<p>I was wondering what is the best way that I can self study for the SAT. My parents can't afford the expensive prep courses and I need to do this by myself. I have purchased the collegeboard official sat book and princeton review's sat 2010 book. How shall I go about this?</p>
<p>Well, first read the CC prep guides (Silverturtle’s and Xiggi’s). After that, just start doing practice tests (do the CollegeBoard one first).</p>
<p>Once you do a practice test, review all the ones you missed on the ones you weren’t sure on. Review is key. It’s the only way you’ll improve.</p>
<p>Don’t use the CollegeBoard Official Book for strategies and studies. Use it only for the practice tests, as they are very similar to the actual test in terms of difficulty.</p>
<p>Study the syllabus from the Princeton book (can’t vouch for it; I used the Kaplan book and loved it) along with guides on CC (can’t vouch for them either, but they seem to be great) and after you finish learning the stuff, strategies, tips, hints etc., then do the Practice tests.</p>
<p>See the areas where you make mistakes. They are your weak spots. Beef up on them. Keep on practicing and you’ll get a great score.</p>
<p>I self-studied, didn’t join any prep program and got 2280 on the test.</p>
<p>Thank you very much. I truly appreciate it!!!</p>
<p>I can vouch for the Princeton Review guide - it’s a solid resource and, for only twenty bucks, you can get, more or less, all the information you need to do well on the SAT (spending thousands of dollars on prep courses has always seemed to me an outrageous and unnecessary expense). My only complaint about the Princeton Review guide was that I didn’t it’s section on essay writing particularly helpful. Doing well on the SAT is more a matter of knowing how to take a test than anything else - I self-studied and got a 2290. Sorry, if I reiterated lazygarfield’s comment, but I am a big proponent of self-studying and felt compelled to reply.</p>
<p>You can totally do this by yourself and do well. I also never took the crazy expensive courses. In fact, I never studied for the first SAT. Afterward, I realized I needed to study and this is what helped me improve on the 2nd test by more than 500 points.</p>
<p>I used the CB blue book to get a feel for the test and to figure out what i really needed to focus on in order to improve. Then I used that information to focus on specific areas. For me, I needed a lot of math help, so I bought a prep book that only focused on math and really helped (5 SAT math practice tests). My writing also kind of sucked, so I got the other book 5 SAT writing p.t.). For vocab I used a lot of sources.</p>
<p>The important thing is to practice, practice, practice. But practice efficiently by using the blue book to figure out what you still need to work on.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>^^ i agree with lazygarfield n u too westernblot</p>