<p>The link that yankeesfanatic posted is very useful, but I’ll just give you my two cents on SATs.</p>
<p>First of all, order the Blue Book from Collegeboard–that should be your Bible. Second, I strongly suggest studying over the summer. You don’t want to be stuck studying for SATs over junior year, and perhaps senior year, along with the increased school work; I was fortunate enough to have my testing out of the way mid-way through junior year, but a lot of my friends are still fretting over SATs and have to take them in October. Moral of the story–start the summer before junior year!! Start by taking Blue Book tests without timing yourself and then going back to look up unfamiliar vocabulary/working out math errors/etc. Then once you start understanding the layout of the SAT, you can start taking full tests, timed. (It’s definitely about stamina)</p>
<p>Writing: [Reading</a> and Writing Tips for the SAT and ACT](<a href=“http://ultimatesatverbal.blogspot.com/]Reading”>http://ultimatesatverbal.blogspot.com/) was a nice site for Writing Tips (buy the book if you can. It’s around $20 dollars but that was what boosted my score up to an 800)</p>
<p>CR: In terms of vocabulary, I suggest using Larry Krieger’s Direct Hits (both ‘Core’ and ‘Toughest’ if you’re shooting for >700s). Vocab is definitely key to scoring high.
Also, Barron’s is notorious for being much more difficult than the actual test (in Writing/CR/and Math). I used Barron’s and took the tests untimed. When I went back to the Blue Book (actual past SAT tests), my total score went up almost 150 points just because I had “overextended” myself. </p>
<p>Hope you found this helpful. :)</p>