Up Your Score Read Free Page B

circles for practice and have done extensive experimentation to identify the most efficient way to fill them in. See page 307 .)
    Other useful skills are eating for endurance and stealth snacking. These skills are covered in Chapter 6 .
    For more on snacking successfully, see Chapter 6 .
How do I get psyched to study for the SAT?
    You cannot study for the SAT unless you are mentally and physically prepared. Listed here are several ways of psyching yourself up.
    1. Try to convince yourself that it is fun and challenging to learn new words and mathematical facts. (Good luck.)
    2. Try to convince yourself that the things you learn in today’s study session will enable you to think critically and to sound articulate for the rest of your life. (This technique does not work either.)
    3. Realize that the opposite sex is often attracted to equations and big words. (Nope.)
    4. Note that the average teenager burns approximately 115 calories during an hour of intense studying. (Maybe so, but walking up and down stairs for an hour is much more interesting and burns 350 calories.)
    The above techniques do not work because they use positive thinking. The SAT does not inspire positive thinking. You must learn to think negatively. For example:
    1. Recognize that if you do not do well on the SAT you will not get into a good college. You will have to go to school in the Australian outback and your college years will be disrupted by kangaroo migrations.
    2. Go to the kitchen. Press your tongue against the metal freezer tray and hold it there for ten minutes. Then rapidly yank it away. By comparison, studying for the SAT may actually be pleasurable.
    3. Realize that the ETS is a wicked organization. By reading our book you are beating the system because you will score higher than you would otherwise.
    4. Most of the dweebs who deserve to get into the colleges of their choice are probably too busy playing with their TI-89 calculators to have time to read this book. It’s fun to watch dweebs get mad when they don’t get into a college that you get into.
    5. The SAT is expensive:

    You must learn to dwell on these negative thoughts. Let them gnaw at your insides. Begin to feel a hatred of this test and all it stands for. Hate is a powerful emotion: It will give you the drive and determination you need for intense study.
A N A UTHOR’S N OTE I NTENDED TO B UILD C ONFIDENCE
    Before we begin we must make one important point. In the extremely unlikely event that you read this book and still do miserably on the SAT, do not whine. Just make the best of going to college in the Australian outback. In addition, there are a number of small details that could go wrong during the test regardless of what you learn (or do not learn) from this book. A few examples:

    1. You lose your admission ticket, so they never even let you into the testing center. (But here’s where Al Gore’s famous invention, the Internet, kicks in. See page 317 .)
    2. You fall asleep during the critical reading passage about the history of celery.
    3. You fall asleep while the proctor is reading the directions.
    4. You fall asleep the night before the test and do not wake up until it is over.
    5. You don’t know the answer to question 6 on the test, so you skip it. However, you forget to leave number 6 blank on your answer sheet. Then, you put the answer to question 7 in the space for question 6, the answer to question 8 in the space for question 7, etc. You don’t realize that you have done this until you wake up in the middle of the passage about the history of celery and try to find your place. (Seriously, if you mess up your answer sheet like that, the proctor will probably give you some time to rearrange your answers after the test is over. Raise your hand and ask.)
    6. All four of your number 2 pencils break, and you end up having to use chalk.
    Some distractions can be remedied. For example, if your desk squeaks, it’s too hot, there’s a fan blowing your papers around, or