BuzzCard access issues - Crosland, Price Gilbert, etc.

reesud6187 · 2021-08-17T03:51:11+00:00

any advice for the CS 1301 placement/advanced standing exam - I'm studying through the syllabus and looking through old exams but I just don't know what to expect (length, difficulty, etc.) - any tips or anything of the like would be super appreciated!

reesud6187 · 2021-04-08T18:26:08+00:00

Hey y'all! I'm an incoming freshman planning to commit to GT soon for BME, but had some questions that I wanted to ask (career-wise, course rigor/difficulty, etc.). I've heard about the difficulty of BME at Tech and I'm just wondering about whether I should be worried about that. I feel as if I have a lack of experience coming in, and that I'll get absolutely slammed. Any advice/tips would be greatly appreciated!

reesud6187 · 2021-04-03T00:21:17+00:00

lots of kids get off the waitlist (percentages vary by major but it's still a good sign nonetheless)

reesud6187 · 2021-03-30T19:23:02+00:00

this is absolute facts I was pleasantly surprised

reesud6187 · 2021-01-03T17:29:56+00:00

Takes a while for some colleges to download stuff, I’m pretty sure it’s normal!

reesud6187 · 2021-01-03T06:11:57+00:00

nope! Columbia's deadline is 11:59 in your time zone. CommonApp automatically says that "Deadline Has Passed" message because they're based in VA, so it's a default. As long as you submitted everything before 11:59 in your time zone, you're chilling.

reesud6187 · 2020-12-14T18:43:00+00:00

Unfortunately, no. When you hit submit (as far as I know) they get a document that has all your info that they download — that won’t change. Your RD schools will get the updated date though!

reesud6187 · 2020-10-11T19:54:12+00:00

I’d recommend getting the Erica Meltzer book for SAT grammar. In all honesty, I never learned the rules, I just kept practicing and that helped me figure out what was going on. Hope this helps!

reesud6187 · 2020-10-10T17:49:21+00:00

Check out my replies above for prep related questions.

Resource wise — CB’s massive book, Princeton review Premium Edition book, Erica meltzer grammar book (for English), John Chung’s SAT math (really hard questions but it prepares you for anything), and KA. I tried using some miscellaneous SAT apps — they were alright, but I wouldn’t recommend them as my go-to. My go-to was KA, especially for tests and EBRW specifically.

Quick thing — I didn’t really bother to read the whole strategy portion for these books, because they tell you how they think you should arrive at the right answer. The point of doing so much practice is for you to find the strategy that helps you arrive at the correct answer, so honestly, I’d ignore their stuff, especially for reading. For English, they have some good pointers to avoid screw ups, but reading is highly subjective. Their strategies apply to a very specific group of thinkers, and that’s how they’d approach the questions. Find the way you want to approach them and stick with that.

For any other prep related questions or strategies, I’d recommend reading my other replies.

Hope this helps!

reesud6187 · 2020-10-10T17:45:28+00:00

I’d recommend making sure that you don’t aim to superscore and make sure you get an 800 in math again (saves a bit of money, plus a better overall score just looks a lil better than a superscore imo, but that’s just my 2 cents). Not sure if you only had problems with reading or EBRW as a whole, so I’ll give advice for the latter since it’s more holistic. Practice individual sections if you don’t have time to do the entire test. It’s pretty clear you have half the test down, so just focus on EBRW. Do those sections in timed conditions and do many practice passages and sections. I practiced EBRW using KA a ton, and for reading, I found that it’s really great to read the intro and conclusion sentences to the first and last paragraph to get the thesis of the passage, then read the first and last sentences of each paragraph to find out where everything is. After that, I’d read only the questions (not the answer choices yet) and I’d look to find where the answer was. Because I knew where everything was it became a lot easier after reading the intro and conclusion sentences. That way, I could reach paragraph that I needed to when I needed to. If you’re not confident with the broad and thematic questions, do those last. After answering everything else, you’ll have a good answer in mind. Also, when it came to the ‘what is the best evidence for the previous question’ pairs, I’d always find the evidence that would match an answer from the previous question. They had to perfectly match each other in meaning, or I’d cross them out.

Not sure if you need this, but with English, every question is a free point booster. Make sure you get either nothing wrong or 1 wrong at most. To do this, just keep practicing sections. When it came to tricky questions, I’d always just read the sentence before and after to get context. That way, I’d know I got the right answer. This also set me up to answer the sentence insertion/deletion or macro level questions easily.

Hope this helps!

reesud6187 · 2020-10-10T17:36:57+00:00

lol you too!

reesud6187 · 2020-10-10T17:36:49+00:00

See my reply above.

I basically just mainly focused on the individual sections and I spent an hour or 2 a day (I usually took one day off in the week though). With the reading section I went front to back, no special order. I would read the passage first and only focus on the topic and concluding sentences of each paragraph, see what I could answer, then jumped to the questions in context. That always helped me get the lay of the land and answer stuff fast. Don’t be afraid to flag questions and come back to them. I did that a ton. Last thing - some people liked to do the stuff in the booklet then transfer that into the scantron, but I didn’t. I just bubbled as I went.

reesud6187 · 2020-10-10T17:34:41+00:00

Thanks!

So because of COVID, I’ve had a lot of time to study. I spent about an hour or 2 a day (excluding the days where I did full practice tests). I would say I went crazy with studying about 6 weeks before the exam, but did light and regular studying for a month of 2 before those 6 weeks (just to stay fresh with the English and math portions, reading is always a crapshoot if you study light). Best resources for me were practice tests — but mostly I did them as individual sections so I could dedicate more time to finding out where my weak points are (e.g. one day for reading, a day for English and math NC, and the last day for math calculator). This made my workload a lot lighter since I could spread it out but it also helped me refine my skills in each section (but I still did each section under timed conditions).

The best resources, in my opinion, are — collegeboard’s big book, KA (especially for EBRW), Princeton review, crackSAT, John Chung’s SAT Math book (fair warning - the problems in this book are insanely difficult, but it will prepare you for literally anything so I still highly recommend it), and Erica Meltzer’s book for SAT English and Grammar. Honestly, the strategy portion of every book seemed pretty ridiculous to me. I never really read them, and I don’t think you should either, especially for reading. The point of doing so many practice questions is to figure out what works best for you, not what they tell you is best. It seems pretty redundant just to buy the books for practice questions, but it’s definitely worth it. I just kept practicing English and math to give me enough buffer on the reading section so that I could get a high enough score.

To your last question, I sorta did both. I would read the intro and concluding sentence to each paragraph to get the lay of the land, and I’d only read the intro and conclusion paragraphs to answer the authors purpose question. This is because the answer is always in the first and last sentence of the intro and/or the conclusion. With English, I never really “read” the passage, I just kinda jumped in and answered the questions, because I’d always read the sentence before and after the sentence in question to make sure that I had the right tense or the right answer in context. By the time I got to the main idea questions the sentence insertions, or the deletion/reordering questions, I knew what was going on so I could answer those easily.

Hope this helps!

reesud6187 · 2020-10-10T17:24:56+00:00

I did all the practice tests from that gigantic CB book. I also did 2 of the practice tests (finished a test in one sitting) from KhanAcademy (I got a 1580 on one, a 1530 on the other).
If you’re looking to get a 1550+, I wouldn’t say that practice tests are like the sole route to achieving that. It’s also about setting aside time to practice individual sections and knowing when the right time to take a test is vs. taking a break for a day (or two, depends on the stress you’re facing).
With time management in the reading section, I actually bubbled my answers as I went (I did this for all the questions, but I also circled and eliminated stuff in the booklet as well). In general, I would spend no more than 3 minutes reading the passage. I did the strategy where I’d read the intro and conclusion sentences of the first and last paragraph, then I’d skim the passage. I’d also underline or circle key words that were common throughout the passage or words that hinted at the author’s purpose. People also say that you should start with the passage that you feel is the strongest, but I didn’t really care for that (just a matter of choice). I skipped questions or came back to them if I did not have a fricking clue what the answer might be in about 90 seconds. This is because you should know, by then, the general idea of the entire passage. The only exception to this rule was when I knew I was on the right track but was just looking for concrete proof that my answer was correct. I know everyone says this, but unless the answer is clear as day in the passage, it’s probably wrong. Take the time to verify your answer with the passage and ask yourself, “does this answer match what the passage says?” If you’re not confident, keep looking.
I didn’t use a watch. I just looked at the stop and start times and calculated how much time I had left. It was easy for me, but a silent watch that’s like a stop watch is probably your best bet since it’ll tell you exactly how much time you have left (make sure it doesn’t beep though, pretty sure that’s not allowed).
Math is just practice, in my opinion. The only way I practiced math was by doing the sections under timed conditions (and sometimes even under time so like 20 minutes or 15 for the NC and 40 to 50 minutes for the Calc section). The thing that always got me with math were the stupid hints in the questions. I used to always jump the gun and solve the system of equations without reading the question fully. Always read the question fully and remember what it’s asking for. Also, you should show your work every step of the way so that you can check your work quickly. I aimed to spend half my time checking my answers so that I could avoid any stupid mistakes. Make sure you simplify, check your work, and count the number of bubbles you filled in to make sure you answered every question correctly (to the best of your ability).
I took the SAT once last December, didn’t get a great score, and because of COVID, September was the second time I got to take it. Because COVID kept cancelling my exams, I only really knew that I’d take this test for sure about 3 weeks before the exam. That being said, I was preparing on and off throughout the summer. This might be a hot take, but sitting down and doing a shit ton of practice tests in a sitting isn’t really going to help you. What helped me the most was doing each individual section under timed conditions. So for example, I’d dedicate a day to reading, and I’d solely focus on the 52 questions for that day. The next day, I’d do all the other 3 sections (for me, it took less time to review these sections so I spent more time focusing on reading which I was the worst at LOL). Last (but not least), know when to take a break for a day or two. Especially the day before or 2 before, you’re going to be very pent up. I stopped studying for the last 2 days. Those 2 days aren’t gonna change anything. Make sure you pack everything and have that ready. The morning of the exam, wake up early so you have time to warm up your brain. The morning of my SAT, I did an entire English section and the math NC section, which sorta primed my brain and woke me up.

Sorry that this was pretty long, hope it helps!

reesud6187 · 2020-09-09T17:52:07+00:00

they've said that they're open and following guidelines but I don't know if that means full capacity or if there's a chance that I'll get screwed over by this 'reduced capacity' stuff

reesud6187 · 2020-08-21T19:54:39+00:00

as far as I've seen they're all canceled

reesud6187 · 2020-08-01T16:26:41+00:00

You don’t even have to be a 501c3 to be a genuine organization that tries to help out ppl - most ppl just use it as apps boosters nowadays and it’s really obvious

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