Big difference in SAT subject test prep books??

[SusanAR]

My ds finished the Princeton Review prep book (Biology) and did ok on the tests. I purchased Barron's last week for a quick review. He says that the tests are NOTHING like Princeton's- Barron's is much harder and has things he hasn't covered.
Anyone have any experience with this? it really shook his confidence.
susan

[Jane in NC]

My son noticed the difference when he was prepping for the AP Bio test last year. He did not care for the Princeton Review which seemed to be pump strategies that would land a 3. I have often read that students will do better on the real deal than on their practice tests with Barron's. My son likes the thoroughness of Barron's but suggests that a student use two different prep books, advice we gleaned from this board.

[Kareni]

Our experience has also been that Barron's test prep materials are amongst the most difficult for a subject. I can't speak to Biology, but this was my teen's experience with the SAT subject test in Math Level 2. I've heard that the Barron's materials will often be more challenging than the actual test.

Regards,
Kareni

[Michelle in AL]

My dd used Barron's to prep for AP Biology. She felt the book and the tests it contained were much harder than the real test and did very little to prep her. She said Barrons covered the challenging topics and the AP test actually covered much more basic biology, which she felt was skipped over int he Barrons book. We'll see what the actual test results are :001_huh:

[Laurie4b]

My ds finished the Princeton Review prep book (Biology) and did ok on the tests. I purchased Barron's last week for a quick review. He says that the tests are NOTHING like Princeton's- Barron's is much harder and has things he hasn't covered.
Anyone have any experience with this? it really shook his confidence.
susan

Did your student also use the official AP test guide? Those put out by Collegeboard should be the best, with additional help from other guides.

[Chris in VA]

Don't know if this will help, but when I worked for PR, they compared themselves to Kaplan prep by saying PR told you how to take the test. Kaplan told you what's on the test. So I'm thinking Barron's has a lot more content--learning the actual skills, and PR has test strategies.

Chalkdust SAT math prep DVD's supposedly have both.

[Gwen in VA]

The huge range in difficulty and variety in topics covered made us realize early on that we should buy multiple test prep books for each SAT2. My kids usually work through one slowly and then one quickly as a micro-review, doing tests from both of the prep books. For AP's, we even add a third book.

[jubileex5]

Don't know if this will help, but when I worked for PR, they compared themselves to Kaplan prep by saying PR told you how to take the test. Kaplan told you what's on the test. So I'm thinking Barron's has a lot more content--learning the actual skills, and PR has test strategies.


I agree with Princeton Review covers a lot of strategy which both of my kids liked. My 2 sons used the Princeton Review book and then also used the 10 Real SAT's book. They heartily recommend PR, but haven't used the Barron's.

[Musicmom]

We found using more than one prep book was very helpful, especially if the books each took a slightly different approach (content vs. test strategy) Here were the winning combinations for biology and chemistry for us:

Biology: SAT II Biology for Dummies and Princeton Review. (Ds also did an older version of Barron's, so he did have the content from that one, but we learned the hard way that Barron's alone was not very good preparation for the actual test.) By the way, I highly recommend SAT II Biology for Dummies--it was great for both content and thinking skills, and ds found it very entertaining too. :001_smile:

Chemistry: Barron's and Princeton Review. Barron's had good content and ds says Princeton Review was good as well.

HTH