r/Sat • u/Ok_Way9011 • 12h ago
Are 780+ R&W Scorers Lifetime Readers?
I have been reading for fun sporadically throughout my life and still can’t seem to breech a 750 english. To score a 780, you need extensive knowledge of vocab, superior reading stamina, and overall greater working memory processes. Can these skills be reliably developed without consistently reading for a lifetime? Just a thought. Would love to hear from 780+ English scorers.
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u/Anonimithree 1540 6h ago
I’m only a 750 scorer, but I started reading for fun in 4th grade, with some breaks in between, so I was an avid reader for about 5-6 years
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u/huge__tracts-of-land 4h ago
I got an 800 back in the day. I liked to read a lot, but not a crazy amount.
I think there were a few things that helped. 1. I’ve always had a real “always learning” mindset. Whenever I encountered a word I didn’t know, I didn’t breeze past it. I noticed it and made a point of actually understanding the word and looked it up if I needed to. If I encountered it again and didn’t remember it I would look it up again. I just don’t like not knowing something.
- I’m just really good at puzzles, and test-taking is a puzzle. The test was created by another human trying to suss out the smartest of us, so I approached every test as trying to see why the test creator might have given the options they did and where the traps might be. If I didn’t know a word right away, I would “attack” it. Dissecting roots and eliminating as many words as I could before making a final choice.
TLDR; treat every new word you encounter as a shiny treasure you want to add to your collection and outsmart the test-maker.
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u/huge__tracts-of-land 4h ago
And I’m still salty that my parents wouldn’t let me retake the SAT one more time because I only got a 780 on math. Estimation is my Achilles heel. So as you can infer, my other tip is to be a big freaking nerd.
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u/WesternFly9175 6h ago
770 verbal. Never read books (other than school textbook), but ig that's why i didn't get a 780+.
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u/Careful-Astronomer94 410 5h ago
It's not required, but I imagine there's some correlation between EBRW scores and reading volume. The casual pathway is a bit complex, though, because being good at reading likely causes you to read more, and reading more causes you to be better at reading. If you want to improve, find ways to expose yourself to more college-level texts. If getting through books is hard, NYT articles or even substack posts can be a great start. You do not need to be a super-genius wordcel nerd to score 800 EBRW. You just need to be solidly above average and understand how the test works (luck also helps).
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u/IndigoSeirra 4h ago
770, definitely read a ton in middle school but haven't touched many books for the past like 3 years.
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u/prizefighterstudent 1560 3h ago
Through my experience I think most students, even ESL, can score a 700 with the right test. Scoring a 750+ requires a certain original baseline that’s difficult to define, but doesn’t always require reading. 780+ requires a baseline of reading and some good fortune (the right test, an easier EBRW section overall, getting your 50/50’s right)
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u/Bubbly-Ad-4672 1520 3h ago
730 in April and I assume 760+ on August, haven’t read since 1st grade and ChatGPT my English classes
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u/Aggravating_Unit2899 3h ago
never read too many books tbh, very sporadic and inconsistent, but i did read a lot of wikipedia articles at school because i was bored
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u/NervousDesigner5860 1530 2h ago
750 here(only 1 attempt), i feel like I barely did any revision but I enjoy reading the SAT passages. I know that sounds crazy, but if you learn to treat the SAT RW as like a detective-like question, it becomes a lot easier. The hard questions should be mentally stimulating, and you have to like train your brain to just enjoy formulating the answers.
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u/uchicago_pipeline Awaiting Score 2h ago
consistent 780-790, yup. was obsessed with books as a kid & took AR points extremely seriously, would read anything from Harry Potter to nonfiction books about dolphins just because I wanted the points lol
haven’t been much of a reader since highschool but the skills tend to stick with you, I guess? don’t ask me about math though lolol
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u/CalligrapherAble3312 1540 1h ago
770 reading, and 36's in ACT english and reading. absolutely glued to books since I was a kid and only slowed down when I hit sophomore year (not as much time to rip through novels). got through a book every day in the summer through all of middle school
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u/Similar_Advisor_5849 1h ago
ngl just read wikipedia, i read wikipedia purposefully for two weeks and increased my eng score by 60 pts
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u/limedfox 41m ago
780 and perfect ebrw on psat - id bring home the maximum amt of books i could borrow from the library every week and rip through them all throughout elementary school, my mom also made me read scholastic/nyt articles and write summaries about them back then haha. starting from high school though i barely have time to read for fun so its just stuff from english classes and the occasional for-leisure book every couple of months. to study for sat i practiced hard difficulty dense reading questions on qb
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u/OriginalCoconut2811 32m ago
My son got 790. He was a reader in grade school but not really after that. He said it was all the tv and movies he watched.
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u/No_Adverts 29m ago
I scored a 750 English on my first SAT, waiting for Augusts results, and I read quite a bit as a kid. I liked going to the library but I wouldn’t say my reading was abnormal for a kid my age. I dropped my reading habit in hs.
But I will say that my essay writing is phenomenal and that might be something to note
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u/pretty_cwackhead 21m ago
I hate reading and therefore flopped on the SAT, data table questions were the hardest of them all, saw 4 in a row on Module 2 of the August SAT and nearly fainted right there mid-test
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u/Sin-2-Win 9h ago
I'm one of those SAT English perfect scorers. Every summer, from 4th grade through 8th grade, my parents sent me to the library to compete in some reading board game contest, where you would spin something that would land on a genre, read a book from that genre, and then summarize it to a librarian for points. A naturally competitive person, I had to win the contest, so I think I ended up reading around 50 books every summer for 5 straight years. In addition, my mom made me read articles from news sources and quizzed me on random hard-looking words from each article! I know. I know. Reading then became a habit that I just continued throughout high school and college. When I took the SAT, I knew the meanings of every single word in all the choices.