How to Get Straight A's and Prep for AP and Subject Tests at the Same Time

Update: I've added a section titled "Studying Ahead."

Are you wondering how you'll ever find time to study for school and still prep for AP and SAT Subject Tests?

Fortunately, you can do both at the same time.

Reading prep books is a great way to review for the classes you're already taking.

Choosing Study Materials

Once you know which classes you're taking, go online and order several SAT Subject Test or AP prep books for each subject.

Stick to the ones with 4.5- and five-star ratings. The books with the best reviews will have lots of practice problems, good answer explanations, and relatively accurate answer keys.

The College Board publishes a line of books with official practice tests, but those books don't offer much help with strategy and content review.

Of the major publishers, the Princeton Review usually produces the most accurate practice tests. Barron's and Kaplan's practice tests tend to be harder than official AP and SAT Subject tests. Avoid McGraw-Hill, ARCO, and Peterson's materials, as they tend to have poorly written problems and answer key errors.

I've also compiled a list of the best prep books for each subject.

Studying Ahead

Your classes will seem easier if you read ahead and do practice problems at least one week before your teacher covers the same material in class. It takes just as much work to be a week ahead and maintain an A as it does to be a week behind and maintain a C. You'll feel more confident and be more prepared for college.

I was able to get mostly A's during the latter half of my time at U.C. Berkeley because I figured out how to study ahead. Suddenly, instead of struggling through my classes with B's, I was in the top ten percent. Students asked me to lead study groups, professors invited me to offer feedback on the chemistry department's classes, and I got to take graduate classes with PhD candidates. Studying late at night at the library with my friends became a social event; we enjoyed pushing each other to get every problem right on tests.

Use the syllabus or class Web site to figure out what you need to read in order to stay at least a week ahead in each class. If your teacher publishes the homework ahead of time, you can do the homework early and fix any mistakes during class while your teacher is lecturing on the work you've already done. If you don't have access to the homework ahead of time, pick some representative problems in your textbook and AP prep books and check your answers against the books' solutions.

Preparing for Tests

Before each of your school's tests, go through one of the prep books you bought and create a practice test by circling all the problems that look like the ones your teacher gave you for homework. Do those problems and give yourself a letter grade based on the number of problems you got right.

Stare at each problem you got wrong for several minutes and try to figure out how to do it on your own. If you're still lost, read the prep book's answer explanation carefully.

If your grade on that practice test is lower than an A, repeat the process using one of the other prep books for the same subject.

If you want to raise your grade in any particular class to an A, calculate the average grade you need to get on each of your remaining tests and use the method above to make sure you score at least that high on the practice tests you create.

Do this consistently during the entire school year. When you get ready for AP tests and SAT Subject Tests in April, you won't be prepping from scratch, and any prep you end up doing will also prepare you for your school's final exams. April is also a great time to take timed practice tests using official College Board materials.

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SAT Physics Subject Test: The Best Prep Books

Use the books below to aim for a perfect score on the Physics Subject Test.

The Official SAT Subject Test in Physics Study Guide

If you can only afford one book, get this one. It has two official practice tests and answer explanations.

Neither of these tests is a copy of the one in The Official Study Guide for ALL SAT Subject Tests, so you should get both books if you can.

Pros
Official material is a true confidence builder. Every question you get wrong contains skills you need to practice.

Most prep books have poorly written questions, answer key errors, and questions that are unrealistically easy, difficult, or off-topic. If you get questions wrong or run out of time on unofficial tests, you'll have trouble figuring out whether the fault lies with you or with the book you're using.

Based on the raw-to-scaled score conversion tables in the book, a raw score of 58/75 and 59/75 will get you perfect 800's on the first and second practice tests,

Cons
There's no Kindle edition, so you'll have to plan ahead and order a physical copy from Amazon.

The Official Study Guide for ALL SAT Subject Tests

This book contains a unique official College Board practice test.

Pros
Official material is a true confidence builder. Every question you get wrong contains skills you need to practice.

Most prep books have poorly written questions, answer key errors, and questions that are unrealistically easy, difficult, or off-topic. If you get questions wrong or run out of time on unofficial tests, you'll have trouble figuring out whether the fault lies with you or with the book you're using.

Based on the raw-to-scaled score conversion table in the book, a raw score of 59/75 will get you a perfect scaled score of 800.

Cons
This book has only one Physics practice test and along with a few warm-up questions.

Cracking the SAT Physics Subject Test

This is a good all-around study guide. It contains content review, useful strategies, and decent practice tests.

Pros
The practice tests have no answer key errors. They're very similar to actual College Board tests.

The book's helpful content review chapters can keep you from feeling lost. The Physics Subject Test covers a broader range of topics than you're likely to learn in your high school class, so content review is a must.

Cons
The Princeton Review is all about giving you what you need and not one iota more. You don't have to know every topic covered on the test to score an 800. The book's content review is incomplete in a couple of areas; this might have been done purposefully to keep students from over-prepping. You can still Google the explanations for the those topics.

Barron's SAT Subject Test: Physics

This is another good all-around study guide. Instead of scattering practice questions throughout the chapter text like the Princeton Review does, the Barron's guide completely explains each topic in textbook format and puts all of the practice questions at the chapters' ends.

Pros
The Barron's book has the look and feel of a physics textbook, and its detailed explanations can be helpful as a supplement to your school's textbook.

Cons
The downside of completeness is the potential for information overload. You don't need to understand every topic on the Physics Subject Test: a raw score of 59/75 will get you a perfect scaled 800.

Physics Mastery for Advanced High School Students: Complete Physics Review with 400 SAT and AP Physics Questions (Tony Rothman and Steve Warner)

As the title suggests, this is an all-in-one prep guide for SAT and AP Physics.

Pros
The topics, language, and problem-solving approaches in this book are fairly advanced. If you're taking AP Physics, this book can be very useful as a supplement to your school textbook and as a study guide for the AP test.

Cons
This book does not resemble Steve Warner's SAT and ACT Math workbooks: in those books, Dr. Warner targets specific tests, and his practice questions realistically reflect the topics, formats, and difficulty levels of the official tests. This book tries to prep you for SAT and AP Physics at the same time, and the questions are much harder than anything you'll see on the SAT Physics Subject Test.

Sterling Test Prep SAT Physics Practice Questions: High Yield SAT Physics Questions with Detailed Explanations

This is an excellent source of extra practice questions.

Pros
Unlike Sterling's SAT Chemistry and SAT Biology books, the SAT Physics book contains answer explanations for almost all of its questions.

It contains four diagnostic tests, followed by banks of practice questions that are organized by topic.

Cons
This book doesn't have any organized content review. If you're not a superstar in your physics class, start with the Princeton Review's book and move on to this one if you need the extra practice.

Books to Avoid

Peterson's SAT II Success: Physics has some very badly written questions. It's not just the answer key is wrong: the questions themselves are written in a confusing way. Avoid this book at all costs.

Going for a Perfect Score

A raw score of 59/75 will usually get you a perfect scaled 800 on SAT Physics. Even after the test deducts a quarter of a point for every question you get wrong, you can afford to miss thirteen of the seventy-five problems. That's like getting an 83% on a comprehensive high school physics final.

The books above contain everything you need to get an awesome score, but if you'd like personalized help, you can sign up for in-home or online tutoring.

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SAT: The Best Prep Books

Update: I've updated the Errata list for John Chung's SAT Math book.

This is a current list of the books I'm using with my own students. I'll revise it as new books are released.

The Official SAT Study Guide, 2018 Edition

This new edition eight official practice tests with answer explanations, though the College Board is no longer recommending that students take tests 2 and 4. The 2020 edition of this book has two replacement tests that are already available online.

Pros

Official material is a true confidence builder. Every question you get wrong contains skills you need to practice.

Most prep books have poorly written questions, answer key errors, and questions that are unrealistically easy, difficult, or off-topic. If you get questions wrong or run out of time on unofficial tests, you'll have trouble figuring out whether the fault lies with you or with the book you're using.

Not all unofficial prep guides have a good feel for the SAT yet, so it's doubly important to practice with official material.

Cons

The practice tests and answer explanations are already available for free online. However, it is cheaper to buy a $16 book than to print 1280 pages. Even with a laser printer at two cents a page, you'd have to pay $25.60 to print the book out yourself.

The book itself doesn't contain the conversion tables that you need to figure out your scaled (out of 1600) scores. You can download those online by visiting the SAT practice test page and clicking on the Scoring Chart link underneath each test.

The first four tests in this book were released as practice material, and the raw/scaled score conversion tables may not be accurate. (The College Board is now recommending that students skip Tests 2 and 4.) Tests 5-8 were taken by real students in 2016 and 2017.

SAT Prep Black Book, Second Edition

If you don't have a tutor, this is the book to start with. Barrett's answer explanations are very detailed, and he uses only official SAT practice tests.

You have to use College Board practice tests 1-4 from Official SAT Study Guide, since Barrett's book has answer explanations for those tests but doesn't include the questions themselves. Fortunately, you can also download the tests online for free..

Pros
A top tutor can explain any officially released ACT question to you in as much detail as you want. Barrett's answer explanations are almost as good. At $27, it's a lot more affordable than hiring a real tutor.

His book really shines in its strategy suggestions for the Critical Reading section, where the right approach to the test is more important than reviewing content.

The answer explanations in this book are more organized and easy to read than the ones from the (older) ACT Prep Black Book. Unlike his ACT book, in which he skips some problems but explains others, Barrett includes explanations for every single SAT practice problem.

Cons
Since Barrett chooses to use only official SAT practice questions, he doesn't include any practice questions in the content review chapters. You have to read the entire book and then take an official practice test. For this reason, I suggest treating your first few tests as untimed practice.

Barrett's content review for the Math section is limited, and he emphasizes the use of guessing strategies and calculator tricks over doing problems the "right" way. If you're shooting for a perfect score on the Math section, you really need to know both calculator shortcuts and the "correct" methods in order to decide which approach is the fastest. His English grammar content review is limited and written in a confusing way.

IvyGlobal's New SAT Guide

IvyGlobal's SAT 6 Practice Tests

IvyGlobal's 3 New PSAT Practice Tests

Answer Explanations for IvyGlobal's Practice Tests

These are the best unofficial SAT practice tests I've seen. Even better, IvyGlobal's Web site has detailed answer explanations that are much more helpful that the ones the College Board provides for its tests. I've been impressed enough to include two IvyGlobal tests alongside the College Board tests on my SAT practice test page.

My evaluation is based on four practice tests in a 2015 edition IvyGlobal book. One of my students took all four Critical Reading sections and one of the Writing/Grammar sections and checked IvyGlobal's answer explanations for the questions he got wrong. He made a list of the questions he still couldn't figure out and brought them to me. After spending an hour going through the list with him, I couldn't find any problems that felt ambiguous or inauthentic. Overall, I've been impressed with both the tests and my student's performance on them.

(Update: He ended up getting a 1520 on the real SAT, largely due to practicing with Ivy Global's tests.)

I've taken Ivy Global online practice test #1 on a timed basis and was impressed. The questions are tricky without being unfair, and the answer explanations are concise but accurate.

Pros
IvyGlobal continually revises its books to correct mistakes. It publishes the corrections alongside its answer explanations online for students who don't own the revised books.

Ivy Global's Web site automatically scores practice tests and generates score reports. Select the test you want to score from Ivy Global's menu and enter the answers from your bubble sheet into the online interface.

Cons
It would have been convenient for the answer explanations to have been published inside the books instead of online. IvyGlobal's Amazon book reviews reveal that not everyone is aware that the answer explanations exist.

Errata
Ivy Global's "Six Practice Tests book" doesn't give you enough information to definitively solve #38 on page 300 (practice test #3, section 4). The third column of the table isn't labeled clearly enough.

#41 on page 476 (practice test #6, section 2) can't be solved unless you replace the phrase "no dollar signs" with "numerals only."

#20 on page 483 (practice test #6, section 3) can't be solved unless you assume that segment CG is perpendicular to segment AE.

Marks Prep: Four Realistic SAT Practice Tests

These four high-quality practice tests are about as good as Ivy Global's (see the link above) and also come with helpful answer explanations at the back of the book.

I've had several students work through these tests with no issues.

Pros
The answer explanations for the tests are at the back of the book (unlike Ivy Global's, which you have to find online).

Cons
Unlike Ivy Global, Marks Prep doesn't offer online scoring. It can also be a bit of a pain to score and review the tests, as the four tests begin on page 7, the scoring instructions are on page 228, the answer keys are on pages 229-237, and the answer explanations start on page 237. You'll be flipping back and forth a lot.

There's also no bubble sheet in the book, so you'll have to find and print out your own.

Khan Academy's SAT program

Khan Academy provides an online SAT practice program that's great if you don't have time to buy and read prep books.

Pros
The practice tests are the same as the ones in the May edition of The Official SAT Study Guide, but you can print them from Khan Academy for free without having to wait for the book to arrive. Note that Khan Academy doesn't have links to the answer explanations. You can find the links at my SAT practice test page.

I consider the questions in the Web site's drills to be semi-official. They've been approved by the College Board but haven't been tested on students on actual SATs. That may change in the future if the College Board decides to add some of its real SAT questions to Khan Academy's practice pool.

Cons
Khan Academy provides good SAT practice, but its answer explanations aren't always helpful. SAT Math problems always have more than one solution, and the fastest solution takes 30 seconds or less. Khan Academy's explanations only include one solution per problem, and it may not be the one that is fastest or easiest for everyone.

Its answer explanations for the SAT's Critical Reading section can be particularly incomplete and confusing. To be fair, I've looked at most of the prep books for the SAT, and all of them have this problem to some extent.

If you miss questions, Khan Academy doesn't offer related questions for targeted practice. Khan Academy's normal math courses do do this, so I hope these features are added to its SAT program in the next few years.

The Critical Reader: The Complete Guide to SAT Reading (Erica Meltzer)

Critical Reading is the hardest section to write good practice questions for. Erica does a very good job of emulating the trickiness of the real test. 

She includes great strategies for managing time, skimming, taking notes, and answering tricky questions.

Pros

Erica's practice questions and strategies are several levels better than anything else that's out there. She has detailed strategy descriptions and plenty of practice material.

The Suggested Reading list has a good sweep of different types of writing, from financial journalism to historical United States documents.

Erica's Web site offers several reading quizzes.

Cons

This is a big one: Critical Reading questions are very tricky, and Erica's answer explanations aren't long enough to fully explain why each question has three objectively wrong answer choices and one objectively correct choice.

Supporting Evidence questions on the SAT are hard, and some of them seem to have two correct answers unless you read very carefully. She mentions this in Chapter 5, but there's not enough information there for most people to apply her strategies to the toughest one or two questions on the test. To fill the gap, I've written detailed instructions for conquering Supporting Evidence questions.

IES SAT Reading: World Literature (Advanced Practice Series)

IES SAT Reading: Vice and Virtue in the Exploration of Democracy (Advanced Practice Series)

I used to use AP English Language and Literature tests to over-prep students for SAT Reading - at least until I ran across these two IES books.

Since each book focuses on a specific passage type (either Literature/Fiction or History), you can choose the one that best matches what you need to work on.

The SAT is designed to reward the use of background knowledge from AP Euro, AP U.S. History, and AP English Language/Literature classes. (Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was not an abolitionist and that early feminism resembles modern Christianity more than it does modern feminism?) Keep that in mind as you work through these books, especially when you read history passages. The "Vice and Virtue" book has a page with historical background information at the beginning of each chapter.

Pros
The practice tests are very accurate in their passage selections and practice questions. The answer explanations are detailed enough that most students haven't needed my help when reviewing their work.

Once you graduate from these IES books, you should be able to move on to AP English Language practice tests if you still need to over-prep. The AP Lang released exams don't have any answer explanations, so I strongly suggest either doing both IES books first or getting a tutor to help you.

Cons
These books are more about practice than strategy, so I suggest starting with the SAT Black Book unless you've taken AP English.

The science-based passage at the end of the Reading section can also be challenging, but IES hasn't produced a dedicated book to help students with that yet.

Errata
#7 on page 105 of the World Literature book has four answer choices that are all incorrect. The answer key indicates that (D) is the answer, but the passage doesn't provide evidence that the author progressively withdrew from social events during the holidays.

The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar (Erica Meltzer)

The Ultimate Guide... Workbook

This two-book set is similar to Erica's ACT English book in its comprehensive grammar rules, practice questions, and answer explanations. Unlike the ACT version, the SAT version has a second volume called the Workbook that contains six extra practice tests.

Pros

If you understand every grammar rule Erica teaches, SAT Writing questions become objective, and you can tackle them like math questions. This doesn't mean they're easy, but it does mean that you can figure out why the wrong choices are actually wrong.

Since the first volume has a practice test and the Workbook has six, you get a total of seven practice tests with answer explanations.

Erica's Web site has a complete list of grammar rules and and reading/grammar quizzes.

Cons

Of the six tests in the Workbook, only tests 1, 3, 5, and 6 are useful for timed practice. Tests 2 and 4 contain a few confusing questions and answer key errors. It only takes one confusing question to throw your timing off for the whole test, so it's better to use tests 2 and 4 for light practice.

Erica's strategies are great for all of the question types except those that involve adding and deleting sentences. For those, read the Relevance and Purpose article on the College Panda's blog.

Her books are like textbooks (long and possibly boring). Decide now that you're going to be dedicated enough to read everything, including the answer explanations for the practice questions.

SAT Vocabulary: A New Approach

This unusual book addresses vocabulary skills that can help with both the Critical Reading and Grammar sections.

Chapter 5 is devoted entirely to the SAT Essay and includes two student essays that earned perfect scores.

Pros
Instead of drilling vocab words using flash cards, Erica groups words by their function in the English language and provides practice questions for those functions. This is a practical approach that will pay dividends in college later: words like hypothesis, tentative, and analogous often occur in science-related passages, so it makes sense to group them together.

Because Erica's focus is on practical reading, her book is equally helpful for ACT English and Reading passages. The section on passage-based vocabulary for science passages (pages 31-35) will even help you on the ACT's Science section.

Cons
If you already score higher than 700 on SAT Verbal and 30 on ACT English/Reading/Science, this book might be too easy. You'd benefit more from taking practice tests and reading 10th-to-12th grade level books to build an advanced vocabulary.

A Guide to SAT Math (Richard Corn)

This is the closest thing to an SAT Math textbook I've seen. It organizes content review and practice drills by topic. If you don't feel comfortable with high school math, start your prep with this book.

Students who get A's in school math often struggle with the SAT. A school test focuses on one chapter of your book at a time, and a good teacher tells you exactly what's going to be on that test. The SAT, on the other hand, tests knowledge that ranges from 7th grade to trigonometry and includes Common Core material that not all students have seen yet.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the author. I get free copies of books on a regular basis, but this one is unique enough to earn a spot on my SAT book review page.

Pros
Richard Corn's book is enough like a textbook to get you comfortable with the topics that are tested on the SAT, but it's not long enough to be truly intimidating.

Cons
The main strength of Corn's book, its textbook-style organization, is also its weakness. The real SAT won't tell you whether a particular problem is testing the standard-form equation of a circle, the area of a circle, or right triangles within the unit circle. It could potentially test all three topics at the same time!

To truly be ready for the SAT, you have to learn how to think on your feet. Corn's book is great if you need content review as a primer, but you'll want to graduate quickly to more advanced practice materials.

This is the first edition of Corn's SAT Math book, so you may notice some typos and ambiguously written questions.

28 SAT Math Lessons - ADVANCED Course: For Students Currently Scoring Above 600 and Want to Score 800

28 SAT Math Lessons - INTERMEDIATE Course: For Students Currently Scoring Between 500 and 600

28 SAT Math Lessons - BEGINNER Course: For Students Currently Scoring Below 500

Each of these books is a strategy guide combined with a large set of problems and answer explanations.

Pros

The practice material is very similar to real SAT Math tests.

Dr. Warner presents strategy, followed by practice problems, followed by more strategy. The cycle repeats with increasingly difficult problems.

If you do one lesson a day, you can finish each book in a month, although many people will need more time than that.

The answer explanations provide more than one way to do each problem, and the fastest method is marked with a star.

Cons

You can use this book without a tutor, but the problems near the end of the advanced book get so hard that you might throw your pencil at the wall and give up. Dr. Warner is trying to help you get an 800 on the Math section, so you'll be seriously challenged.

Dr. John Chung's SAT Math: Designed to help students get a perfect score on the SAT

If you absolutely must get a perfect score in SAT Math, you'll want Dr. Chung's 626-page tome for its extremely hard practice problems. Be warned: this is not a book for wimps.

Note that Dr. Chung's book is great for practicing difficult algebra and geometry problems but that it doesn't have nearly as many word problems as the SAT itself does. If word problems are your weakness, you're better off practicing with Dr. Warner's books and Ivy Global's practice tests.

The most recent version of this book is the fourth edition, which is basically the third edition with different page numbers and an additional practice test. (The page numbers are different because the fourth edition uses less empty space in between its answer explanations. The questions are identical; even the errors in the Third and Fourth editions are the same.)

The answers to Tips 1-60 start on page 113.

Pros

If you want a perfect score, I'd normally suggest doing a trillion official practice tests. The SAT doesn't have that many, so the next best option is to practice with questions that are difficult while still being accurate in other ways.

Every hard problem on the SAT has an easy solution that take 30 seconds or less; the difficulty involves finding that solution quickly. What you want is a set of accurate problems that looks like SAT Math but has twice as many hard problems and almost none of the easy ones. That way, you can challenge yourself without distorting the timing of the test too much.

Dr. Chung's problems are hard, but they're still doable within the 30-second limit.

There are other books that are unhelpfully difficult: you can get Barron's New SAT if you want problems that are time-soakers or that have to be done by plugging twenty different numbers into a calculator. In case you're wondering, that's not an approach I recommend.

Cons

Dr. Chung's book will frustrate you unless you already understand everything in Dr. Warner's advanced course. The answer explanations tend to skip several steps in a row (exactly the sort of thing your math teacher tells you not to do), and he doesn't always approach problems in the fastest or most intuitive way possible. The explanations also contain numerous typos. Use his book for the excellent practice problems and ignore the answer explanations.

As mentioned earlier, Dr. Chung's book doesn't have as many word problems as the SAT does. If you're better at math than at reading, you may find that your scores on his practice tests are higher than they would be on real College Board exam.

SAT math diagrams are always drawn to scale unless the test indicates otherwise, but the drawings in Dr. Chung's book are generally intentionally distorted. In addition, the SAT always states its assumptions (segment AB is the diameter of a circle, lines CD and EF are perpendicular, lines GH and IF are parallel), but Dr. Chung sometimes doesn't do this. Don't get in the habit of making assumptions that are not explicitly stated in the problem, as doing so can hurt you on the real SAT.

I suggest starting with an official practice test, then Dr. Warner's books, followed by at least one additional official practice test. If you score 750 or higher and want to get to 800, then (and only then) should you use Dr. Chung's encyclopedic volume.

Errata
Page 22: Tip #8, problem #4 has two answers (B and C). To fix the problem, assume that a ≠ 1 and that answer choice B is not an option.

Page 30: Tip #13, problem #1 should state that points P and R are the roots of the parabola. If you don't make that assumption, the problem is unsolvable.

Page 53: Tip #27, problem #1 should state that you are solving for k.

Page 85: Tip #45, problem #4 graphs the parabola incorrectly. (It should have a y-intercept of 8 and should be concave-up.)

Page 107: Tip #58, problem #1 asks for the correlation coefficient, which is not actually tested on the SAT.

Page 272: Practice Test 4, section 4, problem #22: All four answers are incorrect.

Page 490: Practice Test 12, section 4, problem #35: The answer is 91, not 39.

Page 491: Practice Test 12. section 4, problem #38: The answer is 21.9, not 21.

Page 519: Practice Test 13, section 4, problem #31: The answer is 16, not 6. (The book's answer explanation mistakenly multiplies the trapezoid bases instead of adding them.)

Page 534: Practice Test 14, section 4, problem #12: All of the answer choices are incorrect.

Page 564: Practice Test 15, section 3, problem #15: The problem is un-solvable without a clearer definition of what "does not support the candidate" means. (Does it include both the "Against" and "No Opinion" responses?)

Page 594: Practice Test 16, section 3, problem #20: The answer is 41°, not 39°.

Page 605: Practice Test 16, section 4, problem #30: In the last sentence, replace the phrase "number of algebra workbooks" with "price of each algebra workbook." If you don't do this, all the answer choices will be wrong.

Books to Avoid

I strongly suggest staying away from Peterson's Master the New SAT 2016. Two of students came to me after taking practice tests from this book. There were so many poorly written questions and typos that the students' scores went up 100 points in the Math section alone after I adjusted the answer key.

Peterson's has a 2018 edition now, but you may want to use the excellent free practice tests provided by the College Board and Ivy Global rather than risk your sanity on a new edition of a poorly written book.

Working with Official Practice Tests

If you find unofficial questions to be inaccurate or confusing, you can still prep for the SAT using only official practice tests:

1. Take a practice test under timed conditions.
2. Score your test and clearly mark the questions you missed. Use a different symbol to mark the questions that you got right by guessing.
3. Review the questions you missed or had to guesss on. Spend at least ten minutes on each one. You have to prove to yourself that each question objectively has one right answer and three incorrect ones.
4. Make a list of the questions you're not able to figure out on your own. Look up the questions on the Internet or use a tutor's help to get to the point where you can clearly identify one correct answer and three incorrect ones for every single question. Your job isn't done until you can do this.
5. Repeat the process using a new practice test. Keep the cycle going until you're happy with your scores.

This method can work really well if you have a tutor. Do a practice test and hire a tutor to go over some of the answers with you, then spend time at home going over the remaining answers on your own. In your next session, you can go over any questions that are still confusing. When you and your tutor are satisfied that you fully understand the first practice test, repeat the process with a new test.

Going for a Perfect Score

Getting a 1600 on the SAT isn't easy.

On the ACT, you can get two 35's and two 36's, and the four scores will round to a composite of 36. The SAT doesn't offer that luxury: the section scores are added, not averaged. The SAT's Critical Reading passages are tough, and the Math sections contain a large proportion of word problems. You also face the challenge of finding enough practice tests to search for and eliminate the careless mistakes we all have a tendency to make.

You'll really have to go above and beyond in your understanding of the test. Work on improving your vocabulary. Read college-level books for practice and, preferably, for fun. Go through Dr. Chung's SAT Math practice. If you really want to challenge yourself, prep for AP English Language and SAT Literature; SAT Critical Reading will seem like child's play in comparison.

Most of all, go easy on yourself if you don't make it. Colleges want students who will bring them glory, and the difference between a 1550 and a 1600 doesn't say much about that potential in the long run.

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SAT Literature Subject Test: The Best Prep Books

Update: I've added material to the Background Knowledge section of this post.

The SAT Literature Subject Test, like SAT Critical Reading, is very difficult to write practice questions for. Each question has to be properly tricky while still having one objectively correct answer and four others that are unambiguously wrong. The College Board's tests do this far better than third-party practice tests do.

You'll need a hybrid study plan: College Board tests combined with content review from a third-party company. Here's a list of the best prep books.

The Official Study Guide for ALL SAT Subject Tests

This book has the only officially released SAT Literature practice test available.

Pros
If you're going to take several Subject Tests, you need this book anyway.

Cons
The answer explanations only cover the answer choice that's correct for each question and ignores the incorrect choices. If you want to prep effectively, you have to be able to explain to yourself why each of those choices is objectively wrong.

College Board Online Practice for SAT Literature

You need all the official practice you can get for this test.

Pros
These are official questions, and they're free!

Cons
There aren't enough online questions to form a full practice test, and they're easier than the questions you'll see on the real exam.

Ivy Global Online SAT Literature Practice Test and Answer Explanations
Ivy Global, which has published fairly accurate SAT practice tests, has a downloadable SAT Literature practice test.

The test itself is realistic, but it has answer key errors. (The online explanations contradict the key at the back of the test.)
#26 is D, not A
#27 is A, not D
#43 is B, not D

Here are my own answer explanations for two questions for which I thought Ivy Global's explanations were not very clear:

For #4, the poem describes a train rushing through the city's great gaunt gut, which literally means a large, thin intestine.
(A) doesn't match the idea of an intestine,
(B) points to criminals that aren't in the poem, and
(C) is problematic because there's no support for the word efficient or for whatever the subway is supposed to be digesting.
The word viscera in (E) works, but the words bloated and distended don't, as they suggest a swollen stomach and not a gaunt one.
(D) is the answer, as "sprawling" matches the idea of a long intestine, while "cheerless" matches the words weary, sick, heavy, swallowed, and moans.

#8 is tough because of the vocabulary words in the answer choices:
(A) doesn't work because the word bucolic refers to the pleasant aspect of countryside life, and most of the imagery in the second half of the poem is ocean-related.
(B) is wrong because there's so suggestion that the wind will end up escaping the subway in the future. Just because it "wants" to doesn't mean that anything will happen.
(C) contrasts concrete (actual) realities with surreal (bizarre, unrealistic, dreamlike) fantasies. Unfortunately, the metaphor of a subway as a human intestine (a strange description of reality) is more bizarre than the picture of wind gently blowing palm trees and ships (a fantasy grounded in reality).
(D) is wrong because the poem is talking about the wind desiring to be somewhere else, not about some imagined war between humanity and nature.
(E) is correct: everything the wind touches in the first half of the poem is either human or human-made, while everything in the second half of the poem describes the setting the wind would like to be in.

Kaplan SAT Subject Test Literature

This is the only prep book I've seen with well-written content review practice questions. The 2017 edition is identical to the 2015-16 edition I'm reviewing.

Pros
Considering how inaccurate and confusing unofficial questions tend to be, the ones in chapters 1-7 are actually pretty good. The only poorly written question is problem 2 in chapter 4.

Cons
This book will overprep you slightly: you probably don't need to know the term anastrophe, for example, although it's helpful to be familiar with the idea that poetry can change a sentence's word order to make it fit a poem's rhyme scheme and meter. You don't need to know a sonnet's exact rhyme scheme, although it can be helpful to be able to identify a sonnet and to recognize that its main point is always contained in the last two lines.

The practice questions in chapters 1-7 are well-written, but the answer explanations are unhelpfully short.

Avoid the diagnostic test and the practice tests. which have poorly written questions that will make you legitimately confused about which answer choices are correct.

Ivy Global's SAT Subject Test in Literature: Study Guide & 6 Practice Tests

Ivy Global's content review chapters aren't as good as Kaplan's, but the Ivy Global practice tests are better.

Pros
I worked through all of the content review as well as the first three practice tests and didn't run into any issues except for two questions on test #2 - pretty impressive for a subject that's hard to write practice questions for.

The tests' answer explanations are thorough and accurate.

Cons
This is a big one: the practice questions in the content review don't have answer explanations. Good luck trying to review your work on your own!

If you need explanations, go through the content review in the Kaplan book before taking Ivy Global's practice tests.

Errata
On the second practice test, watch out for #16 (nostalgia requires positive feelings about the past that aren't present in the passage) and #33 (it seems to me that both self-interest and pride are valid answers, as self-interest isn't strictly incompatible with consideration for others' feelings; you just have to consider your own feelings before those of others).

The Official SAT Study Guide, 2018 Edition

The Critical Reader: The Complete Guide to SAT Reading (Erica Meltzer)

Yes, I'm recommending regular SAT books. The new SAT's Critical Reading section is tricky enough to help you train for the SAT Literature and AP English tests. Here are the differences:

	New SAT Critical Reading	SAT Literature	AP English Literature multiple choice
Passage Difficulty	Medium	Hard	Hard
Question Difficulty	Hard	Hard	Very Hard
Time per Question	75 seconds	57 seconds	65 seconds
Curve	Brutal	Hard	Forgiving

Neither SAT Literature nor the AP test has the SAT's tricky Supporting Evidence questions ("Which choice provides the best evidence for...").

The more forgiving the curve, the easier it is to overprep and get a perfect score. On practice tests, I usually get 52/52 correct on Critical Reading (a 400/400), 59/61 correct on SAT Literature (an 800), and 51/55 correct on AP English Literature (a 5).

You can download SAT practice tests for free online or read my reviews of SAT prep books.

AP English Literature Released Exams

If you want to challenge yourself, take the multiple choice sections of official College Board AP English Literature tests. The passages are similar to those in SAT Literature, but the questions are much harder, and they don't have any answer explanations.

You'll find a few complete released exams along with a wide selection of free-response questions at the AP English Literature Web site. Here are direct links to the complete exams:

2012 AP English Literature exam

1999 AP English Literature exam (As of 3/23/19, this link is broken. I'll keep the link on this page for now in case the College Board decides the make the test available again.)

1987 AP English Literature exam

You can also find sample multiple-choice questions starting at page 12 (PDF page 16) of the AP English Literature Course Description booklet.

If you're really serious, you can purchase more released exams from the College Board's catalog or from Amazon.

Background Knowledge

Understanding how Western thought has developed from medieval times to the 20th century is critical to finishing the SAT Literature test on time with a score of 700+. Here's a reading list designed to help you get that knowledge as quickly as possible.

I've already mentioned Kaplan SAT Subject Test Literature as a useful way to review the test's content and question types.

Sophie’s World is an engaging, readable introduction to the history of western philosophy. If you can identify how a difficult passage interacts with a major viewpoint like Christianity, Romanticism, or post-modernism, you'll be able to read much faster.

Read as many of Shakespeare's sonnets as you can. (My favorite is #130.) Get familiar with the way sonnets use meter, rhyme, and couplets as organizational tools. If you struggle with sonnets, read the couplet at the end (the last two lines) in order to figure out each sonnet's main point and return to the beginning with that information in mind. Sonnets tend to be about love or death - and sometimes both.

If you prefer to listen to a podcast, subscribe to The History of Philosophy and Christian Thought (taught by the late Dr. Ronald Nash, a professor at a Christian seminary). Listen to episodes 16- 19 (on Augustine) for an overview of medieval thought and episodes 24-27 to learn about Renaissance and Enlightenment rationalism and empiricism.

Books to Avoid

Unlike the Princeton Review's normal offerings, Cracking the SAT Literature Subject Test has confusing, poorly written questions throughout the entire book.

Barron's SAT Subject Test Literature will overprep you with a plethora of literary terms you don't need to know. The Level 1 vocab list at the beginning of chapter 5 is pretty good, but the Level 2 and Level 3 lists are a mixed bag. Why are sarcasm, imagery, and conflict in the Level 3 list, with ballad, sprung rhythm, and antiheroine in Level 2?

Going for a Perfect Score

To get a perfect score on the publicly released SAT Literature practice test, you need to get 59/61 questions right. That's like getting a 97% on a comprehensive 12th-grade English final.

This article contains everything you need to get an awesome score, but if you'd like personalized help, you can sign up for in-home or online tutoring.

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ACT: The Best Prep Books

Update: I've added an Errata section to my review of For the Love of ACT Science.

The Official ACT Prep Guide, 2019-2020 Edition

This is a much-needed update addressing the weaknesses of the 2018 and 2016-17 editions. The ACT essay changed in fall 2015 and again (slightly) in fall 2016, so all of the practice essay questions in the older editions were out-of-date.

The ACT has gradually been getting harder over time, and the 2019-2020 edition addresses that by making its own practice tests pretty tough and then making the scoring curves pretty generous to compensate. The first three tests are identical to the ones in the 2018 edition. The fourth one appears to be ACT Form 74C, which was administered June 2017. The fifth test is ACT Form A10 (December 2017).

Pros
This is one of the best and most convenient sources of practice material you'll find. The book is heavy and unwieldy, but you can tear out the practice tests and bubble sheets and take them on a flat surface.

Cons
The scoring instructions are hard to find. You'll find answer explanations immediately after each practice test, but the actual answer keys, scoring instructions, and score conversion tables are at the back of the book. It's important to use the correct score conversion table for each practice test you take, as harder tests also have more generous curves. You can miss some questions and still get 36 if you get a difficult section; this tends to happen most often for Math and English.

ACT Prep Black Book, Second Edition (Mike Barrett)

If your score goal is 30-33 and you don't have a tutor, this is the book to start with. Barrett's answer explanations are very detailed, about five to ten paragraphs per question, and he uses only official ACT practice tests.

This new second edition addresses the weaknesses of the first edition: it uses the updated (2018 and 2019-2020) Official ACT Prep guide as its companion, it explains every question on every practice test instead of skipping questions, and it presents solutions in a much more organized way.

You have to get either the Official ACT Prep Guide or the Official ACT Prep Pack, since Barrett's book has answer explanations for that edition but doesn't include the questions themselves.

Pros
A top tutor can explain any officially released ACT question to you in as much detail as you want. Barrett's answer explanations are almost as good. At $28, it's a lot more affordable than hiring a real tutor.

His book really shines in its strategy suggestions for the Reading and Science sections, where the right approach to the test is more important than reviewing content. If you apply Barrett's advice with enough practice tests, you can eventually reach a Reading score of 36 and a Science score of 34.

His treatment of ACT Math focuses on strategic guessing. It's faster to cross off three or four answer choices and choose from what's left than it is to solve problems traditionally. Unless you're very good, you'll need to use strategic guessing for the first forty questions in order to garner enough time for questions 41-60, which tend to be much harder.

The Math content review is limited. If you're shooting for a perfect score on the Math section, you really need to know guessing strategies and the "correct" methods in order to decide which approach is the fastest. Unless your math skills are already very strong, you might have trouble breaking above 32 without additional content review.

Barrett's English grammar strategies are very easy to learn: for example, he uses the term comma sandwich instead of the more common but technical term non-essential clause. This is a strength if you want to learn the material quickly but a drawback if you want a deeper understanding of the ACT's grammar rules.

Cons
Since Barrett chooses to use only official ACT practice questions, he doesn't include any practice questions in the content review chapters. You have to read the entire book and then take an official practice test. For this reason, I suggest treating your first test as un-timed practice.

Cracking the ACT with 8 Practice Tests

This is a good all-around study guide with content review, basic test-taking strategies, and six practice tests. It's a good choice if your final target score is 30 or lower.

Pros
For unofficial practice questions, these are pretty good. My students almost always buy this book and do some of the practice tests before deciding to hire me to review the material with them. I haven't seen the kinds of confusing, badly written questions and answer key errors that plague other unofficial study books.

The strategies in this book are basic and easy to apply.

Cons
The Princeton Review is all about giving you what you need and not one iota more. The ACT is a difficult test that requires students to think critically and pay attention to detail, and the basic strategies in this book may not be enough to reliably raise your ACT score above 30.

Its advice for ACT Reading, to skip directly to the questions without reading passages first, makes it hard for some students to grasp each passage's main point.

1,511 ACT Practice Questions

This is the best bank of unofficial practice questions I've seen. It's useful if your can't get access to official ACT practice tests.

Pros
For unofficial practice questions, these are pretty good. I haven't seen the kinds of confusing, badly written questions and answer key errors that plague other unofficial study books.

Cons
It's not a full prep guide. It has answer explanations but doesn't contain content review or organized strategy suggestions.

The Complete Guide to ACT English, Fourth Edition (Erica Meltzer)

This book is a winner: it has grammar rules, practice questions, and answer explanations. It's a great choice if you're shooting for a 30-36 in ACT English.

The new Fourth Edition adds a Parts of Speech Preliminary Exercise (p. 14), includes answer explanations for the practice problems (p. 247), and fixes some typos, including a major problem with the practice tests (incorrectly labeled problems).

Pros
If you understand every grammar rule Erica teaches, ACT English questions become objective, and you can tackle them like math questions. This doesn't mean they're easy, but it does mean that you can figure out why the wrong choices are actually wrong.

Erica also has some grammar quizzes on her Web site.

Cons
Erica's strategies are great for all of the question types except those that involve adding and deleting sentences. For those, read the Relevance and Purpose article on the College Panda's blog.

Her book is like a textbook (long and possibly boring). Decide now that you're going to be dedicated enough to read the whole thing, including the answer explanations at the end of the book.

Minor annoyances include

• the way that practice questions are numbered (passage number, followed by question number)
• the fact that you have to remember to flip to page 247 to grade the practice problems
• the lack of any guidance regarding the use of the score conversion chart (p. 304).

The Complete Guide to ACT Reading (Erica Meltzer)

Another winner from Erica, this book has great strategies for managing time, skimming, taking notes, and answering tricky questions. It's a good choice if you want a 30-36 in ACT Reading.

Pros
Erica includes a lot of practice questions, including two full practice tests with answer explanations. Her book is more convenient than the ACT Prep Black Book, which requires you to buy an out-of-date edition of the Real ACT Prep guide.

Erica's Web site also offers several reading quizzes.

Cons
Erica's practice questions are good, but they're not as good as real ACT questions. You should supplement her book with real ACT practice tests or consider getting the ACT Prep Black Book instead, which has excellent answer explanations for official ACT Reading questions.

SAT Vocabulary: A New Approach

This unusual book addresses vocabulary skills that can help with multiple sections of the SAT and ACT.

Pros
Instead of drilling vocab words using flash cards, Erica groups words by their function in the English language and provides practice questions for those functions. This is a practical approach that will pay dividends in college later: words like hypothesis, tentative, and analogous often occur in science-related passages, so it makes sense to group them together.

Because Erica's focus is on practical reading, her book is equally helpful for ACT English and Reading passages. The section on passage-based vocabulary for science passages (pages 31-35) will even help you on the ACT's Science section.

Erica's Web site has a complete list of grammar rules and and reading/grammar quizzes.

Cons
If you already score higher than 700 on SAT Verbal and 30 on ACT English/Reading/Science, this book might be too easy. You'd benefit more from taking practice tests and reading 10th-to-12th grade level books to build an advanced vocabulary.

Ultimate Guide to ACT Math (Richard Corn)

This is the closest thing to an ACT Math textbook I've seen. It organizes content review and practice drills by topic. If you don't feel comfortable with high school math, start your prep with this book.

Students who get A's in school math often struggle with the ACT. A school test focuses on one chapter of your book at a time, and a good teacher tells you exactly what's going to be on that test. The ACT, on the other hand, tests knowledge that ranges from 7th grade to precalculus and includes Common Core material that not all students have seen yet.

Pros
Richard Corn's book is enough like a textbook to get you comfortable with the topics that are tested on the ACT, but it's not long enough to be truly intimidating.

Cons
The main strength of Corn's book, its textbook-style organization, is also its weakness. The real ACT won't tell you whether a particular problem is testing the standard-form equation of a circle, the area of a circle, or right triangles within the unit circle. It could potentially test all three topics at the same time!

To truly be ready for the ACT, you have to learn how to think on your feet. Corn's book is great if you need content review as a primer, but you'll want to graduate quickly to more advanced practice materials.

28 ACT Math Lessons to Improve Your Score in One Month: ADVANCED Course (Steve Warner)

28 ACT Math Lessons to Improve Your Score in One Month: INTERMEDIATE Course (Steve Warner)

28 ACT Math Lessons to Improve Your Score in One Month: BEGINNER Course (Steve Warner)

320 ACT Math Problems arranged by Topic and Difficulty Level (Steve Warner)

These excellent practice books can get your ACT Math score into the 30-36 range. They're banks of practice problems with detailed answer explanations.

Pros
The practice material is very similar to real ACT Math tests.

The problems are arranged by topic and difficulty level, so students who don't need any content review can jump straight to the chapters that contain what they want to work on.

The answer explanations provide more than one way to do each problem, and the fastest method is marked with a star.

Cons
Content review is minimal. Dr. Warner does define terms like range and domain in his answer explanations, but his book doesn't have an index. You'll need to label important pages with Post-It notes.

If you need content review, start with Richard Corn's Ultimate Guide to ACT Math and come back to Warner's book later.

If you feel rushed on ACT Math practice tests - a common problem - you need to make answer choice elimination and guessing your primary strategy on the easiest 80% of the test. If you correctly eliminate four choices, the fifth one has to be right, even if you haven't solved the problem traditionally. Eliminating answer choices is usually fast and less error-prone than traditional solutions, but (unfortunately) isn't taught directly in Richard Corn's and Steve Warner's books.

Errata
#1 on page 86 of the Advanced book has three possible correct answers: A, D, and E.

#4 on page 121 of the Advanced book is unsolvable unless you assume that the marbles need to be close to evenly distributed between the boxes.

#9 on page 205 of the Advanced book has a confusing answer explanation. The answer key is correct, though.

#2 on page 242 of the Advanced book is unsolvable unless you assume that shape at the upper left of the picture is a semicircle. (You should not make assumptions unless they're explicitly stated on the ACT, so the book shouldn't expect you to, either.)

#8 on page 244 of the Advanced book is unsolvable unless you assume that the two triangles shown are right triangles. (Again, you should not be expected to make assumptions that are not explicitly stated in the problem.)

#11 on page 328 of the Advanced book should state that the pyramid has five isosceles triangular faces (not four) and needs to point out that the pyramid is a right pyramid (in which the height is perpendicular to the base).

For the Love of ACT Science (Michael Cerro)

Cerro's book is an excellent strategy guide that can get your ACT Science score into the 30-34 range. He goes over each question type in detail and provides drills, practice tests, and answer explanations.

Pros
It's hard to write good practice questions for ACT Science. I suspect this is because most teachers don't know how to read scientific literature. You have to read journals regularly to understand concepts like correlation and causation, experiment design, and hypothesis evaluation, and even then, most scientific articles read like alien writing.

Given the difficulties involved, Cerro does a great job putting realistic-looking questions together. If you want a dedicated book for ACT Science that's written by a tutor and not a big test prep company, Cerro's book is the only option.

Mike Barrett's ACT Prep Black Book also has excellent strategies for ACT Science, but it requires you to buy The Official ACT Prep Guide.

Cons
The pro is also a con: Cerro's attempt at the impossible, writing accurate ACT Science questions, results in a book that's very good but has some weaknesses. You might feel that a few of his questions and answer explanations are written in a confusing way. If that bothers you, get Barrett's book instead and stick to official ACT questions.

If you want a 34-36 in ACT Science but struggle with finishing the test on time, Cerro's book probably won't be enough. You'll need to work on using your background knowledge to identify the answer that's probably correct before looking at the passage and then use the passage to verify that answer you chose. I'm not aware of any book that teaches this strategy, but I use it in my own tutoring.

Errata
#34 of the Chapter 5 Test (page 89): There is not enough information to answer the question. Based on background knowledge, the answer should be G (methane), which is the answer in the book's answer key, but Student 3 (whom we are being asked about) might argue differently.

The Master Key to ACT Science (Hugh Hung Q. Vo)

There is a noticeable lack of advanced prep guides for ACT Science on the market. My own preference is that students work on building their background knowledge so that they can reduce their reliance on reading the (often long and confusing) passages.

I don't know of any prep book that will teach you how to do this, so if you can't sign up for tutoring, the next best thing is probably this Hugh Hung Q. Vo's book.

It's very dense and will require a lot of self-discipline to get through, as the author's purpose is to help you look at science passages and break down experiments as an actual scientist would. There's also less of an emphasis on background knowledge than I would prefer.

Pros
The table of contents clearly lists the types of questions that students struggle with. If you've taken and reviewed your own practice tests and know exactly what you need help with, this book can be a useful reference manual.

Cons
There's a lot of information packed into this book's pages, and you could easily get cross-eyed trying to figure out what's going on. Unless you're a very serious student, it's probably better to go with Michael Cerro's book.

ACT Essay Sample Responses

Because the ACT essay has changed over the past few years, old editions (pre-2019) of the Official ACT Prep Guide have the wrong essay instructions. If you have one of those older editions, you'll have to go to the ACT's essay page to see the most recent version. That page also has sample essays written by students along with comments on how the essays were graded. There are a total of six sample essays; click on the links in the horizontal, purple Sample Essays bar in order to see all six.

Here's a copy of the updated instructions as of June 2018. Note that instead of having to write about all three perspectives, you can pick only one, giving you the ability to write with more clarity and focus.

The test describes an issue and provides three different perspectives on the issue. You are asked to read and consider the issue and perspectives, state your own perspective on the issue, and analyze the relationship between your perspective and at least one other perspective on the issue. Your score will not be affected by the perspective you take on the issue.

Books to Avoid

Kaplan's series of ACT prep books generally focuses on material that's too easy. The initial diagnostic practice test may give you an inflated score that is unlikely to repeat itself in a real ACT sitting.

Working with Official Practice Tests

If you find unofficial questions to be inaccurate or confusing, you can still prep for the ACT using only official practice tests.

1. Take a practice test under timed conditions.
2. Score your test and clearly mark the questions you missed. Use a different symbol to mark the questions that you got right by guessing.
3. Review the questions you missed or had to guesss on. Spend at least ten minutes on each one. You have to prove to yourself that each question objectively has one right answer and three incorrect ones.
4. Make a list of the questions you're not able to figure out on your own. Use Mike Barrett's answer explanations, the Internet, or a tutor's help to get to the point where you can clearly identify one correct answer and three incorrect ones for every single question. Your job isn't done until you can do this.
5. Repeat the process using a new practice test. Keep the cycle going until you're happy with your scores.

This method can work really well if you have a tutor. Do a practice test and hire a tutor to go over some of the answers with you, then spend time at home going over the remaining answers on your own. In your next session, you can go over any questions that are still confusing. When you and your tutor are satisfied that you fully understand the first practice test, repeat the process with a new test.

Going for a Perfect Score

Since the ACT is an established test, you have plenty of resources to draw on if you want to practice for a perfect score.

If you get two 35's and two 36's, the four scores will round to a composite of 36. In addition, difficult test sections give you free points, so you might potentially miss one or even two questions on a section and still get a 36 on it.

Take an official test to get a baseline score and then go through all the books in the list above. After you're done, do as many official practice tests as you can. Since the ACT gives you some leeway to get questions wrong, you should work on improving your speed and accuracy on official tests rather than on unofficial books with questions that are intentionally harder than the real thing.

Most of all, go easy on yourself if you don't make it. Colleges want students who will bring them glory, and the difference between a 34 and a 36 doesn't say much about that potential in the long run.

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