muffinman said:
I have gotten a 2000 on my practice tests. I'm trying to get it up 300 points, and this program has a guarantee that your score will go up at least 200 points. You can check it out
here.
ROFL! My parents made me go to Elite. Trust me, the practice tests there are sooooo f-ed up...all the instructors I had were dissing the tests quite often (not the ones that were from real SAT tests, but the ones that the people at Elite wrote - i think it's hagen, arnold, and/or someone else usually..it was the initials of the test writers that make up the test #). I don't know if they've changed much in like the past year or two since I've been there, but man...that place...I don't think I ever learned anything. All the kids there knew me because I was the person who always got all the computer-related jeopardy questions right (or, just knew too much about too many things)..and everyone who worked there yelled at me when I slacked off on the tests, or when I finished a full practice SAT test in an hour and got like 1430 (old test) on it or something. I actually think the guy who was sorta proctoring the tests thinks I'm weird because I always ended up finishing a section in 5-10 minutes and playing games or reading for the rest of the time.
Also, the boot camp is SOOOO not worth it. It's faster than the rest of the classes they have, which is nice, but they make you "learn" a ******** of vocab (as in, they will actually hand you thousands of little flash cards with vocab words on them), and had an actual demerit system in place if you got a crappy score...ugh, the guys sitting around me used to cheat off my paper so much so they wouldn't get in trouble for getting like a 50% on the tests..I mean, if you actually get something out of it (and you probably will), it's cool, but most people who do it don't really give a ****, and so it's useless if you're one of those people. But, you need the right people, the instructors make alllllllll the difference. (like, there was an english teacher at the los angeles one, his name was JD, he was REAL good, but he stopped working there indefinitely a couple of weeks before I left elite for good (he was pretty much the reason why, lol) and that sorta sucked. there's also a few other good people, like hamilton, but I think he does LA classes only, also, he's a real gourmand, his restaurant recommendations are awesome...btw, settlow and lebow (yes, he actually is on imdb:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1572991 ) are REAL weird, sometimes cool, but real weird..david long is really good with writing and has impeccable taste in music) Then again, I've just been to the los angeles one, so i dont know if its the same people in san diego. i know sometimes some of them go to arcadia, but not all. And yes, reading this over, I thought it was freaky that I knew so much about some guys teaching SAT stuff, but it's inevitable. You see them listening to iPods, talking about taking their girlfriends to concerts, eating food, acting out scenes from movies, talking about their aspiration to become a screenplay writer...
And, if you know your roots and such, the vocab tests are VERY easy. I don't think I ever really opened the packets or read the stuff more than once, most of it was like 8th grade english stuff.
They repeat a lot of material every like 3 months or so, so it's really not worth going for more than a few weeks. Again, I don't know if that all changed, but it was like that when i went, and odds are it's still the same lol
But, in all honesty, I would go back any day. It was a nice community
btw, do you have a math teacher named eric (like, 5'8" tall asian dude who likes snowboarding and basketball and teaches like crap)? if you do, can you bother him and tell him to get on AIM someday or maybe answer jane's emails, that i have something to ask him about the mcat, and also about what he did to his powerbook? thanks
OMG, i didn't know you were doing one of their intensive classes, haha. Good luck. It'll be over soon
Also, if it's one of those programs where they guarantee a higher score or they will refund your money, if you're out to get your money back, don't ever get a high score on a practice exam or the real test, that's how you get it back
not many people do though, so..
Just as a reference, I got a 1530 on the old SAT, the last one ever (in january 2005 iirc) where the math curve was goddamn brutal, in the middle of sophomore year, 790 on the SAT II writing test somewhere also in freshman or sophomore year (or might have been 800, or 760 or something..scores for SAT II math 2 and physics are all mixed up with writing in my brain right now), and a 1290 or something in 7th grade for the johns hopkins CTY deal...went to Elite somewhere between the two times that I took the SAT ever...judge for yourself whether or not it worked for me
