My son just started using the CollegeBoard’s The Official SAT Study Guide which has 4 full practice tests. Prior to this, he was using the Barron’s version, both based on new SAT, not the older version. Upon doing both, he found that the CollegeBoard’s version is “lot easier” than the Barron’s. My question, then, is how close to the real test are the practice tests offered by the CB’s book?
Barron’s material has always had a rep for being unreasonably hard.
That answers half of my question. The other half of my question is how closely does the SAT book by CB reflect the real test?
No real way to know yet since the new test won’t debut until March, @TiggerDad
@TiggerDad are the tests in the Official SAT book different than the ones on the CB website?: https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/practice/full-length-practice-tests:
Also, Barron’s prep is usually a lot harder than the actual test. I’ve seen this with the old SAT prep books, AP books, as well as SAT subject test prep books.
I made a post about this earlier. Real SATs and Barrons are the main material I use in tutoring. I found a bigger difference than before between Barrons and the real SATs. I suspect the College Board is copying everything from the ACT, including publishing books with easier than real tests to encourage people to take that test.
Does anyone know if the essay will be first or last?
From my understanding, the essay will be last.
Yes, essay is last, @micgeaux
The book has the same tests as the collegeboard website and khanacademy.
@nw2this wow what a rip off
Printer ink is so expensive its kind of worth it, plus the section on essay writing is the only source I know of, but I haven’t checked to see if Barron’s or the other publishers have any good essay prep in them.
Barron’s goes overboard with their difficulty. When I looked at that their SAT Math subject test book, most of the content was way beyond the difficulty of actual questions tested on the exam. I would recommend sticking to the official SAT content as much as you can. Another good source is the official SAT question of the day app from Collegeboard: https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/practice/daily-practice-app
My guess is that the real test will be pretty close to the official tests that Collegeboard has disclosed in the Official guide. In math, you will see lots of boring and repetitive questions on linear modeling and quadratic equations. Barring a few difficult questions towards the end the test is going to be fairly predictable, similar to the ACT.
Sorry, I was out of town and just got back to reading all the helpful responses. In spite of my tardiness, thank you everyone for taking the time to respond to my question.
@SATQuantum , how does one prepare for the difficult questions towards the end of the test? What about AMC prep books?
@VANURSEPRAC
AMC questions would be overkill for SAT Math questions. Plus now the test is revised, it tests less of the “tricks” so practicing with AMC questions won’t be the most effective way to study
Most AMC questions would indeed be overkill unless you look at the really old AMC tests from the 1950s. I can spend the time and fish those out but for most students that would be a lot of work and not worth their time. Here are a bunch that I compiled from AMC that are relevant in my opinion.
[AMC problems for new SAT](http://www.screencast.com/t/1Fkwa523Q)
A better source would be the SAT Math Level 1 questions and some of the CLEP exams, but again one would need to have a good sense of the style of these tests to fish out the relevant questions.
Thank you so much @SATQuantum! You are wonderful!
One of the hardest aspects of the “hard” questions on the new SAT is the linguistic usage. I haven’t seen any other test with math problems with similar language. There are reports that Common Core tests have similar wordy word problems, but as far as I know, these tests are not available to the public. One way to practice this language is to change the numbers in existing official practice test questions.
Thank you @Plotinus and you too are wonderful. I gain so much information and knowledge from your posts.
I have a friend who’s very bright and well prepped kid had trouble with the non calculator part because of the wording. He could not figure out what the question was asking.