<p>I am taking it in October, studying over the summer. I am planning on buying the Barron's book. How would you recommend studying for it? I took precalculus this year and aced it, but I need to refine and focus for this one test.</p>
<p>if you already know the material, just do practice tests. i would advise kaplan, pr, and sparknotes. only do barron’s if you’re daring and don’t get discouraged if you get a bad score. try to do an online sparknotes test first to see how well you know the material.</p>
<p>Get the CB tests, and get Barrons. Kaplan has decent tests as well. Do the practice problems on the website</p>
<p>If you want to review the material covered in the test – PR
If you want to take practice tests – Barron’s
If you want to see a realistic approximation of how you might do on the actual test – CB</p>
<p>And a combination of more than one is probably a good idea.
Also, Sparknotes’ website has free Math II practice tests that most seem to view as accurate.</p>
<p>Okay, I’ll take this advice wholly. Thanks! To improve my score, would you say just take practice tests and review?</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-subject-tests-preparation/544092-complete-guide-sat-subject-tests-mathematics.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-subject-tests-preparation/544092-complete-guide-sat-subject-tests-mathematics.html</a></p>
<p>Great, thanks!</p>
<p>In a nutshell:</p>
<p>1. Take several practice tests. SparkNotes has good online practice tests: 5 for Math 1 and 5 for Math 2. I recommend taking some of each because there is some overlap, so most deficiencies identified on Math 1 apply to Math 2 as well. Kaplan’s tests are also good. I’d recommend taking all but 1 of each type of practice test you have available before you begin studying (e.g. I used SparkNotes and Kaplan, so ideally I would have taken 4 SparkNotes Math 1, 4 SparkNotes Math 2, and 3 Kaplan Math 2.)</p>
<p>2. Compile a list of areas that need attention. The thing I love about SparkNotes is how it breaks down the areas of the test into sections (e.g. coordinate geometry) and smaller sub-sections (e.g. coordinate space, lines in a plane, etc.) Look through your score reports and determine which areas in which you accurately solve the lowest percentage of problems correctly.</p>
<p>3. Practice textbook problems. In my experience, this was the best way to improve myself in specific weak areas (for me, that included complex numbers, conic sections, and some others.) Practice as many relevant problems in your old (and current, if you’re taking precalculus) textbooks as you can find.</p>
<p>4. Take a few more practice tests. This lets you follow up on the review you just did, as well as indicating where you need to do last-minute touch-up (if any) and bringing your perspective back to all the areas of the test as a whole.</p>
<p>Know how to use your calculator well. Quite a few problems can be solved very quickly with a few calculator punches. In addition, calculator is much less error-prone than solving by hand.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t take the Sparknotes tests. I mean, my worst topic in math is functions, so I only got a 700 on the 1 I took because Sparknotes hammered so hard on functions (like literally 40% of the questions had the characters “f(x)” in them) which was much different than the actual thing b/c only probably like 5-10% of questions dealt w/ “f(x)” functions and they were much, much easier. I think I got an 800 on the test I took the other day. I believe I’m 47.75 according to our consolidated answer list and a 43.50 is an 800, so the Sparknotes tests are not good predictors.</p>
<p>I agree that SparkNotes tests shouldn’t be used as an indicator of what your entire score will be, although they are pretty useful for deconstructing the material of the test and helping you discover where you need to practice. If you’re good at visualizing graphs of functions but need work on polar coordinates, the tests are as useful if you accurately answer 2/6 polar coordinate questions and 37/40 graphing questions as they are if you accurately answer 4/12 polar coordinate questions and 26/30 graphing questions.</p>