Is the Barrons SAT practice tests harder than the real thing?
Oh yes! They certainly are more difficult than the actual SAT. When I first took Barron’s practice tests for the SAT subject in math I was surprised with the difficulty. I’m pretty strong at math but I was getting in the 650-700 range on the Barron’s tests. Later I took practice tests from other books (Princeton, Sparknotes) and found that on those I could even scrape an 800. (As it turns out I did just that on the actual exam) You have to take the Barron’s tests with a grain of salt and remember not to get discouraged if you score poorer than you expect on those.
