<p>I am hesitant to use the college board practice books and the SAT practice test on the college board website because I feel nervous using the practice material made by the people that actually administer the test. Is this a valid fear or am I being paranoid? Because I want to use some of their material, specifically their online practice test, but I am worried that they make there practice stuff easy so their actually test is harder than expected?</p>
<p>Advice? Opinions?</p>
<p>That’s not a valid fear at all. Test with the blue book and all of collegeboard’s practice tests! They WRITE the test. The only thing I’m skeptical about is their free prep materials online. The questions are a lot easier there than on the actual SAT I took</p>
<p>I found the blue book to be a pretty accurate representation of what was on the test. I think most of the questions there are actually from past SATs. Also, the college board has no incentive for students to do poorly.</p>
<p>The blue book was excellent. My first-time SAT was 2250 (in 8th grade…) but I bought the blue book and did a practice test a week in the last part of the summer before my junior year, leading to achieving a 2400 in the October test :]. From what I remember, the blue book tests were very similar in difficulty to the actual SAT questions; I attribute my improvement toward taking those practice tests with a timer (because I did fail to finish at least one section on my first time around) and correcting the practice tests myself in order to get accustomed to the style of SAT questions. </p>
<p>Their online set of tests (10 of them I think) which you buy (under 100$) is very representative of the actual tests. This has been my experience through my own kids and their friends. My daughter worked with the blue book and the online tests. She did the online ones really seriously, meaning under test day conditions. She timed herself etc. One of the most useful things she did, she told me later, was that she went over her test each time, looked at her mistakes and studied the related material. She scored 2320 (in one take, luckily the last of 3 takes). So all this to say, I think you can trust their sample tests.</p>
<p>They write the tests; if they wrote bad practice problems, then people on CC wouldn’t be recommending it. 
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<p>I found that they are a pretty accurate depictor. The only thing is you might not find the exact type of problem as on the SAT test, but after you do enough of them you will start to see patterns and it will help you greatly. If you are looking for sat strategies, gruber’s or dr chung could be a good way to go, which will help teach you some techniques for the everyday problems</p>
<p>Stick with previously administered exams. Some of the practice material offered on the website has not gone through the extensive standardization process that is the hallmark of questions that appear on actual exams.</p>
<p>To be specific, the quizzes that accompany the online course are no better than 3rd party material AFAIC. Even the QOTD are substandard in my opinion. At the very least, seeing questions out of context is a sub-optimal course of study. </p>
<p>Ideally, you don’t even want to bother with the 7 tests in the blue book that were not previously administered. However, this obviously limits the number of practice questions available and is probably overkill.</p>
<p>Sorry, I guess I didn’t really answer the question.</p>
<p>The CB does not make its online material/questions “easier” per se. That it not the point. Difficulty level is irrelevant. Climbing Mt. Everest is difficult, but it won’t help your SAT score. Barrons, supposedly, is also more difficult, and that will help you little more than mountain climbing.</p>
<p>Practicing with actual questions in their original context is what will help your score the most. Actual previously administered exams are the gold standard of efficient prep. The SAT exams are standardized like nothing else (the ACT isn’t even in the same league), and the online practice material/questions are NOT subject to the same level of standardization. </p>
<p>To be honest, a lot of the third party prep materials may seem more difficult than the actual test. A lot of them use ridiculously harder questions, leading to demoralized students who buy more prep materials to prepare for SAT / ACT</p>
<p>Don’t trust the ones online. The books should be pretty accurate, if easier compared to the Princeton Review and Baron’s stuff.</p>
<p>Definitely use it dawg. It’s the shizzle bomb.</p>