<p>I love how SATgen1us said raise your ACT by 400 points hahha</p>
<p>I loved direct hits. efficient and effective. sorry if this sounds too formal or something. but its true. sentence completion was my greatest weakness and i was able to get 2-3 additional test questions right per test bc of direct hits. thats like a good 50 or so points.</p>
<p>Okay, thanks for all your honest opinions guys :)</p>
<p>I’m amazed at how stubbornly skeptical people can be about these books. If you do a simple search on these forums, there’s more than plenty of evidence proving how helpful these books are.</p>
<p>Both Direct Hits books are fantastic. They contain a lot more than 400 words, too. For example, many words are actually two antonyms or related words (like ‘boon’ and ‘bane’). Other words are lists of synonyms (like ‘trite, platitudinous, banal, hackneyed’). Additionally, littered throughout the book are important vocabulary words that aren’t counted in the 400 but are still helpful, because they are briefly defined within parentheses. Thus, there are probably more like 600-700 useful, SAT-level words between both volumes. I’ve found them to be extremely useful, even impacting my eloquence in everyday speech and writing. If you are having trouble with sentence completions, buy these books. You won’t regret it.</p>
<p>Direct Hits is not a scam. They’re way too good for that.</p>
<p>Sure their reviews may be false, but thats business. Its just another form of advertisement if you ask me. </p>
<p>DH for USH was amazing. I read it two weeks before the exam. I needed serious help. I got a C in the class but a 5 on the exam. Well worth it if you ask me. It saved my butt.</p>
<p>even if people are getting paid to write positive comments about the book, how does that make Direct Hits Themselves a Scam katrina?? LOL.</p>
<p>^^exactly. If the book works, it works. I don’t care what people have to say about it. As long as it gets my score up, Im happy.</p>
<p>DH Alone raised my CR score from 560 to 720</p>
<p>If you think it’s a scam, then don’t use it lol…</p>
<p>I bought mine from Barnes and Noble so they obviously sell it. I got it online though not at the physical store.</p>
<p>Lol DH is an amazing book. Anything Krieger writes is amazing for Prep. I used Crash Course Euro, DH 2010/2011, and his new AP US book. All well worth it. </p>
<p>And there is more of a difference in DH 2011 vs. 2010 than there is when you compare PR AP euro 2010 and 2011 edition. My vocab is utter crap, and I got 19/19 in SC after DH + vocab from school.</p>
<p>I doubt the books are “scams”, but I didn’t find them very useful. Most of the words were in Barron’s Hot Words for the SAT or in the Wordly Wise books. Different strokes for different folks, after all.</p>
<p>I have the first volume of Direct Hits, and I think it’s great. The words are presented in a way that makes memorization easy, so I had no trouble learning one chapter every day.</p>
<p>Even though I think DH is good, I’m not buying the second volume. Each book only has 200 words, which I don’t think is enough to prepare me for the SAT. The DH books are expensive, and so I’d rather look up commonly appearing SAT words on CC, learn the words from Sparknotes, and then study the vocab presented in my Barron’s and PR book. I’d rather get as much as I can without spending too much money, instead of paying a ton to facilitate my learning process… </p>
<p>But yeah if you have a LOT of trouble remembering the vocab you’re presented with, I’d get Direct Hits. If you’re naturally good at memorization, then I wouldn’t bother with these books.</p>
<p>Love Direct Hits. Great approach to standardized test: Focus on the items most likely to be on the test, get those correct and get a great score. Great for students who are really busy.</p>
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<p>Did you know that all of the words in Barron’s Hot Words are in the Oxford Unabridged dictionary?</p>
<p>DH and The Essential 300 Words (same author) are perhaps the most useful word lists for the SAT. The 2300 I got the first time taking the SAT rested in no small part on the two aforementioned books.</p>
<p>I just bought the books damn it -_-</p>
<p>I’m going to post really quickly but say that by memorizing every single one of DH’s 400 words, I went from a 580 to an 800. An 800 doesn’t mean every question was right for the CR section (very favorable curve), but I can tell you that I didn’t miss a single sentence completion (this I know by the detailed score report).</p>