<p>I am a rising sophomore and I have just started preparing for the SAT. I started of using the Blue Book and after doing 4 tests I switched over to the Barron's SAT book. I understand that Barron's tests are a little bit more challenging then the Blue Book tests, but how much of a difference am I looking at?</p>
<p>What is the difference?</p>
<p>The College Board has the only tests you should use. That is where the book shine. The first pages with the advice are nothing special. </p>
<p>The Barron’s book is just the opposite. The advice shared could be helpful to some students. The practice tests are simply best ignored altogether. There is no value whatsoever in purportedly harder tests. </p>
<p>And, fwiw, this applies to almost every book in the genre. Decent to good advice but horrendous practice tests.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I do agree that you should do every singleone of the 10 tests in the blue book, but I don’t agree that you should ignore all other books. Why? Because 10 tests is just not enough for some students to get their score up. My son did all 10 in the blue book and is doing all of the Barrons and Princeton Review now (and he got a few expired SAT tests that are available but not in the blue book). You are right that the blue book is the best, and it is too bad that the College Board doesn’t publish a “Blue Book- Part II”. However, since they don’t, I’d highly recommend also doing others: eg Barrons, Princeton Review; Hot Words for the SAT for vocab; and Grubers for CR.</p>