 600 key vocabulary words, teaches important insider math tricks, shows how to improve memory and concentration, and demonstrates how test-taking is itself a skill, including how to think like the SAT and why it's always better to guess than leave a question unanswered. And there are the side issues-what to do if you have a nasty proctor and how best to fill in the answer circles and save nearly six minutes. With Joe Jewell's updated cultural references and his own special strategy tips, here is the latest on everything kids need to psyche out-and not be psyched out by-the Test.

About this title

About the Authors

Michael Colton, a Harvard graduate, writes for film and television and most recently the animated Web series “Zoolander: Super Model.”

Larry Berger is a Yale graduate and Rhodes Scholar and the president of Amplify Learning.

Manek Mistry graduated from Cornell Law School and is in private practice.

From the Back Cover

Praise for earlier versions of UP YOUR SCORE:

IEverything You Need to Give IEm HellO (Sassy Magazine)

IShows other sweaty-palmed teenagers how to outsmart the SAT before it outsmarts them"This is big news in high school hallways.O (The Boston Globe)

It might be next week. IT might be next year. But one day before long youIre going to walk into an SAT testing hall and in three hours set the course of your future. Worried? Well, Joe, Larry, Manek, Michael, and Paul were worried, too. But not only have the authors been there and back (with all of them scoring over 1500, including two perfect 1600Is), they decided to do something about it. A guerrilla guide written for students by students, UP YOUR SCORE combines the best math and verbal preparation with the strategy you need to psyche out O and not be psyched out by O The Test.

FIVE KIDS WHOOVE ACED IT SHOW YOU HOW TO:

-Think like the SAT

-Improve memory and maintain peak concentration

-Master insider math tricks

-Learn 600 key vocabulary words

-Hone you speed and timing

-Be a better guesser (and why itIs almost always better to guess)

-Do sections in the best order

-Prepare your SAT II essay in advance

BUT WAIT! THEREIS MORE:

-Insider college admissions advice

-What to do if you have a nasty proctor

-The UP YOUR SCORE Lower Your Stress PlanU

-The SAT and the Internet

-A recipe for Sweet and Tasty 800 Bars and how to smuggle them into the testing hall

-How best to fill in the answer circles and save nearly 6 minutes

-and ATTITUDE

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 2: THE VERBAL SECTION

The verbal section of the SAT supposedly tests how skilled you are with words. It tests your vocabulary, your ability to understand the relationships between words, and your ability to read and comprehend. Basically, though, it's just a glorified vocabulary test. If you read the following strategies for answering analogy, sentence completion, and critical reading questions and have fun with our vocabulary section, you'll be able to bury the serpent and maybe someday be a star contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Four Key Rules and a Tip

On every SAT there are 19 analogies, 19 sentence completions, and 40 critical reading questions, for a total of 78 questions. In this chapter we will go over each type of question individually in order to familiarize you with the different question types, and then we'll show you some slick tricks. But first, here are some general rules for doing the verbal section.

Rule 1: Know Your Speed

You are given only 75 minutes for the three verbal sub-sections. So you figure, "Great, I have a minute per question." Wrong. You have to subtract about 20 minutes for the amount of time you need to spend reading the reading passages. Then subtract another minute from the total test time for the time you spend watching the kid in front of you pick his nose and maybe another half second for the time you spend picking your own nose. Now you have only about 40 seconds per problem. That's just about the amount of time most people need if they work efficiently. If you find yourself finishing 10 minutes early, then you're probably working too fast and being careless, or you didn't spend enough time picking your nose. If you aren't finishing all the questions before the time runs out, you might have to be a little less careful (or skip the last reading passage of each section, as described in Strategy 5 of the reading passage section of this chapter, page 50). In any case, it's essential that you have practiced enough to know exactly how fast you should be moving. Good control of your speed and timing must be second nature to you when you take the real test.

Rule 2: Do the Subsections in the Best Order

All questions are worth the same number of points. There- fore, you want to have done as many problems as possible before you run out of time. Sentence completions take the least amount of time, so do them first. Then do analogies. The critical reading passages take the longest; do them last. (This is usually the order of the subsections on the test.) The only exception to this rule would be if you consistently find that you score better on practice tests when you do things in a different order.

Rule 3: Realize That Questions Get Harder

The Serpent gets more and more cruel as each subsection (a set of 10 sentence completions, a set of 10 analogies, etc.) progresses, except in the questions following each critical reading passage. The first question in a subsection is usually easy. The last question in a subsection is usually hard. This is important to remember, because if you know that you're going to have to skip some questions, you might as well skip the hard ones.

This is also important because it can be used to outsmart the Serpent. You can use this principle to find correct answers to questions that you otherwise wouldn't be sure about. How? Since the first few questions in a subsection are always easy, the obvious or most tempting guess is probably correct. The middle questions in a subsection are a little harder; on these questions the obvious or most tempting guess is sometimes right and sometimes wrong. On the last few questions in a subsection, the obvious, most tempting guess is probably wrong. This is a crucial concept. As we will explain in more depth later, a question is put at the beginning of a subsection if, in the Serpent's experience, most students get it right. It is put at the end if most students get it wrong. The trick is to learn to pick the answer that "most students" would pick on the questions at the beginning of the section and at the end of the section avoid the answer that "most students" would pick. What we have explained here is just the basics of how to apply this concept. In Chapter 4 we provide a more advanced explanation, with additional useful strategies and tricks.

Remember, the questions get harder within subsections, not from section to section. So if you've finished with the analogies and are moving on to sentence completion, you'll be starting with relatively easy sentence completions.

If you want an in-depth explanation of this rule and its uses, read the 500-page book Cracking the SAT and PSAT by Adam Robinson and John Katzman. They call it the Joe Bloggs principle.

Rule 4: Know the Directions

The directions are the same every year. You should not waste any time reading them during the test. Memorize them from your copy of Taking the SAT, available from your high school guidance office.

Quick Tip: If you skip a question because you don't know the answer, put a mark next to it. We suggest an X for the questions you don't think you'll be able to figure out and a ? for the ones you think you'd get with more time, if you have it later on.

Sentence completions

Definition: Fill in the blank.

Number: 19 questions.

Priority: Do them first.

Comment: Not that bad once you get the hang of it.

For each sentence completion question, the ETS presents you with a nice, logical sentence. The trouble is that one or two words are missing from it. Your job is to pick the correct missing word(s) from among five choices. All of the possible answers make sense grammatically, but only one will make sense logically.

Some students consider sentence completions to be the hardest part of the verbal section because they test your sense of "sentence logic" in addition to testing your vocabulary. We think they are the easiest part because you have a context to help you figure out the answer. For example:

The man was smelly so I plugged my ________.

(A) ear

(B) toe

(C) eye

(D) socket

(E) nose

Each of these choices is okay grammatically, but why would you plug your eye, toe, ear, or socket if the man was smelly? You would plug your nose. Usually, the SAT questions are more sophisticated, but the logic is the same.

If you approach them properly, the sentence completion questions can be extremely gratifying. When you choose the right words to go in the blanks, the sentence will have a certain flow, a sort of magical aura that will suffuse your body with a warm, orgasmic glow.

The Basic Pattern

You should follow a basic thought pattern whenever you attack a sentence completion question:

1. Read the sentence first, skipping over the blanks, just to get a feel for how the sentence is set up.

2. Read the sentence again, and this time when you get to the blanks, guess on your own what the missing words should be. You may not be able to come up with a specific word, but all you really need to determine is the answer's generic category-whether the word is a "negative" or a "positive" one. In the blank write a "+" or "-" to remind yourself what type of word you're looking for. When there are two blanks, you should at least decide whether the two missing words are antonyms or synonyms, "good" or "bad."

3. Compare your guesses with the answer choices provided and see if any of them fit your general idea of what the answer should be.

4. Plug in the answer that looks best and see if it makes sense.

5. If it clearly makes sense, then go with it. Otherwise, try all the other choices and pick the one that works best. As you're trying choices, cross out the ones that you're sure don't fit. Then, if you get stuck and decide to come back to the question, you won't have to waste time reading all of the choices again.

After some practice, these rules should become second nature, so you won't have to go through a three-minute process on each problem.

Excerpted from Up Your Score. Copyright (c) 2000 by Larry Berger, Michael Colton, Manek Mistry, Paul Rossi. Reprinted with permission by Workman Publishing. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0761119884
• ISBN 13: 9780761119883
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288