<p>I'm going to take SAT II in December for U.S History; I took AP US History last year and did fairly well on thee exam (4). What prep book do you guys suggest along with my notes from last year?</p>
<p>I heard Kaplan was good, and I heard Barron's was inconsistent and even wrong at time. </p>
<p>Appreciate your help, Thanks guys</p>
<p>Kaplan is very good, and so is sparknotes. But you don't have to get both. They are pretty much the same books. However, I do suggest you get "5 More Practice Tests" from sparknotes to get a feel for what the test will be like. I used that book along with the Kaplan and got a 700 last Oct. Just those 2 books and nothing else. (The last time I took history was the summer of 10th grade, and that was horrible for SAT II prep.) If you use those books, I'm sure you'll do very well, considering you did well on your AP exam.</p>
<p>About the Barron's, it can be useful when you need details. For example, a lot of questions ask, "blah blah blah did all of the following EXCEPT _____" In that case, you might want to check out the details of the blah blah blah. The Kaplan might not contain all that information, but the Barron's will. So if you need to discover more stuff about a certain topic, use Barron's, which is as detailed as a textbook.</p>
<p>I used Kaplan's. I've only taken about 3/4 of American history and much of what I have taken, I took last year so I really needed prep. Unfortunately, all I had was the Friday before the test and I browsed through all of Kaplan's, beginning to end. It definitely helped. I ended up getting a 770, which was much higher than any of my scores on the practice tests.</p>
<p>For those of you who've used Sparknotes, how did your practice scores correlate with your actual score?</p>
<p>Sparknotes was amazing. The practice tests are very helpful and accurate.</p>