SAT exam:Latest tips on how to improve your scores

SAT exam:Latest tips on how to improve your scores

The students enrolling for SAT exam more than once, doesn't find any substantial increase in their SAT scores. Now, what could be its possible reasons? Is it because the students don't prepare for it properly? Or is it that the parents don't enroll their

THE STUDENTS enrolling for SAT exam more than once, doesn’t find any substantial increase in their SAT scores. Now, what could be its possible reasons? Is it because the students don’t prepare for it properly? Or is it that the parents don’t enroll their child for fancy test-prep classes?

High school students and their parents are often allured towards SAT test-preparation solicitations as they approach the college application process.

Test-prep offers are not cheap either. (The Princeton Review's "Ultimate Classroom" course costs $1,199 in New York City.) When students take these crash courses and don't see their scores improve, parents may wonder if their kids studied enough or if they've wasted their money.

Last year, the National Association for College Admission Counseling released a report concluding that test prep courses have minimal impact in improving SAT scores - about 10-20 points on average in mathematics and 5-10 points in critical reading. The NACAC report noted that this evidence is "contrary to the claims made by many test preparation providers of large increases of 100 points or more on the SAT."

She added that "the College Board does not recommend taking the SAT more than twice, as there is no evidence to indicate that taking the exam more than twice increases score performance."

Parents might also be surprised by actual average SAT scores: 501 in critical reading, 515 in math and 493 in writing, according to Steinberg, is the highest score you can get in any section out of 800.

Scott Kirkpatrick, President of the test-preparation services division of The Princeton Review, said that the company had been planning to shift its emphasis on score improvement independently of the Better Business Bureaus case, and that it is changing its focus to offer a more personalized approach in helping students to improve in all areas.

"Score improvement is not our core mission," he said. "I don't want us to be a test-prep company. We need to be an education company. "

Alternatively, some online courses offer good preparation for the test at a low-cost as compared to the expensive prep program. (The online course is $70, the book is $22 at CollegeBoard.com.)

Some helpful tips to improve your SAT scores:-

There are some tricks for doing well in the test that a good coach or the College Board guide can impart. For example, one should comprehend that questions in sections typically go "from least difficult to most difficult, so that an obvious answer at the beginning of a section is correct, but an obvious answer at the end of a section is probably a trick.

And one should complete as many questions as one can, because while one gets one point for each right multiple-choice answer, one only looses a quarter-point if the answer is wrong. And fortunately, there is no negative marking for wrong answers in maths section.

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