Score improvement depends on your starting point, effort, and time invested, but most students see meaningful gains with focused, personalized instruction. Many students improve 50-100+ points when they work with a tutor to identify weak areas—like vocabulary gaps, pacing issues, or comprehension strategies—and practice consistently. Your tutor will create a customized study plan based on your diagnostic results and target score.

Common struggles include managing time across long reading passages, building strong vocabulary for context clues, understanding complex sentence structures, and distinguishing between similar answer choices. Many students also struggle with pacing—spending too long on one passage and rushing through others. A tutor can help you develop efficient reading strategies, strengthen vocabulary in context, and practice question types until you recognize patterns automatically.

The first step is a diagnostic assessment to identify your specific strengths and weaknesses—whether that's reading comprehension speed, grammar rules, vocabulary, or test anxiety. Varsity Tutors connects you with an expert tutor who reviews your results and builds a personalized study plan targeting your weak areas. From there, you'll work through practice problems, take full-length practice tests, and refine your strategies before test day.

Practice tests are essential—they help you understand the test format, build stamina for the full section, identify patterns in your mistakes, and track progress over time. Taking full-length practice tests under timed conditions is much more valuable than drilling individual questions, because it reveals pacing issues and shows how you perform under pressure. Your tutor will use practice test results to guide your study plan and focus on the question types that trip you up most.

Yes—if one section is significantly weaker, your tutor will prioritize it while maintaining your stronger area. However, both sections test overlapping skills like vocabulary, comprehension, and grammar, so improving one often helps the other. Your tutor will diagnose whether your weakness is speed, comprehension, grammar knowledge, or strategy, then tailor instruction accordingly to maximize your overall score.

Most students benefit from 8-12 weeks of consistent preparation, though your timeline depends on your starting score, target score, and how frequently you meet with your tutor. If you're aiming for a modest improvement, 6-8 weeks of focused work may be enough; if you're targeting a significant jump, 12-16 weeks allows time for deeper skill-building and multiple practice tests. Your tutor will recommend a timeline based on your diagnostic results and test date.

Test anxiety often stems from unfamiliarity with the test format or lack of confidence in your skills. Personalized tutoring builds confidence through repeated practice with real question types, timed drills, and full-length tests that simulate test-day conditions. Your tutor can also teach you calming strategies and help you develop a mindset shift—moving from "I don't know how to do this" to "I've practiced this before and I know my approach."