<p>the real SAT?
I've heard that College board dumbs down their practice tests, is this true? If so which is the best book for practice tests?
please help! thanks</p>
<p>I tried to search for an answer to this quesiton in this thread:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/696084-barrons-math-much-harder-than-collegeboards.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/696084-barrons-math-much-harder-than-collegeboards.html</a></p>
<p>According to most posts, they say that the best and most accurate representation of the real sat is collegeboard’s blue book. This is because they are the only ones who know the criteria for making SAT questions, and other companies are only trying to imitate them.</p>
<p>But I was not fully convinced, because I heard rumors similar to the ones you mentioned about the blue book, but what can you do?
You, as well as I, are left to two choices:</p>
<p>-Study from the BlueBook and take all practice tests and figure your weekness and learn from your mistakes, and rely on Barron’s or any other prep-guide maker’s techniques and tactics to solve the questions. Finally, wish to have some luck on the real test.</p>
<p>-OR: you can merely rely on Barron’s or Princeton’s guides or any other one without looking at the blue book’s exams. This could be a major risk, so I do NOT recommend this.</p>
<p>If you found out the there is a better way PLEASE inform me via Private Message, because I really wish to know the truth.</p>
<p>Thanks for reading so far :)</p>
<p>thank you, I guess i’ll use a mix of both books…so far i do not know of a better way</p>
<p>As for your question, I’ve heard that barron’s is a lot harder than the real test, and that princeton and kaplan are more representative of the real test.</p>
<p>Thanks for the tip!</p>
<p>But I have Kaplan, and I find it the worst prep-guide of all time, so stay away from it.</p>
<p>My math teacher recommends Princeton, but i am doing the SAT on May, so I have no time to study it.</p>
<p>Thanks again :)</p>
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<p>Kaplan couldn’t make a single good Prep book even if Collegeboard told them exactly what would be on the test. Seriously, I used if for world history and the PSAT, and it was completely off.</p>
<p>
What? Seriously, you have time to do every test in the blue book, unless you have no free time.</p>
<p>Even if college board “dumbed” down their tests, the tests would still be as close as you could get to the real test.</p>
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<p>I am planning to do all the tests in the blue book, but I am not planning to purchase Princeton’s book because I think I wont have more time.</p>
<p>Also, I regret having spent the past months studying books other than the BB.</p>
<p>so…
JUST USE THE BLUE BOOK, THE ONLY OFFICIAL AND ACCURATE RESOURCE.PERIOD.</p>
<p>Use Kaplan if you wanna score your all-time low. Stay away from Kaplan. My teacher works at Kaplan and he even admits that he would never go to Kaplan over Princeton Review and even he says that BB is the most accurate. He got a 2400 twice, gave us a screenshot of his collegeboard site with his name on the page.</p>
<p>I thought the BB was really accurate. My score on the real SAT was like the average of all my practice tests from BB…the scores on each section were kinda different but the overall score was within the average!</p>
<p>ANd I thought PR was pretty bad. The math was ok I think but the CR section was horrible. I missed like every other question…and I promise I’m not THAT bad at CR. My scores on those tests were compleeetely weird. I’d try to stay away from PR if possible. I guess it’s still good practice though. Get used to the timing and whatnot.</p>
<p>When I took the test in March, I found the CR and writing sections to be pretty much the same in content and difficulty as the Blue Book, but I thought the math was a little harder. As a result, I scored a little lower than I did in the BB (BB was 2350-2400, and I got a 2310).</p>
<p>^Hm I forgot about that but I do agree, the BB math was a bit easier. I usually got 780-800 in the BB and got 730 on the actual test. The questions were still quite similar…just more harder ones on the actual test.</p>
<p>thanks to everyone for your answers! I think i will get the BB. Does anyone know if there are free BB practice tests online?
I have a Kaplan book, and it didn’t seem too different from PR or the BB or Barron’s when I browsed through them, so maybe it depends on the individual…</p>
<p>There are two official SAT tests online that you can download for free:
<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
<a href=“https://satonlinecourse.collegeboard.com/SR/digital_assets/assessment/pdf/0833A611-0A43-10C2-0148-CC8C0087FB06-F.pdf[/url]”>https://satonlinecourse.collegeboard.com/SR/digital_assets/assessment/pdf/0833A611-0A43-10C2-0148-CC8C0087FB06-F.pdf</a></p>
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<p>Same here… 0-2 wrong on BB then four wrong on the real test for a 720. Retaking in May - I’m curious to see whether I did worse just because it was my first time and I wasn’t used to taking it for real or if it really was harder.</p>
<p>^ Yep, that’s what I’m doing. Because I think the part where I missed a lot of questions was the first section…and I was quite nervous during the first 2 sections (essay and then math). So I’m retaking in Oct…I’m hoping I can get it up to around 780. I consistently got really high grades in the BB even though I don’t concentrate as well when I do them by myself at home. </p>
<p>But I do remember some harder questions on the actual test that I had to spend a lot of time on…so I didn’t have enough time to check over my answers on the first section. On all the other sections, I had enough time to check over all the questions twice. Maybe that had something to do with it? It’s realllllyyy important to be accurate on the Math part. One wrong question can cost you quite a bit of points… </p>
<p>CR and Writing were really similar to the actual tests though. the BB helped me ALOOOT on those sections. I improved 100+ points on each of those sections by working through BB. My math only increased 20 points. Hahhaha. That wasn’t the section I was focused on though.</p>
<p>Lockn: Thanks so much for the links!!</p>
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<p>Haha we are like twins. I went up 90 points from my PSAT in CR and 70 in writing. Math went down 80 x.x</p>
<p>One of lockn’s links doesn’t have answers; I put links to the two tests with answers in [thread=622654]this thread, post #10[/thread] …</p>