<p>I am planning to take SAT in oct 2006 and have done all the practice tests in College Board's blue book/college board online tests. I am getting around 2300 in them. I then did some practice from Kaplan and am getting similar scores. Recently I started doing some practice tests from PR and find it be very difficult specially in RC.. </p>
<p>This worries me. Is PR truly hard or I need to ramp up more ? </p>
<p>I would also appreciate inputs on levels of difficult for other books like Barrons or Mcgraw Hill.. I seem to think that Kaplan is easier than College Board books.. </p>
<p>Barrons doesnot help at all, their materials are harder in fact than most, yet very unrealistic. so do not rely on barrons. Princeton Review is great, i think their practice is harder than the real ones, especially in the math sections, in the PR course i took, i got an avg of 710 in math, but on the real one i aimed 790, so dont worry about that. in reading, by studyin PR, my actual score was 30 points higher than my PR avg. Kaplan, one word, it sucks. My friend took Kaplan, got around 2200, pretty confident, ended up with 1950 on the real one. maybe its just him. but do your self a favor and stick to PR and collegeboard. Truth is, doign more next hurts, but do focus on those that are more realistic.</p>
<p>i loved kaplan it helped alot with a bunch of tactics with me though i cant stand princeton review at all. i scored lower on all the tests, but got higher results on my real exam. but then again im still not a high scorer cus im not good in either math and english concepts</p>
<p>My experience with PR tells me that its reading sections are slightly harder than collegeboard's. I just did a bunch of practice readign sections today from Princeton and got 2-3 wrong. BUt when I practiced in the BLuebook, I got 0-1 wrong. So you shouldn't have much to worry about. Good job on getting a consistent 2300 in the bluebook. i think you should stick with the bluebook for evaluating your scores.</p>
<p>I have never tried Kaplan's but I heard mixed reviews. AS for barrons, I am one of thoses people who like it for its more challenging content. However, I do not use barron's exclusively for practice. What I do is do tons of practice tests from princeton review and collegeboard ( i find that PR's 11 practice tests very closely resemble collegeboard's tests) and use barron's for hard math and grammar concepts. Different testing companies are good for different things. And also what stage you are at in your self studying quest also determines what books you need.</p>
<p>Hello tofulover: Your response makes sense. Just to add some more data points, I am getting 2300 consistently in college board tests but getting only around 2150 in PR. So far I have done around 3 tests in PR. I would welcome inputs from others on this board as to what is their experience. </p>
<p>Going forward, I guess I would ignore Kaplan and concentrate more on PR to conquer it if possible. I wopuld also attempt Barron's after I finish PR. I agree that more the practice, better would be my score..</p>