<p>hi guys. I'm a junior now and I plan on taking the sat for the first time either in march or in june...is it a good idea to take a prep class? i mean, do they actually help you or do they just make you do what you could have been doing with a prep book at home? and if it is, can you recommend one?</p>
<p>The real issue is whether you are disciplined enough to do the (pretty boring) prep on your own. If you are, it's not a good use of your time or money to take a prep class, the books work just fine, involve less time overhead and a lot less money. Neither of my daughters ever took a prep class, and did the test only once each, and got mainly 800s, 1 770 and 1 790 between them. They found the Princeton Review and Kaplan prep books helpful both to practice specific sections (one daughter tended to make silly mistakes in Math, the other tended to read the CR sections too literally) as well as to practice overall pacing on the test.</p>
<p>btw, June is generally best reserved for SAT IIs - unless you are done with those already - since they are best done right after you complete the course. I would recommend you do the SAT I well before that.</p>