qsthillaire

hi guys i was looking for sat book reviews when i came found this forum, and most of the thread that i read recommend the blue book (college board official study guide) but on amazon.com i found out that it doesn't provide explanation. i got 1250 on the june sat 400 on the math i need a book that teaches the material and have sat format question i hate math , the critical reading i got 450 i know i could have done better if i had study the vocabulary but i didn't i instead just study at little prefix and roots,and 400 on the writing (8 on the essay) which i didn't finish much of instead totally guess on alot of questions due to the time limit. what book or books do you guys recommend i study from over the summer to improve my score by a 1000 points i didn't study much on this sat since i am a junior and can take it in October again. i already have up Up Your Score which is great but don't have practice test and i believe i need more strategies to improve my speed.

Ashraf Eassa

Uh, first of all, I don't think aiming by a 2250 (top 1% of the country) is realistic after scoring a 1250 (bottom 20% of the country). Aim for something more realistic, like a 1700 or 1800, or you'll severely disappoint yourself.

I reccomend the following, to be read and completed in this order:

Princeton Review Cracking the SAT - read all the lessons, do all the practice problems, do all the tests, and learn ALL the vocab words in it

Princeton Review's 11 Practice Tests for the SAT & PSAT -do all the tests under TIMED conditions, and read the explanations for every question you got right and wrong

Kaplan 2400 - good strategies, hard practice problems

The Official SAT Study Guide - after you've done all the PR tests, and read the books above, you should now start taking practice tests made by college board. Do the same as you did with the PR tests, only you won't have explanations -- figure out each question you got wrong on your own until you understand every question in that book

Doing this should increase your score significantly.

qsthillaire

Ashraf would you recommend the baron 2400 and how to prepare for the sat, i saw some bad reviews on the Kaplan and Princeton review. thank for your help.

Ashraf Eassa

Every book is going to have bad reviews -- that's natural given the subjectivity of any given product.

I think Kaplan 2400's a little more approachable than Barron's 2400 and the practice questions, while difficult, more accurately represent the real thing.

Barron's 2400 and How to Prepare for the SAT are great -- but they're very dense (especially the latter). I wouldn't reccomend them to anyone scoring less than an 1800.

The key here is that you need to build your fundamentals -- 400s indicate a severe problem with your foundations. Your math score will be greatly improved with a refresher (or, in some cases, a learning) of the arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and other things of the SAT. After you know what you're doing, you can start learning how to solve the more difficult problems. But baby steps first.

For reading, you just need to get used to the questions and the types of passages. It's not your typical, hand-held story, but the SAT passages are either highly complex literary works or dense essays written by experts/intellectuals. Also, you could never go wrong by learning new words -- they help for both the sentence completions and reading comprehension (trust me -- it's a lot easier to understand what you're reading if you know what the words mean...)

For writing, I think you need to learn the grammar rules COLD. Your timing issue indicates that you had to think WAYY too much for each question. Learn all the grammar rules tested so when you see a sentence you say, "okay, this is error X, and choice Y fixes it the best without introducing errors Z, Q, or L". This section becomes instinctual after a while.

Also, look up any words in your daily life that you don't know -- it can only help. Plus, you'll be more interesting to talk to