Vocabulary Distress
Vocabulary can be the most frustrating part of the SAT. We all remember the feeling of not knowing any of the answer choices in SAT sentence completion. Sadly this humiliation does not end with the SAT; some of us continue to struggle as we read material with difficult words. One must not be pusillanimous when it comes to approaching vocab words; in fact one should reach the prodigious ability to engage in lexicon snobbery on a daily basis. The best way to attain this level of skill is to peruse resources such as the Excel… Continue Reading
Gearing up for Junior Year
Junior Year is notorious for being the most difficult year in your high school journey. In reality, junior year is not that bad. Sure, you may be taking multiple APs, the SATs are right around the corner, and your parents and teachers are constantly stressing the importance of maintaining your GPA. But, with a couple of tips, you can endure the various challenges that this year poses. Take a vacation before junior year. Being such dedicated, hardworking students, chances are you have spent your summer doing something academic. To avoid school fatigue (which at… Continue Reading
A Foolproof Way To Increase Your Critical Reading Score
If you’re having a hard time with the SAT, I’ll bet that you have trouble solving the critical reading section. Critical reading is what we at Excel see people struggling with the most, and it’s easy to see why. Grammar and math consist of complicated but concrete rules that you can break down into recognizable patterns and strategies. Critical Reading is a different game. It requires abstract thinking, knowledge of archaic vocab, and a high tolerance for reading passages. So if you’ve practiced and practiced and you’re still not seeing your score rise, what should… Continue Reading
Breaking Down Vocabulary
So you’ve been studying your vocabulary list for the last few weeks, and you’ve gotten the hang of it. You know definitions and you feel pretty comfortable about understanding the words in context, but what about the other hundreds of thousands of words in the English language? One thing that you can do to prepare yourself when you encounter the more remote words is learn to dissect words and figure out their meanings based on the roots. By dividing words into familiar parts, you can learn how to decode even the strangest vocabulary words. You… Continue Reading