College: (in Off-topic)

so ill be taking the SATs and ACT again any pointers?

im going back to college for this linky

Other than studying (they have prep books you can go look at and don't have to buy at Barnes and Noble to help formulate a study plan. You can get a coffee and read for hours in that place.)

make sure you sleep good the night prior, wake up and EAT a good breakfast and get to the test center at least 20-30 minutes early. I picked up a friend when we took it and were borderline late and that alone caused a lot of unneeded stress right off the bat ;)

that website is creepy... the people stuck in the loop on the banner look quite uncomfortable and soulless.

anyway, can't think of any pointers that aren't common sense for anyone who has taken it before.

Before I took the sat my parents had me take a prep. Class which really wasn't that great. Didn't really teach me anything I didn't already know. Kevlar has it right, get a good nights rest and go into the test with a positive attitude. Prentend that you already got the test back and saw the good score you wanted. Go into the test already having the feeling of accomplishment and you should do alright =)

i want to get better than the 1609 over all i had, ill have to study harder this time

Practice tests. Trust me. They might be dull and boring, but honestly, they work.

I improved my SAT score by 140 points by doing a lot of practice tests.

Is it worth it to buy the books?
Yes. The practice tests are what you need.

Specific pointers:
For the essay, if you write to the end of the second page, I can almost guarantee that you will receive a 12 (the top score). You can search on Google about the correlation between essay length and score, but I am certain that if you do this, you will receive a 12 (I did, at least)

For the non-essay writing portion, look for grammatical problems in the sentences. Don't read it and see if it sounds fine - that's what the people writing the test want you to do. Far less than 20% of the answers will be "no mistake" even though probability dictates that it will be 20%.

Importantly, memorize the grammatical rules (any half-decent prep book will have these listed out for you).

But I must stress: Do the practice tests. An entire one in one sitting. DOING MANY PRACTICE TESTS IS KEY. Trust me.

Also, I have to disagree with Pygon. The SAT prep class that I took definitely helped me. The classes themselves were completely worthless, in my opinion - I basically knew all the math they "taught" and had already known most of the tips they gave me for the test.

However, what I found most useful from the classes were the practice SAT tests they gave to us in SAT conditions - just like the real thing. There was no answer key in the back that we could be tempted to flip to to check our answers. The mock SATs I took helped me to prepare for the real thing because it was virtually the same thing.

Again, I must stress PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE.

The SAT prep classes are incredible.
They teach you how to take the test, and yes, there is a proper way to take the test.

They also have thousands of practice questions to help prepare you.

I took a Kaplan course for my MCATs and it was very helpful.

I recommend cheating.

i second that ^