Is it worth it to buy the College Board Official SAT Study Guide?
December 15th, 2009 | 
Author: 
Hi and welcome to my blog,
I opened this blog to help anyone who is preparing for his SAT.
I remember myself when I started - I was so lost and in such a panic.
Luckily I got this great SAT guide that helped me a lot . So study hard and good luck!
I’ve heard that College Board’s practice tests are "dumbed down" compared to the real thing. On the other hand, college board is the one distributing the tests, so it would seem like their tests would be most accurate. I took a practice test from a college board free guide and it did seem easier, but it’s not like i suddenly got all 800s on it, either.
What should I do? If you took the SAT in march, especially, if you used college board’s study guide, how did it compare to the actual test?
Thanks in advance!!!
thanks guys! specifically, what do you think of this book for the math section? (i suck at the math section)
Posted in sat guide | 
Tags: college board, math section, practice test, practice tests, thanks in advance
I took the SAT in march, did very well, and don’t think I could have done so without the help the book gave me. It really just gives you a good idea of what you’ll have to deal with, and doing the practice tests helped me a lot. That is just the way I study though, so it would depend on what is best for you. I would recommend it though, it’s only $20 I think. The practice problems are just like the ones that were on the actual test. Same with the essays, just reading the example essays helped me with mine a lot.
I scored an 11/12 on my essay! :]
Some of the questions on college board are wiked easy, but so are some of the ones on the real test. Just be prepared for more challenging questions towards the end of each section.
it’s crap. It is just practice tests.
I took the SAT in March and prepared with the College Board Offical Book. Honestly, I thought the test questions in the practice book were more difficult than on the actual SAT. If you have those questions down, you should be good to go.
hey ive gone through just about every sat book there is and got a 2340. if your not getting the scores you want, get the actual released tests as they are your best bets- the real sat is more or less like them. use the barrons book to learn some helpful hints especailly in grammar.
if you do get the official guide, do not bother to learn most of the words on it since they will never be used again. its only sorta helpful for ppl who need serious help with critical reading (as in reading only no VOCAB).
hope this helps.
I’ve compared the Official Guide to a few actual SATs, and they are very, very similar.
If anything, they are harder, because there are a few question in the Guide that are harder than anything I’ve seen on an SAT.
They are definitely not dumbed down; more importantly, they are the exact style of the real SAT.
For the most part, the two are very similar. The practice tests might be just a little bit easier. The only real difference I saw was in the section where they test your vocabulary. The practice tests were much easier in that section for some reason. Otherwise, I think it is worth the money and will help you improve your score.