<p>How accurate is this book? I was going through the 2nd practice test and it seemed relatively easy, but then the curves seemed uber harsh. It was like you needed a perfect 12 on the essay and a mc writing subscore of -1 or -0 to get an 800. The Critical reading curve seemed too harsh too. How much are both the actual tests and the curves in this test like the real thing?</p>
<p>Okay, first of all, according to Mike Barrett, this book can't be reliable. It was published on July 13, 2004, even before Collegeboard's book was released. So..he says there is really no way they knew about the tests and the book, is at best, guesses. I also read that this book may be too easy compared to the real thing, and there are quite a few errors.</p>
<p>well the writing curve was pretty harsh in march too. with a 12 essay, you could only lose 3 points (which means a -2 if you answered all the questions) to get a 800.</p>
<p>I found it helpful, in that sections for the Critical Reading, they had like double the actual number of passages. The SAT really isn't a test of skill, it's a test of endurance--so I really upped my game on getting it down fast with PR. Of course, now i think that I should have had additional review besides that--but we'll see on monday...</p>
<p>Sample questions were available for the new SAT on the CollegeBoard website from June 2003 on so the book has questions similar to the SAT. The SAT has been recycling questions from former, unreleased SAT II Writing tests, and reading passages from SAT Critical Reading passages. I assume that this is a marketing ploy by Mike Barrett to encourage people to buy his book and not TPR, and Kaplan. </p>
<p>Of course the Writing curves cannot possibly be correct since the Collegeboard doesn't know the percentiles for the test since it was never administered. Scores on the SAT II Writing test are NOT comparable to the new Writing section (according to the College Board website).</p>