We get tons of questions from students wanting to boost their scores from the 1150 range to 1500+ in a two-month time frame. This is a tough question to answer because there are many factors that go into a student’s personal testing experience. But, here are some tips to improve your scores.

First and foremost, making the jump from 1150 to 1500 in one leap is quite unlikely. And rather than set yourself up for disappointment, we suggest trying to go from 1150 to 1200, and then to 1250, then 1300, and so on. It is going to serve you better to look at things in a series of stages rather than trying to make a huge leap. Once you’ve mastered that first jump, you’re ready for the next.

Let’s break it down into sections:

In Reading, it’s best to start with the basics we laid out in this newsletter from a couple of weeks ago! You’ll want to start with reading the questions, then read the passage with the goal of finding those answers that you need. While you’re looking for the right answers, don’t forget to use the process of elimination to get rid of the wrong answers as well! If you’re scoring a 27 or below in the reading section, working on these fundamentals is going to be your best step forward.

In Writing, you will want to focus on your grammar rules! You can find our Free Writing Course here! If you’re currently sitting in the 1150 range, it is likely that you are making easily correctable mistakes with things like semicolons, dashes, commas, subject-verb agreement, or pronoun agreement. Brushing up on your grammar rules should get you a quick boost in this section!

In Math, we suggest working on errors in the easy and medium questions. These are typically found in the first half to two-thirds of each section. These are going to have more easily fixable errors, which will help you improve your score. Don’t worry so much about the ends of each section, or the grid ends of each section, but rather focus on the earlier questions with quick fixes first. Once you’ve mastered these, then you’re on to the next step.

Lastly, Keep going! It is likely that you will have a fast initial improvement, but you could see scores eventually start to plateau. This can be a slow and excruciating part of the process, but you must keep working on it to improve!

By looking at your testing process in a series of steps as opposed to huge leaps, you are setting yourself up for success.