I recommend you pick up a copy of Word Smart. It’s a book with nothing but vocabulary words, the $20 variety [translation: words with very specific meanings that add alot to your ability to express yourself exactly].
My school had us study 30 words a week during 10th grade. During 11th, it went to 60 a week. Stop, don’t freak at that number: the first section is general “good words to know,” second is specifically “SAT” vocabulary, third is “GRE.” There’s alot of cross over between the lists, so it’s not that bad.
From personal experience, lots of these words will be on the SAT Verbal. A good SAT study guide will have the format of the test for you to study; combined with the vocab book, you should be able to raise your verbal by at least 100. In any case, they’re good words to know. [just to prove the point, i got a 720 on verbal and i gaurantee (sp?) that studying that book is the reason why.]
Did you take the PSAT? Was it different from your SAT?
A lot of schools don't publish their tracks for premed or the like. I can tell you it is usually 2 years chem (general, organic), a year of bio, a year of calc, and maybe one of physics, followed my the MCAT. Law school is usually more humanities aimed at the LSAT. Cal Berkley is pretty tough, you're gonna have to get the SAT up, particularly if the PSAT is in the same range. If not, they may look further, assume you were sick, or skipped a q and messed it up . (know someone who did - got an 800 or 900 the first time, 1430 I think the second.)
I can’t remember the PSATs off the top of my head, but the math was definately higher. At any rate, it was high enough to be considered for the National Merit Society Scholarship. I was under the impression that not too many testers score high enough for that. My scores are buried under a mountain of paper work THIS HIGH.
Pepperland… If I may make a suggestion, why not do your first two years at a junior college? For one thing, SATs don’t mean squat to a JC, and once you’ve got 2 years under your belt, they won’t mean squat when transferring to a 4-year school, even Berkeley (I speak from experience, btw, since this is exactly what I did). Transferring in with even a 3.5 GPA will, with a good essay, mean more to the admissions folks than a 4.0 with high SATs straight out of high school.
And I can tell you this: from an academic standpoint, the education you receive during your first two years at UCB are not going to be any better than what you would get at a JC.
Honey, it doesn’t matter since you girls only go to college to score a husband anyway.
(Ducks and runs away quickly, laughing maniacally and saying, “That should liven things up!”)
(Yelling from under a bridge): Mauve Dog is absolutely right. The first two years at a big school are mostly there to make sure there is plenty of room for incoming junior college graduates. The ones who have demonstrated that they want to learn, not just party. I recommend MD’s course of action to everybody I meet, including my own children.
Actually MDs advise is something I have been considering a lot lately. The local JC is literally 5 mins away, and it’s cheaper too.
Plus, I really don’t think I’m ready to completely leave home. Don’t get me wrong, I WANT too. I just don’t think I’m mentally or emotionally prepared to completely leave just yet. Ya know?
Pepper, all I have to add is “Take it again!” You may have been nervous the first time, but you won’t be as nervous this time. I jumped my score up from 1260 to 1330 without doing a darned thing to prepare (other than the fact it was a few months later.)
There’s no way you’re getting into Cal with SATs at 1130 - they’ve been known to turn away applicants with perfect scores.
Then again, MauveDog has an excellent point. Go to a JC for a couple years, then apply to Cal. By then, your scores won’t mean diddly, and you’ll save a bunch of money at the same time.
I did my undergrad work at a couple UC campuses, and in retrospect, I probably would have been better off attending UCNT - the University of California Near Target (as we called the local JC).
Knowing whether to leave home or not is a very personal decision…I wasn’t ready, but I didn’t know it.
Just to show you test scores are no indicator of how well you’re going to do I scored a 99% verbal and an 86% matematics on my PSAT and gues what I went on to do…
Drop out.
But I guess that just shows how much of a fool I really am.
Most people I know who did Political Science didn’t really realize what it’s about. I am one of them. A lot of people seem to think it is more or less like History with a political focus and more attention to current events.
Sadly, it is not. At least at my Alma Mater, a no-account school in Washington DC, Political Science was the study of people who have previously studied politics. One of my professor, who taught Legislative Politics, proudly proclaimed that people who had worked on Capitol Hill got lower than average scoress in his class. It didn’t bother me; I did the homework and I write pretty well. I figured it would be an easy course, regardless of my internship with my Representative. I ended up getting a C+; I made the mistake of talking about legislative behavior and voting patterns when he wanted us to be talking about competing academic models of voting behavior.
I know you’re not fixed on any course yet, just keep in mind that some people cultivate a completely bizarre definition of “social science”. There’s a lot of sunlight in those ivory towers, but apparently not much oxygen.
On a completely different topic …
Does anybody else think it’s weird that a score of 500 is the 46th percentile? I though the score of 500 was scaled to be the 50th percentile (it is midway between 200 and 800 after all) … is their a different scaled score attached to the 50th percentile, or have they gone off and done some radical changes without telling me?
You could probably even improve the verbal score if you take it again. Like you, I got a 630 on the SAT verbals. Six or seven years later I took the GRE after studying “Vis-Ed” flashcard vocabulary for a few weeks and I got 790. Yeah, studying is unlikely to significantly improve your scores … my butt. Um, I mean my gluteus maximus.
I got my ACT scores today. They made me feel slight better
I got a 32 in reading and a 29 in English with a composite of 26. (All out of 36) Could be better, but that 32 made me feel pretty good.
