<p>the ratings and reviews on amazon say Kaplan and McGrawhill are better than PR and barrons.</p>
<p>which book(s) is truly best for a chem student without AP experience?</p>
<p>anybody have an idea?</p>
<p>I like the PR book, but that's just me. I also took AP Chem, so I really wouldn't know.</p>
<p>PR is good.</p>
<p>amazon ppl saying PR has quite a few errors..</p>
<p>is sparknotes good also?</p>
<p>i liked kaplan; my chem course sucked in school and i ended up having to teach almost everything to myself only from ny kaplan (stoichiometry, redox, acids/bases, electrochem, organic, etc; basically all the hard stuff). i studied from kaplan for maybe a month to teach myself all of the new data and i found kaplan to be quite helpful. it had the information presented in an understandable but not tedious form so it was easier to learn/etc. </p>
<p>the first diagnostic i took in kaplan was 640 (before any studying). went up to 740 in kaplan by the time i had finished studying, and got 790 on the real test.</p>
<p>i used sparknotes too.. watch out tho because some of the practice tests answers are different on one page than another (ex on the page that lists them all vs the answer explanations). Other than that i thought it was really good.</p>
<p>Sparknotes is horrible. I hate it. You're tons better off with PR than Sparknotes.</p>
<p>atrophic hows barrons or kaplan? any1 else have an idea?</p>
<p>im planning on taking the test in october. i just finished my honors class. So i have the summer to prepare. i think im first going to start off with barrons..then add PR or mcgrawhill later. sound like a good plan??</p>
<p>Happy iveleague? lol</p>
<p>And I was going to buy Barron's but I heard it's
1) OVERLY detailed
2) unrealistically hard (which is a good thing for some people)
3) better off with a tutor's help</p>
<p>I was convinced and bought PR because I was told (from the CC Forum) that it is most like the actual test and it tells you the exact things to know, nothing more or less.</p>