About your score
A critical reading score between 500 and 590 places you in the 50th-75th percentile of students. This means you scored better than 50% of students but worse than 25% of students. This score represents a student who incorrectly answered between 18 and 29 of the questions on this section. You probably have strong reading skills, but struggle with applying these skills to the exam. You are a strong student and might feel like your strengths are not appropriately represented on the exam. You also probably find certain passages on the test much easier than other passages and will notice you perform much better on one passage than another.
Weaknesses
- One of your main weaknesses is a lack of knowledge of vocabulary used on the SAT. This will affect not only the sentence completion questions on the exam, but also the reading portion of the test. Many of the passages and answer choices use a high level vocabulary that make it impossible to understand the meaning for students who aren’t familiar with the words.
- Another weakness is lack of an ability to understand what makes answer choices incorrect. Understanding the subtleties of word usage and phrasing is a skill necessary for success on the critical reading section. While you probably understand the meaning of the passage, you will struggle applying that knowledge to answer choices designed to trick and confuse you.
How to get to: 600-650
In order to get to the 600-650 range, you will need to only miss between 11 and 17 questions. You should shoot to be able to correctly answer:
- Sentence completions: 13-15 of 19
- Passage based reading: 37-41 of 48
To reach this goal, you will need to:
- Learn 500 new sentence completion vocabulary words.
- Spend at least 10 hours with a tutor or on your own working through practice passages, ensuring you understand not only the correct answer, but WHY other answer choices are incorrect.
How to get to: 650-700
In order to get to the 650-700 range, you will need to only miss between 7 and 10 questions. You should shoot to be able to correctly answer:
- Sentence completions: 16-17 of 19
- Passage based reading: 41-43 of 48
To reach this goal, you will need to:
- Learn 750 new sentence completion vocabulary words.
- Learn 50 new “reading” vocabulary words.
- Spend at least 15 hours with a tutor learning to understand the common error types seen on critical reading answer choices.
How to get to: 700+
In order to get to the 700+ range, which only 4% of students do, you will need to miss between 0 and 6 questions. You should be able to correctly answer:
- Sentence completions: 17 or 19
- Passage based reading: 44 of 48
To reach this goal, you will need to
- Learn 1000 new sentence completion vocabulary words.
- Learn 50 new “reading” vocabulary words.
- Likely spend at least 20 hours “re-learning” how to read and how to apply this new reading technique on the test.
Studying Tips
- Learn vocabulary.
- Go through practice tests and underline each time you don’t recognize a word in a passage, question or answer choice. Turn these words into a vocabulary toolkit.
- Purchase a set of vocabulary flash cards that are frequently seen on the SAT and begin learning these words.
- Read a variety of sources. Exposing yourself to a variety of written materials, including scholarly articles and first person narratives told from different voices should help to alleviate those passages that “don’t click”.
- Analyze every question you miss until you understand not just what the right answer is, but WHY the one you picked was incorrect. If you cannot figure this out on your own, consult an expert.
