<p>Hi everyone,</p>
<p>I am a Junior in high school and will be taking my SATS for the first time this January (2014). To prepare myself for the SAT, I bought two books: Gruber's Complete SAT Guide and the CollegeBoard SAT Blue Book (Second Edition). I have looked far and wide on this forum as to whether or not these two alone are good choices to study for the SAT. Is this good? What are some other prep book recommendations?</p>
<p>Thanks everyone!</p>
<p>Whether or not those books <em>alone</em> are good enough for you is also very dependent on how much vocabulary and math and grammar you already know and how good of a writer you are. It also depends on why and how you are getting questions wrong, if any. Those two books DO have everything you need to know, though.</p>
<p>If you’re having issues with the math sections in the form of constantly making stupid mistakes, then I would recommend just drilling daily with one or two practice math sections from Kaplan or Barrons or whatever. If the math sections are an issue for you because some of the questions are too difficult, get Chung’s and go through the entire book and you should be fine.</p>
<p>I would advise against using any book other than the blue Collegeboard book for reading/writing (dunno about Gruber’s, though, haven’t tried it.) The SAT is an extremely straightforward exam and Kaplan, Barrons, and Princeton Review, etc. teach additional “tricks” and then make their practice tests so that the “tricks” apply. It’s BS. So try to avoid those or you may get screwed over.</p>
<p>Erica Meltzer (NYC private tutor) has a couple of great strategy books for reading/writing. For Math, I like ACING THE SAT I MATH – for 550-650 scorers looking for a boost, or Dr Chung for 700+ as a starting score. ACING has great problem sets but the explanations are kind of lame. PWN THE SAT has better strategy but not as much practice.</p>