<p>Could anyone suggest any prep books that helps in the CR and W parts in SAT?</p>
<p>I need no help nor improvement, but CR and W are killing me. </p>
<p>I'm just a junior now, so I still ahve a lot of time to prepare for my SAT in June. </p>
<p>Besides, are there any books out there that are great for memorizing vocabs? I feel the urgent need of memorizing vocabs...</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>The best book I got was Cracking the SAT. The verbal strategies are especially good.</p>
<p>For vocab, get Word Smart. The tips for learning vocab are great.</p>
<p>Cracking the SAT: Princeton Review?</p>
<p>How are each prep books comparetively?</p>
<p>I've seen some "critical handbooks" from Barrons and Kaplans.</p>
<p>Wonder how they are....</p>
<p>Also, I hat ethe way math takes up 1/2 of the book in every version when math is THE easiest section (I'm saying this not b/c I'm good at math, but b/c math's national average is much higher than cr and w parts)</p>
<p>Are there books that are just amazing in CR and Wr?</p>
<p>Thanks for your input, Futureprof.</p>
<p>any other suggestions?</p>
<p>bump....</p>
<p>I've heard good words about Kaplan, PR, Barrons, Rocket, McGill, Grammix.
I don't care about math, I just want the book to be good in CR and W sections. </p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Yeah, the Cracking book is from PR.</p>
<p>I think the easiest section depends on your own strengths. For me, verbal is much easier (I do a lot of writing) than math. I'm not really prepping much for writing. I am good at math but am not a natural at it like I am for verbal.</p>
<p>I like the PR verbal strategies but I don't know about what book would be "awesome" for verbal because I'm not studying for it all that hard. I am surprised no one else has responded, tho.</p>
<p>bump......</p>
<p>Kaplan's practice tests are really easy...I used Kaplan before a test and got worse than the last time I had taken it.
Barron's is a little difficult but it's better than Kaplan.</p>
<p>It might be an unpopular choice, coming from Sparknotes--but I found that The New SAT was actually very helpful to me. Combined with Grammatix's method for Passage-based readings, it has been able to help me improve my CR score on practice tests from the Blue book significantly. </p>
<p>The Grammatix method for the SC part confused me a little, but a lot of the advice makes sense, and I've observed over half of its "hidden patterns" while taking the tests myself. Sparknotes, on the other hand, does a better job of breaking down the SC part and making sense of it how sentences work together--definitely something you need to know for the SAT if you can't do it correctly subconsciously. They even have an extensive list of vocab words you can use to study--but I've heard a lot of people say that cramming vocabulary isn't always the best way to go about doing well on SC's. (I found that writing down 10 words per day from Dictionary.com's past Word of the Days in a notebook and then carrying it around with me to study at spare moments was especially helpful--and it's not exactly cramming. =) )</p>
<p>Hope that helps. </p>
<p>Oh, and if you search "The New SAT from Sparknotes," you can read the book (and their complementary ACT book) online--not the practice tests (you won't need them, anyway)--but the advice is all there. For free.</p>
<p>Urvi</p>
<p>No! not the cracking PR book!</p>
<p>The answer explanations are USELESS.
"It cant be A because it is not included in the passage. Cant be B and C because they're incorrect. Cant be D because it doesn't make sense. The correct answer choice is E"</p>
<p>But it doesnt say WHY it is E. and why D doesnt make sense. and why B and C are incorrect!</p>
<p>alot of books explain like that^</p>
<p>How hard exactly is the "Barrons 2400" difficulty gradient? Their plug-in method is sooo lame... I can't understand how you would get a 2400 with that.
Its like if someone guesses a number 1 through 1,000,000,000, you start counting from one. You'll get it right, eventually. -_-</p>
<p>THanks for all the input. </p>
<p>However, besides criticizing each book, could you also recommend a book?
That would help even more :)</p>
<p>Thanks again!</p>
<p>How about Gruber's New SAT??</p>
<p>Word lists are great, since they got 3,400 words and h+ll lots of vocab quizzes. writing section seems to be good.</p>
<p>Practice test is very difficult, but I feel that that helps me a lot to face real SAT with more confidence.</p>
<p>I have Barron's How to prepare for the New SAT. (MATH)
It's good. The questions are tough. Which is a good thing; It makes the easy ones look really easy.
It also has 3500 vocab words. They're listed like a dictionary and there are flash cards for every word in the back of the book.</p>
<p>Gruber's seems to be good. (Just got it from my local library!) I'm not going to study all the vocab--which sounds useless, considering that's the advice that's been circulating around lately--but I'll study the "most commonly used" word list.</p>