<p>Hi, I've only take honors chemistry(the teacher didn't teach well and there were many topics and concepts we didn't touch on. I bought the Barron and PR book and went through the PR book and skimmed the Barron's but I'm getting very low scores on the Barron's like 580-600.. I feel like a lot of the concepts are foreign to me and I'm also having a hard time finishing on time and also on the questions I think I know the answers to I'm getting wrong especially the true false questions.... I'm really thinking about renting a zumdahl book to help me with a lot of the concepts not taught in class. Do u think the zumdahl book will be helpful? And can anybody give any help or resources that might help me get 800 in a couple months?I haven't decided which sat chem teat date I'm going to choose... Any help will be nice...</p>
<p>My D looked into whether or not she should take the SAT chem test after only honors, and figured out that while there were definitely some topics she hadn’t covered - mostly lab related - her course was rigorous enough that the bulk of the content overlapped. That said - she did have to study in order to learn certain concepts. In addition, she found the SAT chem test asked about really specific chemical reactions (e.g. when you mix A and B in this way at this set of conditions, it turns this color). She learned a lot of these specifics simply by doing practice tests. </p>
<p>Not familiar with the zumdahl book at all - she used Barrons which she thought was a good indicator of the test and her score.</p>
<p>My understanding is that the schools often use the SAT II to validate the rigor of your curriculum and grading. So if two students gets an A in honors chem (two different schools) and one gets a 600 on the test and the other gets a 750, it gives them an indication that the first student did not have a very strong chem class.</p>
<p>I would recommend spending some time on the content part of the Barrons or whatever other resource you can find and map your course material to the structure of the test (they should give you a breakdown of the topics). See how much you need to learn on your own and figure out how much time you will need to learn that effectively for the SAT, and schedule from there. Or decide it is not a good plan and find another SAT II. </p>
<p>I took AP Chemistry before taking the SAT II. It definitely helped, but you do not need to know everything that is taught in an AP class to do well on the subject test. However, I actually thought that some of the harder subject test questions were similar to those on the the AP exam, so it might help you to look at released multiple choice sections from past AP exams. This would be more to help you fine tune your knowledge and get those harder questions right (so don’t worry if you don’t know everything on the AP exams–you don’t need to). For general content review (not too in-depth) and practice tests, I liked Princeton Review. Also, keep in mind that the math won’t ever get too complicated on the SAT II because you’re not allowed to use a calculator (like on the AP exam multiple choice). To really do well on the SAT II, you should focus on trends/concepts and how they interconnect amongst themselves.</p>