<p>Hi guys! I took the sat II in Chem last year and did catastrophically. I mean just really bad. I'm taking AP bio this year but I want to retake my chem because I can't afford to leave that horrible score on my record. Does anyone have any advice on self studying, including which books and guides I should look at? Thank you!</p>
<p>I took Honors Chemistry sophomore year (school doesn’t offer AP). I’ll spare you the details but basically, the teacher was terrible so I didn’t really learn anything. 2 years later in senior year, I had to take the chemistry subject test. So I essentially had to relearn an chemistry course in 3 weeks because I had retained no information.</p>
<p>After reviewing reviews (hah) on College Confidential, I decided to buy Barron’s SAT Chemistry because it was said to be very thorough, which was what I needed. In the first 2 weeks, I just read the book, cover to cover, and relearned the material. Then I doubled my study-time and reread the entire book in one week, solidifying any hazy concepts. The day before the test, I memorized every polyatomic ions, chemical and physical properties of compounds, VSEPR configurations, etc (basically anything I could memorize). I don’t know about you but I have extremely good short-term memory so all of that info stuck with me, at least until the test was over. </p>
<p>I scored a 780. Some people here would be devastated with anything less than 800 but I was content, considering I had self-studied everything. I would recommend Barron’s because it’s very thorough. Yes some of the info is excess and probably won’t appear on the test, but better safe than sorry. I used Princeton Review for Biology and it left A LOT of key information out. If you just need a refresher, reading Barrons once would probably suffice but if you’re like I was, you may need to read it twice or even thrice, to make the content sink in.</p>
<p>I took honors chem in 10th grade I used Princeton review and got a 750. Although some on CC wouldn’t be I was very satisfied with my score :). Princeton review had tests slightly more difficult than the actual tests, and was all around good.</p>
<p>PR, seems quite good and in some ways better than Barron’s</p>