Top 10 Things I Learned From Stacey Howe-Lott

I spent the month of May working with the highest SAT score improver I could find: Stacey Howe-Lott.  Sessions were via Skype with a shared white board, and she assigns work in between sessions (not a lot).

To say that this has been an enjoyable month of test prep, would not begin describe the fun I had. I learned SO MUCH!  I want to stand on a New York City rooftop and scream on the top of my lungs: I KNOW WHAT A DANGLING MODIFIER IS!

Here's my best attempt to whittle down what I learned to a Top 10 List:

Critical Reading:

1) Fill in the Blank Vocab Questions: Jot down the words that you think are the right ones (don’t look at the answers).  You must WRITE DOWN THE WORD (not just air write it in your head).  Whichever blank you felt most strongly about, throw out all answer options that don't match that word.  Literally, CROSS OUT the wrong answers by putting a line through them.

2) On the "backwards questions" in the Critical Reading section, circle the NOT or EXCEPT word to remind yourself that you're looking for the "backwards answer."  These questions hurt my brain every time, and by the way, they show up in the math section too.

3) The more excited you are to read the Critical Reading passages, the better you will do. I haven't been able back this up with Science, but my personal experience verifies that this works.

4) For main idea questions — The thesis is usually the last sentence of the first paragraph.

Writing:

5) Try to cross out prepositional phrases and get the sentence down to the bare bones.  Frequently used Prepositional Phrases: Of, to, In

6) Do you know what a "Dangling Modifier" is? (Don't feel badly if you don't.  I didn't until a few days ago, nor did most adults I asked).

Ok, here it is: A dangling modifier is the part of the sentence before the comma, and the word RIGHT after the comma has to be the "Who" or the "What" that the before the comma was talking about or referring to.  And it can't be possessive (i.e. 's).  These are all over the Writing Section and I pretty regularly get a few of them wrong.

Did I not explain that well?

Read Erica Meltzer's EXCELLENT BLOG and PWNtheSAT's great dangling modifier explanation and examples.  It would be worth spending a few hours before the next SAT (4 days from now) to figure these out.

Math:

7) Turn things back to y = mx + b when it’s written differently.

8)  Make sure you know what you are solving for.  Circle or write down what they are asking.   AFTER you solve the problem, and BEFORE you look at the answer choices, RE-READ the question to make sure you know what they are asking for.  (If you've ever gone over your SAT mistakes, you will know what I'm talking about here.)

9) Notice stuff (ie - square one side of the equation to match the squaring on the other side)

10) Does your answer match the difficulty of the question?  (Medium questions have medium - not easy - answers).  In other words, if you're agonizing over question #3, you're probably overcomplicating it; and if you got question #20 very easily, go back and re-read.  Your answer is probably not right.

Stacey has a masters degree in teaching, and has a gift for explaining boring and complicated subjects in colloquial and mnemonic terms, that stick.  There are a few things she taught me that I will never ever forget because of the way cooky way she described them.  (Exponents? Seared on my brain till death do us part.)

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis