Up Your Score (64 page)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2½ teaspoons baking powder

2 jumbo Hershey bars (the kind with the little squares)

Melt the butter and let it cool until you can put your nose in it for three seconds and feel no pain. Stir in the brown sugar. Then add the flour slowly. Beat the eggs and add them one at a time. Add the vanilla and baking powder. Break the chocolate bars into _____ squares with your _____ and add them to the batter.

(A) Hollywood . . . remote

(B) little . . . fingers

(C) liquid . . . fly swatter

(D) gaseous . . . squirt gun

(E) coconut . . . willpower

Answer: (B)

Take a big handful of the batter and eat it. (Don’t you wish all recipes said that?) Pour the batter into a buttered baking dish with a volume of 216 cubic inches. If it’s 2 inches deep and 12 inches long, how many inches wide is it?

(A) 8

(B) 9

(C) 10

(D) 25

(E) 8
x
− 5

Answer: (B)

Preheat the oven to the average of 100°F and 600°F. Place the pan in the oven until the bars turn golden brown on top—35 minutes in a standard oven, 40 minutes in a slow oven.

When the bars are golden brown, remove the pan from the oven. Now you can cut them into whatever shape you choose.

In terms of getting your food into the test center, we recommend one of those hooded sweatshirts with the pockets in the front. These can hold a lot of food, and the food is easily accessible because it’s in your front pocket. It also keeps the food hidden from all the other starving test takers around you. It’s a jungle in the test center. Ladies, pocketbooks are also useful. Do not do what Larry did. He cleverly stashed a chocolate
bar in his back pocket. Before he had a chance to eat it, two of the Musketeers had melted, leaving an embarrassing brown stain.

Just as it’s important not to be hungry during the SAT, it’s important to be comfortable. You don’t want to waste time wishing you’d worn looser jeans or that your shirt wasn’t scratchy. Make sure you dress in layers no matter when your test date is. The test room could be heated, air-conditioned, both, or neither. Be prepared for any climate. Bear in mind that cardigans and sweatshirts that zip up the front are easier to wriggle out of quickly than garments you have to pull over your head. Avoid loose, floppy sleeves; as fashionable as they may be, you don’t want to have to keep swishing them out of the way to fill in your answer sheet. The same goes for bangle bracelets (which also have a tendency to jangle annoyingly). Finally, a lucky pair of socks or the underwear you wore when you won the basketball tournament couldn’t hurt.

Hand care is crucial to the SAT. Your hands will grip your pencil, they will punch numbers on your calculator, they will write out the certification statement in cursive even though no one ever uses cursive anymore, they will strangle the proctor if he or she is absolutely incompetent and unreasonable. Cut your fingernails so you don’t waste time biting them; the same goes for your cuticles. If you like, paint your nails a soothing color like a pastel green or a blue that reminds you of the ocean. Begin treating your hands with natural minerals and creams at least one week before the test and do isometric hand exercises in order to increase the ease with which you grasp your pencil.

Hair care is also very important. Even if you’re otherwise attired in your oldest floppiest sweats, go to the test with squeaky clean hair—it’ll make you feel pulled together and competent. Plus, its brilliant shine might distract other students and therefore increase your percentile score. Also bear in mind that the month before the SAT is no time to start growing your hair out. The last thing you want is to be constantly pushing your hair out of your eyes and cursing yourself for ever cutting it in the first place.

Finally, choose the watch that you wear carefully. Some proctors will write updates on the board about how much time is left, but having your own watch is a better bet. Because you will constantly be checking how much time is left, you want to feel comfortable with your watch. Digital ones are preferable because in the heat of the moment you could forget how to tell time. Also, make sure your watch doesn’t beep, or if it does, that you know how to turn off the sound. Otherwise you risk being the object of intense hatred by the other test takers.

Go to sleep as early as possible the night before, so you’re well rested, and shower on the morning of the test. It’ll wake you up, and you’ll feel fresh and ready to show the ETS what you’re made of. Plus, you don’t want to be that stinky kid in the room whom everyone else despises.

At this point in the book, we would like to recommend that you find two cylindrical objects, rub them back and forth between your fingers, and then insert them into two of your body’s orifices simultaneously.

The orifices are your ears and the cylindrical objects are foam earplugs. These little squishy thingies are great. They cost about a dollar a pair at your local pharmacy—a small price to pay for cutting out most of the distracting noises in the testing hall. They are comfortable once you get used to them. In fact, some people we know at college have become addicted to them and can’t study without them.

When you put in the earplugs, you suddenly hear your own breathing more intensely and sometimes even your own heartbeat. These are precisely the things that you are supposed to listen for when trying to meditate. So once you get used to them, you’ll find yourself concentrating and relaxing with a meditative intensity.

Earplugs are also helpful for blocking out those annoying teacher noises in classes you’d prefer to sleep through.

Remember, the SAT is only one aspect of your college application. If your score isn’t that strong, make sure the rest of your application is.

Grades and Courses
These should always be your first priority. Colleges usually insist on a minimum standard of grades and courses before they even look at the rest of an application.

Essays
College admissions officers read hundreds of essays—your goal is to write one that will stick in their minds. You might want to reveal something about yourself in your essay that didn’t come out in the rest of your application. You can write about your summer job as a camp counselor, but remember that many others will probably write similar essays about their summer experiences. Make yours stand out. Humor can be effective, but if the admissions committee doesn’t find your witticisms funny, it’s worse than not using any humor at all. So make sure you get feedback on your essays before you send them in. (This goes for all essays, not just humorous ones.) Show them to your family, your friends, your teachers, your plumber. However, don’t let them write the essay for you—it should always reflect you.

Extracurriculars
These are secondary to grades, but they are becoming more important. No one wants a school full of do-nothing dweebs. (If you are a do-nothing dweeb, change your ways now. There is still hope!) One extracurricular that is irresistible to colleges is organizing and leading something socially responsible. Ask yourself what your school or community needs and then get your friends to work with you on a project, such as a recycling program. This is not only a good deed, it may get you into college. Admissions officers also love self-propelled activities—one kid we know organized his own summer trip to work at a Moscow newspaper, and he got into Harvard. Conversely, bear in mind that dinky extracurriculars aren’t that impressive. Being a leader (editor of the school paper, captain of the basketball team) is more impressive than just being a member of a club that meets once a week.

Recommendations
A great recommendation can make a big difference. Ask teachers who know you well and who you think have good things to say about you. Try to choose someone with whom you have a real connection—the teachers you actually think you’ll want to see at your high school reunion in ten years.

Special Talents
Colleges need running backs for their football teams and violins in their orchestra. Even if you haven’t been recruited by the Bears and aren’t the next Itzhak Perlman, make sure your colleges know about any special talents that you have. One of our past guest authors, who originally was deferred Early Action at MIT and Cal Tech, got into both Regular Action after sending an application update that included info about the guest authorship and a percussion audition tape for the band and orchestra conductors at each school. Of course, we at
Up Your Score
believe that
we
were the deciding factor, but the tapes couldn’t have hurt, either.

Note:
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. If for some reason you have your heart set on one school (although there is usually no good reason for that) and you don’t get in, think about taking a year off to make yourself fascinating and smart, and apply again.

Dear Reader,

Congratulations! You’ve made it through (or else you’re peeking at the end of the book). You know what the word
cerebration
means, and you’re all set to be cerebral. You have your ID, your admission ticket, three sharp pencils and one dull pencil, a calculator or two with charged batteries, and some good food to bring into the test all waiting by the door. Maybe you’ve studied everything in a day; maybe you started with verbal flash cards four and a half years ago. Who cares? It’s over now; no amount of studying the night before the test is going to help you significantly.

If you need a boost of confidence, just remember that there are people out there who will be taking the test tomorrow without having read this book first. (Unthinkable, isn’t it?) If you botch the test, you’ll just take it again on the next test date. If you don’t get into the college of your choice, you can choose another one that probably doesn’t cost as much and has a better football team.

We hope you enjoyed our book and learned a lot. Our objective was to teach you how to take the SAT, but we hope that along the way you learned some stuff that will help you for the rest of your life. At the very least, you now know a lot of new vocabulary words, but if we did our job right you are a more clever test taker and a better thinker than you used to be.

All of us authors went through the same thing you’re going through right now. We know how you feel. There is a lot of pressure. It feels as if someone is scratching fingernails on your mental chalkboard.

So go outside and look at the stars. There are lots of them and they’re trillions of miles away. In the Grand Scheme of the Universe, how big a deal can the SAT be? Chill. You’re going to cruise tomorrow. Sit back. You only live once . . . and then they send you your score report.