Scoring a 2130 by William Sidell

I was just imagining of some SAT stories of how people scored 2400 or 1870.
Then I googled 'sat story'. One site I read was of William Sidell. The interesting part was that he had designed the site just for Stanford University meaning he wanted to get into Stanford and mad this site up to impress them. I donot know if he got into Stan for the class of 2014 or not but his sat story was quite interesting. Some of you may get some inspirations!

Extracted from: williamsidell.com/stanfordu/sat.html

Most people take the SAT sometime in their Junior or Senior year in high school. I decided to take in January of 2009 to see how I would perform and I received the score of 1730. I was fairly upset to see that I didn't score higher, so I decided that I would take the SAT again in May after doing a little bit of preparation. In May, I received a score of 1840.

At this point I was at least somewhat satisfied that my score had improved but I was not satisfied in the sense that I knew that I could easily do better, so I signed up for the June test. In June I received a 1940. Now having a 100 point increase two times in a row, I decided "What would be the harm in taking it again?" So in November of 2009, I took the SAT again and received a 2080. I was finally pleased with myself; I had gone from a 600 Critical Reading score to a 740 (2 questions away from an 800), a 550 Writing score to a 710, and a 580 Math to a 680 (if I include my highest math score.)
If I took my best score from each section, my overall score increased 400 points from a 1730 to an 2130.

The one surprising thing about my score is that I did not score well in math. I took several practice tests in Math before taking the SAT for the last time and consistently scored over 700. While I am good at math questions, I believe my problem was due to incorrectly reading the questions.

Overall, I believe that my experience with the SAT has taught me that no matter how bad a situation seems, you often have the power to alter your situation. One of the things that I believe helped my SAT score the most was reading several books about physics over the summer. The authors of the books had such incredible writing prose that I believe my ability to read and write increased dramatically, in turn affecting my reading and writing scores.

Life Saving SAT tips

1. Know the Question Types to Expect on the SAT I :
   * 19 sentence completion
   * 40 reading comprehension
   * 35 math multiple-choices
   * 10 student-produced responses
   The more you are familiar and know what is coming on the SAT, more the marks you get.
   


2. Learn the section directions now. Use the time saved during the test to work on questions.
   By now you should have got this. If not get with the directions right now.


3. As all questions carry equal marks, answer easy questions first. Mark skipped questions in your exam book to return to them later. Do not waste more than a minute on a question.


4. When doing multiple choice, remember to cross out a choice if you get the slightest hint that it is the wrong option. If you do not have a habit of crossing out the option, you will come to it again and again wasting your time and making your mind more cluttered with choices. Though a minor point this strategy can affect your score by more than 60 points.
   


5. Avoid stray marks on the answer sheet. Remember that your paper is going to be checked by an idiot machine that can't distinguish between a correct answer and a careless doodle.


6. Easy questions usually precede hard ones. Except with the passage questions which are arranged according to the the content in the passage.


7. Mark the pivotal words. These words, like however, but, change the direction of the sentence and you may not keep track of the change and loose points for even easy questions.
   


8. Understand the scoring! You get a point for a right answer. You lose a fractional point for a wrong answer. There is no deduction for omitted answers, or for wrong answers in the math section's student-produced response questions.



9. Remember that the SAT consists of a series of small, timed, mini-tests. Keep track of the time you're allotted for each one and how much time remains.


10. Bring a watch to the test center. You can't be guaranteed that there'll be a working clock there.