How to Prepare for the SAT II Chemistry

Rating:
Summary: There are better choices
Review: Barron's has a history of making bad test-prep books, though unarguably, REA is worse. I took the SAT II Biology last year, received an 800, but it was most certainly not the Barron's book that helped. The Barron's book was completely off key in giving difficult enough information, and falsely boosted my confidence in entering the actual test, which was much more difficult than the questions in the Barron's book. In contrast, for the SAT II Chemistry, some of the questions seem unreasonably abstruse and irrelevant (just like REA), providing information that does not help you for the test. Princeton Review has too much of a relaxed tone and misses out on some information as well, and Kaplan also has some unnecessary stuff like (Delta G = -RT ln Keq, some extra electrochemistry stuff), and doesn't have the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation etc. Though a mix of Princeton Review, Kaplan, and Barron's ultimately works. You should definitely stay away from REA though--best to borrow these books from your local library than to buy them.

Rating:
Summary: practice tests help
Review: This book has a lot of useful information in it, but I think the practice tests are the most valuable part. The one thing that was not in the practice tests was an ample supply of questions about descriptive chemistry, which were frequent when I took the actual test. Make sure you study descriptive chemistry. Even though I scored 750, below what I had hoped for, it is still a good book.

Rating:
Summary: Goes beyond the SAT II Chemistry and AP!!
Review: This review book was really good. I only had like a week to prepare for the test so I turned to this book as a last resort. It is better than some of the AP Chem books. I wished I had this book for AP Chem. It is so helpful. It goes over the major topics in detail and most importantly, reviews the labs, which are really stressed on the SAT II Chemistry. It's true what my teacher told me. After you take an AP class, you will forget everything. I did pretty poorly on the SAT II Chemistry. My fault for procrastinating. I get my scores back tomorrow. Hope I got like a 700.