Port Washington, NY
Starting SAT Score:
650M 650V
Final SAT Score:
800M 760V
College: Vasser
In Jon’s case we started in August before his Junior year. Based on his practice test scores we decided that he had a shot at a National Merit Scholarship, so we did some prep specifically for the PSAT (I only do this with students who are within reach of a National Merit Scholarship). In the end it paid off because Jon scored high enough to become a National Merit Finalist and receive a scholarship.
Since Jon was starting at a pretty high level already, it quickly became apparent that he didn’t really have many content weaknesses – it was mostly about the way that he was approaching the questions. So we spent most of our time working on strategy and logical reasoning. The biggest obstacle was that Jon was a little arrogant and tended to think that his answers were right even when they were objectively wrong, so it took a while to get him to understand that there really was only one right answer on every question and that it was not open to interpretation. Once he understood this critical point, the remaining thing was to work on careless errors because Jon tended to work extremely fast, especially on the Math section, and would often make careless mistakes.
Jon’s path to such exceptional scores was not easy, however, in part because he didn’t hit those marks on his first try. In fact, even on his second try, although he scored extremely well by any objective measure, his scores were still below the kinds of scores he was getting on practice tests. So it was a very difficult decision for Jon as to whether he should settle for scores that, while excellent, were still below his potential or whether he should give it one more try. He actually sat out the next SAT but decided to give it one more go on the following one and achieved the remarkable scores that he ultimately ended up with, including the perfect score on Math.