um.... stupid SATs. Aren't they changing this anyway?
Whatever.
Ok. As you know there's a math and there's a verbal. Can't really help you on the math too much. This is what happened to me. Summer before my junior year, I thought - wow, I should probably look at some PSAT stuff since I probably want that award thingy they give out. Problem is, I took the PSAT my sophomore year and got a 186. That's not a good score. I took another test again in January and got a 176. Yeah - that sucked. So one day in summer I took a math section and got a 630 or something like that. I thought - crap. So I did two 25-problem math sets. I took another test later that week. I got a 770 on the math section that time, yeah - within a week my score improved 100+ points. And my score's stayed consistent in the 750+ range ever since. Miracles do happen - don't despair. True story! Seriously! I took the test in October o junior year and got an 800 on math. Weird. I still can't explain it.
Verbal - well, my score increase on this was more gradual than that weird thing in math. I memorized a whole bunch of words. That helps so much on the analogy and sentence comp. section. Although, if you read a lot (unlike me - don't have the patience to read books), you should be fine w/ this section. Here's my vocab list. It's in Microsoft Works (ha! oxymoron!). "Level" means how tough it was for me to memorize the word. "Mn" was mnemonics that I used. If you can't read Mic. Works, here's another list in Excel. If you can't read Excel, get a new computer.
One more thing, the test people use every question 4 times before it is considered "retired." I did lots of practice from old tests in the verbal section - funny thing is, the PSAT this year (from what the juniors have all described) contained all but one critical reading passage that I have practiced on. That's why it's good to practice on REAL tests (hint hint, 10 Real SAT Book). You just might find a passage on your SAT that you've seen. Also, the vocab list above was compilied by comparing old test (I didn't do this, I'm not that big of a nerd) and picking out words that have not been retired yet - or at least, that's what I've been told. Then I took the original list and weeded out the words that I knew already.
Critical Reading wise - um... don't have any tips for you there. This is another one of those sections where one day I woke up and understood the passages. In the end, I got a 750 on Verbal, which is sad because stupid Deborah got a 800 on verbal. grrrr..... So did Alison. grrrrrr...... I feel dumb. No I don't. Just kidding.