The faculty Board also claims that juniors taking the PSAT in October and the SAT the spring that is followingmy son’s plan) will score an average of 55 points higher on the SAT. My son’s score went up 190 points during that same period.

Below is an excerpt from my book that is upcoming that Ethan’s path to SAT score improvement:

The SAT Hand

We blocked off every Saturday for full, timed practice tests, which Ethan took during the dining-room dining table while I worked in my cellar office just below. At the five-minute breaks he’d bring straight down the sections he’d finished, and I would correct them while he done the next set.

Sometimes, we’d see patterns to his mistakes and I’d peek my head into the dining room.

‘Ethan, stop the clock for an extra.’

He’d lookup attentively. He was severe; he wanted to reach his goal so he could put the test behind him and move on. ‘You’re rushing at the final end of this sections,’ I’d simply tell him. ‘ Pay attention to the relevant questions by the end.’ Or: ‘Read every word into the solution choices.’

‘Okay Mom,’ he’d say, and return to work, making a small adjustment here and there.

By April he wanted me to break the charts out we’d made of his scores, the ones he’d cracked jokes about just a couple months before. Now I was asked by him to upgrade the charts to see if he’d made any progress and he had! We would collected enough information to be able to see the line going in the right direction, gradually but unmistakably. That line in the graph had been definitely a motivator.

Therefore had been the girl who lived down the street. She and Ethan had known each other since they had been little, and she was into it, taking those practice tests on the weekends, too. She was a better student than Ethan—in the real way girls often are generally (better organized and more focused)—and each of them were neck and neck inside their practice scores. She additionally happened to be a tennis that is competitive plus some of that fierce athletic energy went along to the picture, which kept Ethan on his feet because he wanted to beat her.

In the end she beat him, but not by much, and he surpassed their goal by thirty points.

Good enough for Ethan to phone it an and feel good about moving on day.

I, on the other hand, wanted him to shmoop essay writer free online take another crack at the test because there had been three eleventh-hour snafus, only two of that we can write about, which had to possess depressed his scores, I thought.

The initial, merely a few days before the test, was Ethan’s hand. His left hand, the hand that is SAT. (Ethan’s a lefty.) He broke his hand horsing around on a soccer field and came home from school requiring a cast. I’ve never had a broken bone in my life, and this was probably Ethan’s fifth fracture, and he had been only sixteen years old. Only sixteen and using his second SAT. By having a hand that is broken.

Needless to say, we’d never factored broken hand that is SAT our test prep, and although Ethan could go his fingers I happened to be nervous he’dn’t have the ability to bubble correctly. Meanwhile Ethan ended up being insisting that the test be taken by him as planned, cast and all sorts of.

‘Let me see you bubble,’ we’d say, and he’d practice, but I could hear little whimpers of pain as he colored in the circles. He didn’t care. He’d had his standardized test strategy all mapped out for months in advance—the SAT, the AP exam, the SAT Subject Tests—and as far as he had been concerned, there was no space in their spring-of-junior year schedule to help make any last-minute test-date adjustments. He might have postponed the test till the fall, which is what the school Board told me personally when I called and attempted to persuade them to give my son a personal bubbler as a ‘special circumstance accommodation.’ They said no. The College Board won’t become involved with the medical issues of juniors as the kids can still take the fall that is SAT of year.

The night before the test, I spotted Ethan playing Halo, which we took to be a good indication. I figured if he could work a video game controller, he could bubble.