<p>I’ve never heard of Direct Hits. I used Barron’s to prepare for the SAT (way back in 2003 :D) and I got an 800 CR. I think their vocabulary list is the best of the books I’ve seen, and you don’t have to go down the list and memorize every single word. You will find that you are already familiar with many of the words; my strategy was to get kids to make flash cards of the words that they didn’t know.</p>