Reddit reviews The Official SAT Study Guide, 2016 Edition (Official Study Guide for the New Sat)
We found 10 Reddit comments about The Official SAT Study Guide, 2016 Edition (Official Study Guide for the New Sat). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Nothing can substitute for pure experience. With the exception of reading, after a while you start to see patterns and trends and those help a large amount. Since you have all summer try that study planner gimmick that they have now (it wasn't available before I took the test) and connect your recent SAT with the Khan Academy webpage for personalized review. The best thing is that it is free.
This was the first thing I used, and I found the practice tests very useful. The review sections can be useful if you've forgot how to do certain things (grammar rules and math formulas) but I mostly used it for the practice tests. The practice tests on here will be the best representation of the questions that you'll find on the actual test, and vastly outclasses those of other testing companies. However apparently the practice tests can now be found on the Khan academy website so I guess that makes this obsolete.
Like a lot of people I got absolutely massacred on the english section due to the obscure pedantic of the language. Now, I'm pretty sure no one else has recommended this (Erica Meltzer seems to be popular but I've never heard of her until now) but it's short, sweet, and to the point. It brought me from clueless to missing 0 on the last writing and english section. I would start with this book because it is very eye opening, then progress on by applying the knowledge during practice tests.
A beast with 8 practice tests, enough to keep you busy for a while. The downside is that there is no "review section," or a section where they go over strategies and other things. Personally, I find that refreshing because those sections are generally useless and it's often better to developed your own strategies by repeatedly taking practice tests. The practice tests were generally well designed but there were some parts that were bad prep, but take this with a grain of salt since I had a very early version.
Ahh, the good ol' Barrons book. The only reason I bought this is because I ran out of practice tests. I bought the very first version actually, so personally I thought the practice tests weren't very well designed. Even more coincidentally, I used to attend an ACT class taught by one of the authors (which I felt was a waste of time, the class). Personally would only use it for the practice test but there's some other goodies in it if you have time.
 
Overall, 1.3k with no prep is very good overall, placing you well above the national average. But that also means that you have a lot of room to grow, and grow you should. Honestly, for most people there's no substitution for hard work (aka repeatedly taking practice tests) and I really would not recommend to push studying back any further. So:
Make a study schedule using Khan academy
Force yourself to follow the Schedule
Start with the short passages, like where they give you 10 to 15 minute sections of questions to do, to get yourself adjusted. Then, after you're getting a good feel, you can move on to the practice tests. I would:
Start with an official practice test (from Collegeboard)
Do some ones from other misc. test providers. (1 -3)
Do another official practice test
Do some misc tests.
Repeat
Before your test you should take one last official test. The reason for alternating these tests is because while the tests created by the other providers can be useful, they are generally not the most accurate representations.
 
I guess one thing I have not addressed is how to utilize the feedback from practice tests effectively. If you already know then skip this part. It goes something like this.
Take a whole test (or a section, but I generally take a whole test)
Go back and grade it
Check answers
Go back and try to figure out how you got the answer wrong WITHOUT looking at the explanations given by the book (because those frankly mostly suck) and if you still can't figure out what's wrong then go and check.
Make a mental note to never make a similar mistake
Make a similar mistake
All jokes aside though the most helpful thing is to try and figure out by yourself why someone may not have been right, rather than rely on the explanations of the book, for the book may not think the way that you think. However, there are some grammar rules which you just have to know.
Another thing I use is a question mark system, where I put question marks on my answer sheet near problems which I'm not sure of. It goes like this
? = educated guess
?? = a lot less education in the guess
??? = wtf
Generally I would get about ~70% of ?'s right and ~40% of ??'s right and about ~25% of ???'s right. More importantly, I always go back and look at them regardless of whether I got them right or wrong, either to reinforce my thinking (if it was correct) or try to change it (if it was wrong).
With enough practice tests, you can actually start graphing your progress and see which areas you need to improve.
 
If this task seems daunting, that's because it is, and the fact that 50% of the nation get's below an 1000 proves it. But, it's the fact that everyone else sucks that makes getting a good score so much more rewarding, imagine what a 1600 would be worth if everyone got one (I didn't, just to tell you right now). As long as you work hard and put your heart into it I think that you have a lot of potential to succeed :)
Also, sorry for the awful formatting and the wall of text.
 
tl;dr study hard
He'll love you forever
It's the Collegeboard set of released tests. The Old SAT version of it came in a blue book, hence it's name. The New SAT version is this.
The Blue Book is updated for the New SAT.
Link
Princeton Review also seems to have multiple books out for the new SAT, but I'd recommend doing the practice tests in Khan Academy or the Blue Book first instead of the old books.
It's always best to go with the official study books. Here's the SAT and the ACT
Princeton Review is known for test-prep, but I've never used them, so I can't attest for quality... I just know that the official guides from the people who make the test are always your best bet for prep.
What you're doing sounds good. I recommend doing practice tests. I can't tell you what to study because I don't remember, plus practice tests would be way better for studying than anything I could provide. Here's the book I used if you're interested http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1457304309/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0W1VBJ0ATHK2PR88YKR6
You can find it on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Official-SAT-Study-Guide-2016/dp/1457304309/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453503668&sr=1-1&keywords=sat+prep+2016
Full text:
I’m a Harvard grad with honors and professional tutor/coach since 2002 (SAT, ACT, LSAT, GRE, GMAT). I have attained perfect scores on the SAT and ACT, with every question answered correctly, and 99% scores on the LSAT, GRE and GMAT (see my website for proof). I have been now teaching SAT for 20 full years, ever since I worked as an instructor for Harvard's "Get Ready" community service test-prep program in the fall of 1998. I am the founder of McElroy Tutoring, who has employed over 500 tutors since 2002, and the "r/SATACTprep" subreddit on Reddit, with nearly 1,000 subscribers and growing. I am also the former employer of another tutor with a highly-ranked review of this book that's very similar to mine. In short, I'm the one who wrote the recipe for the jam...but you know what they say about imitation.
The Official SAT Study Guide 2020 Edition (currently $19), despite not having changed much from the 2018 edition, is still the most essential SAT preparation book on the market. This is neither because the book contains useful SAT strategy advice, nor because the answer explanations are particularly helpful or easy to understand—the strategy advice is almost nonexistent, and the answer explanations are sometimes insightful but far too often convoluted, simplistic and/or incomplete. Instead, the book’s primary value lies in the fact that it includes 8 full practice SATs for only about $.02 per page.
How is this book different from the 2018 edition of the Official SAT Study Guide (https://www.amazon.com/Official-SAT-Study-Guide-2018/dp/1457309289), of which you can also read my detailed Amazon customer review (#1 on top) ? The first 294 pages of the book (the portion before the tests) are exactly the same. 6 of the 8 tests are the same—though the order has been reversed. And the two new tests—which show up as the first two tests in the book—are the October 2018 and October 2017 SATs, respectively, which are not yet available for download through College Board but can be found easily with a Google search. SAT practice tests #2 and #4 are gone, though you can still find them easily with a Google search. If we agree to call the October 2018 SAT test #10, and the October 2017 SAT test #9, then the tests are in the order 10,9,8,7,6,5,3,1.
Although 6 of the 8 the tests in this book are indeed free to download from the College Board / Khan Academy websites and print out at home (I expect the other 2 to be available as free PDF downloads soon), the cost of doing so would most likely exceed $19 unless you have a free/low-cost printing option. In addition, there is significant value in having all the tests literally bound together in one place—it makes it easy to stay organized, and since the SAT doesn’t provide scratch paper, you can practice by taking all of your notes right there in the book.
In fact, I would suggest that you buy 2 copies of this book: one for taking notes, and the other to keep blank, so that you can review questions later without bias. This is known as the “blind review” method and it works wonders.
You will notice that there is no Kindle version of this book, but again, you can download PDFs of the individual tests, scoring guides and answer explanations from the College Board / Khan Academy websites for free, which is far easier than the Kindle format anyway. That being said, it would be nice if the College Board would put a PDF of the entire book on its website as well--the first 300 pages of the book do include some useful advice on the essay, for example--though again, that advice could be vastly improved.
Of course, these 8 official SATs are just scratching the surface of what’s out there in terms of official SAT practice material: as of this writing I’ve counted 36 official SATs and PSATs in the new format that are publicly available online—and that doesn’t include other test forms that have been leaked.
Finally, in 2015, I also wrote an exhaustive Amazon review of the original (2016) edition of this book (https://www.amazon.com/Official-SAT-Study-Guide-2016/dp/1457304309), which I’m happy to say is also the #1 review of that book on Amazon. Please feel free to give that review a read as well, and to google “SAT Action Plan: How to Study and Prepare for the SAT College Entrance Exam” for a full list of my personal SAT prep recommendations.
Best of luck on your SAT and beyond,
-Brian
These worked for me:
You can buy the 2016 edition at your local book store and Amazon.
http://www.booksamillion.com/p/Official-SAT-Study-Guide/Board/9781457304309?id=6623761684839
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-official-sat-study-guide-college-board-the/1122340725?ean=9781457304309
http://www.amazon.com/Official-SAT-Study-Guide-2016/dp/1457304309