The Scholastic Assessment Test, or SAT, is the most popular college entrance exam for upcoming high school graduates, and for many it's their first big formal exam. The SAT can be highly stressful to study for, and covers Math, Reading, and Writing in-depth. Understandably, you want to succeed and want to do it confidently, luckily for you there's a large amount of useful prep books available to help you score high enough for your college and university admissions.
In this list, we'll look at a short list of our best-ranked SAT Prep books to help you or your child succeed on the big day. Rankings will be based on quality of content, affordability, and practice question availability
Table of Contents
Quality: 9/10
Price: Free
In the official guide released by the makers of the SAT itself, you'll find a variety of practice tests, general guides, and their partnership with Khan Academy to provide content overview of the test, all for free! The practice tests are actual past SATs that have been proctored in previous years, and provide valuable insight into how the actual test will ask certain questions, and will help you strengthen your weaknesses that may have gone unnoticed before the actual testing date. The questions aren't just practice, they were once the real deal, and are a great resource for students to prepare with. Further, Khan Academy's overview of different content provides a wide array of possible topics covered on the SAT, and are a great piece of content to use when either reviewing practice tests or learning new concepts entirely. The only drawback is that it doesn't contain much in terms of strategy on question answering and timing, but those strategies are easily accessible for free on many online forums, so it shouldn't be something to hold students back greatly.
College Board also provides an official guide to the SAT that covers each topic and provides the same practice tests along with the answers/explanations for each question. It does cost a bit less than $20, but since it contains the exact same things as the free online version we recommend just sticking to the online version, unless your study plan requires the paperback.
Quality: 10/10
Price: $31.49
The SAT Black Book has a renowned reputation for a reason: It's the best SAT Strategy book around and has led many students to that 99th percentile score. The Black Book provides not only insights into how best to answer different questions, but also understandings on how or why those questions were included in the first place. This is useful because much of the SAT revolves around thinking like the writers, and much of the Reading section can be efficiently answered once proper strategy is in place.
By far the most important part of the Black Book is its coverage of trick questions. The SAT can be full of tricks and question traps, and as such guides like this are invaluable, covering what trick questions may look like what answer prompts can be associated with the right answer if you're feeling lost.
The Black Book is by and large one of the best SAT preps around, and although it may cost some more than others, it is well worth the price.
Quality: 8/10
Price: $12.49
Tried and True, every past SAT prepper has either heard of or used the Princeton Review's SAT prep guide. In this guide you'll find a variety of strategies, practice tests, questions, and study guides for the SAT. The answer explanations for their practice questions are thorough and coherent, with a variety of ways to tackle each reading section. The newer (and more expensive) options also include a set of flash cards and a digital review tool that can be used to find weaknesses in your SAT strategy. The nearly-900 page book contains multiple practice tests and provides a reliable scoring tool for each test to help define your study goals and strategies.
The downside to this prep route is the fact that their practice tests are not official, and are instead created by the Princeton Review. While this isn't necessarily a huge roadblock, it does make them a bit more difficult than the real deal. Some may see this as a benefit, to others as added stress, but either way the Princeton Review SAT Prep is a valuable and affordable tool for studying for the SAT.
Quality: 9/10
Price: $31.34
Contrary to traditional SAT Prep books, College Panda focuses solely on SAT Math, and are phenomenal at doing so. With over 500 practice SAT Math questions, you'll find thorough and strategic explanations for each answer as well as ways you could improve on each possible incorrect conceptual understanding. Uniquely, Panda also goes into tricks on the SAT's Desmos system, which is a newly-implemented aid to help graphical and other algebraic questions. Their coverage of trick SAT questions can greatly help you avoid traps on the day of, without confusing you in a sea of incoherent jargon.
The main downside revolves around the higher price compared to it only covering 1/2 of the SAT. It covers none of the Reading & Writing portions, but that also isn't the point of the book. They also use their own practice SAT questions as compared to the questions straight from College Board, but their explanations of strategy and tricks can make up for this deficit incredibly well.
If you're someone who typically struggles with math and are really worried about how you'll do on SAT Math, this is the book for you. Panda goes over every possible aspect of the SAT Math questions, and you'll find yourself improving progressively with their proven strategies in a rather short amount of time.
Quality: 9/10
Price: $29.74
Complementing College Panda comes the Reading portion of the SAT, authored by Erica Meltzer who has numerous years prepping other students in the Reading portion of the SAT. Meltzer effortlessly and expertly details the various strategies and makeups of different reading section questions, as well as the different ways in which students could go about answering the more difficult reading portions of the SAT. The guide goes in-depth on the necessary grammar and vocabulary students need to know in order to score well on the SAT, as well as passage dissection strategies used to cut down on time while still preserving maximal efficiency during the real deal.
The book includes multiple different reading passages similar to those you'd see on the real SAT, and has updated their strategies to cater towards the digital SAT as well, providing an incredibly useful resource for any students struggling with the Reading & Writing portions of the test. By and large, if you have the resources and funding for both Panda and Meltzer, you or your child will be well-prepared for the big day and their first steps into the college life.
Conclusion
There you have it, the best SAT Prep Books of 2024 according to the tutoring experts at Nucleus Tutoring. Rest assured, you'll find strong support from both these texts as well as the professional tutors at Nucleus. Individualized and convenient study schedules, guidance, and lessons are available from our SAT tutors at the click of a button. Schedule your path to a1600 score today at our website today!
