Tip #1- If students can improve their vocabulary it will help immensely on the Critical Reading Sentence Completion part of the exam, as well as with the Essay.  An electronic dictionary is a useful tool to have while studying for the SAT.  Look up all words you do not understand and try to create your own sentences that will help you remember the definitions.  For example, I have made up the following sentences to help me remember three classic SAT vocabulary words:

1. Truculent- aggressively hostile, belligerent; The truck driver’s truculent honk of his horn caused the crowd of pedestrians to disperse.
2. Fatuous- foolish, silly; My fat friend has made many fatuous predictions, none of which have ever come true.
3. Petulant- irritable; When a stranger reached to pet our dog, the pet greeted him with a petulant toss of his head.  

Use common words that sound like the new vocabulary word.  The most effective sentences also create a mental image of the true meaning of the word.

Tip #2- Passage based reading questions often include a “vocabulary in context” question.  The student is asked to define a word or phrase from an actual sentence in the passage.  The correct answer will almost never be the common dictionary meaning.  To effectively answer these questions, the student must read the sentence before and after the word or phrase and prepare to find a secondary meaning.For example the word mean can have several meanings--"He plays a mean saxophone" is much different from "The mean temperature this past summer was 75 degrees" or from "That was a mean prank you pulled."