SAT II US HISTORY, which books?

Kyrix1
Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:54:32 +0000

I used my knowledge from APUSH (using AMSCO) as well as REA (the SAT2USH one, not the AP one). I got 5/800 also. But my opinion of REA differs from the above poster; I despised that book with a passion. It overprepares you in such a way that about half the stuff in that book will NEVER show up on the test. I repeatedly missed about 19 in the REA book, and I’m confident I missed 2/3 on the SAT2. Sparknotes is amazing; gotta love the practice tests (which are a bit harder than the actual test but nevertheless ridiculously good).

On the other hand, I’ve heard good things about Kaplan, which my friends used with success. Don’t know much about Barron’s.

Forget Crash Course. CC is good only for AP because it is very general and not-so-in-depth. Unfortunately, about 80% of SAT2USH questions are detailed in-depth questions (who wrote this book? A. Hemingway B. Emerson C. Irving D. Thoreau E. Steinbeck, or Which decade did this happen? A. 1930s B. 1940s C. 1950s D. 1960s E. 1970s). By the way, that second one appeared on this year’s May test, and was about the Beat generation (answer was C). CC will tell you what the Beat generation is, but you won’t remember the year.

AMSCO is a given.