Post-SAT SAT book Review

AmaranthineD
Thu, 23 May 2013 09:41:01 +0000

First PSAT: 198
Did Barron’s(kind of)

Second: 211
Did all other books on list:
May 4th:2260-740/750/770/9

*Barron’s Guide for the New SAT
*SAT 2400 Shaan Patel
*Princeton Review’s Cracking the SAT
*Official SAT Study Guide
*10 Real SATs
*Reading Workout for the SAT
*Math Workout for the SAT
*Barron’s Vocab flash cards

Barron: First SAT book I ever got. Maybe it was just an old edition. I didn’t find it very engaging, read through it, did one practice test, eh. XD

SAT 2400: Best for the essay advice. Pretty good advice for the other subjects which I somewhat used. Only one practice test in the whole book, so only use it for strategy.
Princeton Review: Best “general overview/review” for the SAT. Easy to read with PR’s conversational style. Took all the practice tests, mehh.

The best SAT advice I ever got was from Xiggi who said to not use anything besides the official released collegeboard’s tests to practice.
In that vein, 10 Real SATs and The Official SAT Study Guide are must-haves. not much review in them, so definitely read PR or something first. I did all the practice tests, timing them right up until the actual test(for 10 Real SATs, I just skipped the weird format math questions). I also got some online released practice tests. Note: I practiced the most for math. A lot of times I would just skip the other sections and only do math. Original PSAT math score was 57.

Reading Workout for the SAT/Math Workout for the SAT. Good if you need basic review/practice of concepts. But these questions are much more straightforward, and if it’s the trickiness of the SAT that gets you, these won’t really help with that.

Vocab flash cards: I already have a very good vocabulary from reading a lot. I think that’s the best way. I knew most of the cards in this set already. There were some good ones, so I guess I would rate it a fair medium in terms of difficulty.