Gruber's practice tests: useless?

Test Preparation
1

<p>So after finishing all of the College Board's practice tests and most of those on Barron's and the Princeton Review, I decided to purchase the Gruber's SAT prep book. After all, it had five full length practice tests, a huge volume of prep, a vocab list and raving quotes of appraisal on its front cover (lol)!</p>

<p>I took the first practice test and scored a 2100, which is about what I would score when I first began to prep for the SAT. Puzzled, I looked over the answer key and found several typos and ridiculous answer explanations. </p>

<p>I took three more times and scored 2050, 2140 and 2100. In comparison, I had been passing 2300 on about half of my practice SAT's before December, and on the December exam I tested a 2250. Yeah, sure; I might have gotten rusty. But my CR/writing scores were hovering around the same level as my sophomore year PSAT.</p>

<p>Is it just me, or are the questions on Gruber's SAT, particularly the writing and reading sections, ridiculously difficult, and the answers sometimes flat out wrong? I don't like making excuses for low scores, but a 150 point drop in my average writing score is simply too high to be the result of two months of inactivity. I smell ******** here.</p>

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<p>If Gruber's is worthless (it seems that the consensus is that Gruber's is good only for math prep), what books would you recommend for someone wanting to score a 2400 in March?</p>

<p>I appreciate the help.</p>

2

<p>Gruber’s is WORTHLESS for W and CR.</p>

<p>I recommend real tests, but barring that, McGraw-Hill is okay, and Cliff’s/Spark/PR are okay for CR. PR isn’t atrocious for W.</p>

3

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<p>What about its math sections? I score very well on them, but I can’t shake the suspicion that they’re abnormally easy. Then again, some of their math problems are abnormally hard/confusing…gah.</p>

4

<p>Math is good, from what I hear, but here in Seoul we don’t have to prep kids for the M haha, so I don’t have firsthand knowledge.</p>