ivyleague104

few questions about princeton review SAT prep.

1. Are there practice tests from their prep courses such as their online course more accurate than the cracking the SAT by PR prep book?
2. Has anyone tried the online 99 dollar course, is it worth the money?
3. is it wise to compliment the cracking SAT book with another book, such as barrons 2400?
4. Have you people who have done just the cracking the SAT book gotten great results?

Thanks a lot guys.

Coopjust

I can only tell you about the book, and let me tell you, it sucks.

The entire book has a test strategy that caters to weak test takers so they can do slightly better than average. It's not even in the same league as the Barrons books. (I have the "How to Prepare for the SAT 2007" by Barrons, and the review is good).

ivyleague104

is that better than barrons 2400?

Coopjust

Don't know, but the Barrons book people typically swear by in this forum when they do well is the Barron's 2400 book, I'm going to pick it up soon myself.

Choi

I don't know about any online courses, but PR had classes at my high school. This was when I first started studying for the SATs...

First of all, all the students there (except 1) were aiming for like 1600-1800 (as their top score). Now I'm not saying that these are bad scores to aim for at all, but because I was aiming for a 2400, these kids held me back A LOT. Second of all, the teacher was retarded. She was completely, COMPLETELY incompetent. If she took the SAT, I doubt she would have gotten a 1400 (yes I'm talking about the new one -_-). The PR tutors try to force you into using a certain method (even if your method for math takes half the time, they'll try to make you use THEIR method). In fact, self studying was about 5 - 7 times more efficient I think (no exaggeration). The only reason I stayed in the course was to take their diagnostic tests, which were actually the only helpful things the course provided.

So all in all, I don't recommend a PR tutor (don't know about online course, but I wouldn't risk that either?)
Alright, sorry - just venting my frustration.

cookiesgarden

I took the princeton review honors course during the summer with the aim of at least reaching a 2000 on the SATs
I improved for about 100 points to a 1940
which is a huge disappointment for the price that i had paid for ($1599) and their 2100 points gaurantee.

The PR strategies did not work for me at all, especially since i needed help on the critital reading section. They encouraged us to not read the passages and just guess the theme of the passages by looking at the questions. Sorry, but i can't do that at all.
The PR teachers are also extremely young, many of them are barely college sophomores who got into schools that are pretty easy to get into. My teacher had admitted that he did not even do good on the SATs.
I dont understand how one can teach the SAT course after he had barely finished taking it, and he did not even do good on his.