<p>I have heard great and terrible things about the ACT Preparation book Barron's. I have heard the test are much harder, yes, but they help you in the end because if you can master something much harder, the ACT will be a piece of cake. I have also heard that because Barron's is so much harder, it causes so much stress and frustration that users quit using the book because it is inaccurate and irrelevant. Thoughts?</p>
<p>Also, for my personal question: I am a senior in high school this year and plan to take the ACT a maximum of two more times. Once before filling out Early Action applications (September/October), and another time before filling out Regular Decision applications (December). Do you think that Barron's would be beneficial to me if I have already made it through the Red Book and Princeton Review study books? Or do you think the harder layout and practice tests would not benefit me in such a small amount of allotted practice time?</p>
<p>To your general question: I have honestly found the barron’s book nothing but hurtful in terms of practice tests. All they do is crush my confidence and reduce me to tears, which i might be able to get over if not for the fact that I find a lot of the test irrelevant. In my opinion, barron’s reading tests do not correlate with the real act practice tests. With english I also find that it asks many strange questions, and the real act practice tests are much more straightforward. With math and science (my two worse subjects), I honestly can’t say. I actually end up doing better on barron’s math than regular math, but only because for some reason I have worse time management problems for the real act practice tests. The science does seem to ask some ridiculous questions that I’ve never seen on a real act practice test.
Now, you may want to choose not to listen to me because 1. I’ve never taken the official test; I’m a first timer for September
and 2. I am an incredibly stressed out person for various reasons, so this might be why barron’s beats me down so much.
BUT ON THE OTHER HAND! Barron’s review, I’ve found very helpful. So basically, for me I reccomend the review, but would skip the practice tests or just do them untimed for the problems and not worry about the ridiculous ones (especially for english and math)</p>