Helping hs students weak in math with SAT's

[Tiggeroo]

I have two hs sons who will be juniors this year. They haven't taken psat's yet. Both of them struggle with math. My one son will be re-doing algebra this year and taking geometry. The other will be doing algebra 2, but he just squeaked by in alg. and geo. They do fairly well in their other subjects. Does anyone have any pointers on things I can do with them to help them to get by on the sat math section?

 

[Evil Princess]

I don't know anything about your school, but the math on the SAT is like our 8th and 9th grade math. The math isn't very difficult on the SATs.

I don't know if you are able to do this, but my parents contacted the school and asked for the name of a good math tutor outside the highschool. It turned out to be one of the teachers in the school, the same teacher that tutored my boyfriend. He was amazing, and within weeks my practice scores jumped from 500 in math to 700 by the end of the sessions. I really understood the material.

This is also helpful because the SAT math section has many tricks to it that make the problems easier and quicker, saving time for the more difficult questions. There are certain types of problems that always appear, and once you learn them you realize that the problem is the same problem you did at home with different numbers.

My school also offered a class called "SAT prep", which some kids took. Almost every friend of mine hired tutors that came once a week, one for math and one for verbal.

Our local Y also offered SAT review classes.

 

[Kermit]

Get a book about the SAT. The ones by Kaplan and Princeton Review are both very respected. There are some out there that are a bit more "fun," but either of those 2 will be fine. The books will tell you what specific type of concepts are usually tested on the SAT.

There is a lot of geometry on the SAT, as I recall. Algebra 1 is also important. There will not be anything that's not taught until Algebra 2.

If they are still having a hard time after you buy one of the books, enroll them in a program to help boost their scores. The ones given by Kaplan are a bit pricey but worth it from what I hear.

 

[SoonerKate]

I am not a math person. Not at all. There are many reasons I'm majoring in English and French and one of the big ones is that I only had to take one math class.

That said, My first SAT score was a 1230 -- 700 verbal and 530 math. My parents (the physics professor dad, especially) freaked out about my math score and enrolled me in a Kaplan course. The next time I took the SAT, I got a 1460 -- 800 verbal, 660 math. Seriously, taking the Kaplan course was the best thing I've ever done.