Читать книгу SAT Math For Dummies with Online Practice - Mark Zegarelli - Страница 32

I met Shaun when he was a sophomore, in an SAT class full of all juniors and seniors. He was likeable, quirky, and smart, definitely holding his own in a class full of kids one and two years older than him. His real interest was engineering, and he had a garage full of cool projects in various states of completion.

After the SAT class was done, I started working with him one-on-one over the summer between his sophomore and junior years. He did well on the practice tests, but missed math questions he should have gotten, mostly because he misread the question or made a minor calculation error.

He and I worked together to solidify his skills in the areas of math that most SAT questions focus on: linear functions, linear systems of equations, and quadratic functions. I also encouraged him to spend more time answering the easy-to-medium questions and skipping over the difficult, time-consuming ones.

Shaun thought he was ready to take the SAT for real at the beginning of his junior year. His father thought he needed more practice. I recommended that he take it, if only to resolve their difference of opinion with an actual score. On his first try, he got a 1,340 — 680 in English, 660 in math.

“If you’d like to break 1,400,” I suggested, “we can keep on going.”

But instead, Shaun just kept his grades up, applied to a good engineering program, and got early acceptance. Case closed.