<p>Hello! Well today I was was going to "attempt" the Diagnostic Test in the Barrons book for Math 2. Upon reading the first 3 questions, I was befuddled.</p>
<p>Some say that the diagnostic test is very difficult and unnecessary. </p>
<p>How would you say to use the Barrons book? Would it be smart to go through the actual chapters, work on the drills and questions they give you, and then try the practice tests? </p>
<p>Basically, what I am asking is, how do you study from the Barrons (or prep book of your choice) for Math 2?</p>
<p>Well, identify your weak points. For example, mine was the conic sections since it’s been two years since I took Pre-Cal and could not remember the formulas well. If you’re comfortable with trig/triangles/conics/permutations/whatever, then just skip those chapters and read through the ones that you need review with. Then I would just do some practice problems in those chapters and then go on to do the practice tests. See what problems you got wrong and go back and see why you got them wrong.</p>
<p>Everyday I take a Barron’s practice test, whichever one I want. I then look at the problems that gave me the hardest time, I remember them. After that, I review one of the chapters and try to remember the questions that gave me a difficult time. Since they were notably difficult, I will remember the question type, and when I review the examples given within the chapter relevant to that subject area, I will remember how to solve it more thoroughly. I then retake the test that I previously had taken. Any problem that uses a similar method to solve I will be able to decide how to do so much more quickly, and therefore save time on the test. This has worked greatly. Within 3 days(about 15 hours) I’ve improved my Barron’s raw score from a 17-20 to a 25-28. Since I still have a month left, and plenty of hours to study I’m hoping to improve even further to at least 35+ on Barron’s practice test, which most likely will mean high 700s -> 800 on the actual exam. I’d assume that if you already are scoring pretty high, or as you score high you can focus more on the specific problems that give you trouble.</p>
<p>Similar to the above two posters. I take practice tests, notice my weak points, read over the chapters I have problems with. I scored in the 600s on the Barrons and ended up with a 760 on the real thing. If the difficult questions make you lose confidence, get the Princeton book. It could help raise you confidence. I got a 700 on the Princeton one, so it’s still a little more difficult than the real test.</p>
<p>Use it last… I took the SAT math test twice. The first time I used primarily barron’s. It was so obscure it didn’t help much. It didn’t overprepare me, it underprepared me. However, I took the math level two a second time. This time I used a variety of books. I used again the Barron’s soon before I took the actual test. A lot of it actually made sense then taking practice tests with the newfound knowledge from other books. I would suggest using it after you have a solid grasp of the material. The explanations in the book are not thorough. I thought Barron’s sucked after I got my first result back, but it really is good if you have that strong foundation (I got an 800 at last).</p>