SAT and ACT Preparation

I'm sure that all of you have excellent test scores-as seen from the poll. But for those who need just a few extra points, here is my advice:

For SAT, do A LOT of practice tests. At least for me, this strategy worked the most. I'm the kind of person who needs to do practice questions in order to do well on tests. If I simply review stuff, I learn nothing. This is why the Official SAT Guide by CollegeBoard is THE book to get for the SAT. There's no magic behind improving scores. Just takes a lot of practice. If you exhaust the practice test material in the Official Blue Book, go to CollegeBoard's website and purchase the SAT Online Course. This gives you an extra ten tests. If you finished both the book and the online course, then you should do well on the real test.

Also, I feel that practice tests offered by other companies aren't realistic enough. They're not necessarily harder or easier, but just different. Don't buy any books by Kaplan, Princeton Review, Barron's, or any other test companies for SAT or ACT. They simply don't compare to the real thing.

However, I have to make an exception to this rule. There are two other books you should get. They were immensely helpful to me and I believe they would be for you too. The two books are: Direct Hits 1 and Direct Hits 2. Each book contains about 300 vocabulary words that would most likely appear on the SAT. It's not just a boring list either. Each word has a paragraph that helps you remember the word. I actually enjoyed reading this book. because the explanations that follow the vocab are so funny. Could you imagine enjoying memorizing vocab?

NOTE: I did not use any "strategies" during the test. There is no silver bullet for the SAT. Practice, practice, and practice. If you're preparing for a concert, you don't review strategies on how to do the staccato, you simply practice doing it. The same logic applies to these tests as well.