Barron's SAT 2400, 4th Edition [Paperback]

I am an ACT/SAT tutor, and I have seen several of my students stuck in the 1800 range, unable to budge. I've historically used Kaplan materials because of their accessibility, but I've noticed that the Kaplan questions and methods presented in their regular books are not geared toward the higher-scoring students. I kept hering that the tests were so much harder than the material we had covered together.

I've recently switched to Barron materials because I find them to be more challenging for the good student, and I am very happy about the Barron's SAT 2400 book. The sample questions are more challenging than those in most books out there, and the authors offer additional reading strategies. I was very happy to see a calculator guide and a host of mathematical formulas (above and beyond The Pythagorean Theorem) for the student to remember.

I believe it comes with a CD with a practice test and additional practice questions.

AND, while it costs $30 at B&N, amazon carries it for around $10. Good deal.

This book is by far the best prep book out there. The strategies were amazing! I did not use it for vocabulary, but I did use it for almost everything else. The SAT is all about finding which methods work for you. This book gave me amazing results. I took the SAT only once, and I got a 2400 (12 on the essay). I found it to be extremely helpful with grammar, reading, and mathematics strategies. It gave some really interesting methods of viewing the SAT (especially the reading section!) One thing which I thought this book did phenomenally well was the grammar review. This can be a very dry subject area to learn, as you have to memorize the rules of English grammar. What made this resource better than all of the others was the informal manner in which it presented all of this dry content. The conversational style used by the author greatly simplified the material and made it easier to digest. Also, the mathematics section (especially geometry), had some interesting tricks for solving the harder types of problems that show up on the SAT.

Overall, I found this book to be an amazing resource. This was the only "prep book" that I used. Just take some practice tests using these strategies and figure out what works for you, as each person is different. :)

I highly recommend this for improving your SAT score. Remember though, that SAT scores are only one part of the admissions process.

Based on what I have seen through my experiences in high school, after a certain point, test scores and academics do not seem to matter. The difference between a 2400 and a 2280 is just a few questions. For this reason, I believe that any score above a 2280 is considered to be outstanding. What this means, is that if you score anything in this range, do not bother to retake the exam. There have been a few extreme cases where I have seen people do this. You are better off spending your time on other pursuits, rather than trying to achieve a perfect score after getting a 2300. As a statistic to confirm my views, scoring a 2280 puts a student at the 99th percentile of all test takers.

Overall, this resource is a great way to prepare for this challenging exam. I highly recommend it.

I bought this book because I was frustrated of being stuck around the 2300 range. It was always 2-4 questions that prevented me from achieving the pristine score of 2400. Did this book help me improve my skills? hardly. Your time is spent wiser going through couple extra practice tests--let me enumerate why I do not necessarily recommend this book.

First of all, the book's questions are misleading. The difficulty is somewhat on par with the harder SAT test questions, but that is not the problem: the book has question types that do not exist in the real SAT.

Second, the answer choices are misleading. Some answer choices are extremely ambiguous, leading to multiple possible interpretations, which starkly contrasts SAT's answer choices of being unequivocal, assuming one's literary skills are on level. The SAT company has to make sure that no answer choice is even slightly ambiguous; otherwise, they would be inundated with complaints from students and their respective parents. Rectifying all those errors will cost finance, which is not what the company (College Board) wants. Barron or the two professors that authored this book are not held in the same level of scrutiny.

Third, the passages (for CR section) are at times ambiguous as well, which is unforgiving.

The strategies in the book are nothing revolutionary either; they are all strategies you can find in the regular SAT prepbooks such as Princeton's Review, Kaplan, etc. The book is okay for some additional practice, but do not have high hopes for it.

P.S.: the book touts its secret "counting to three" strategy. I'm not going to tell you what it is because I do not want to become entangled in any lawsuits, but I will tell you this: it is completely useless and an unnecessary time-hogger. All of this was my subjective opinion, take heed at your will.