Direct Hits Toughest Vocabulary of the Sat Paperback – August 10, 2012

I received a review copy of the 5th edition, both volumes. As a tutor who has been using Direct Hits since the 1st edition and has also used 300 Essential Words, I offer the following comments.First, there are a lot of lists out there (I'm sure I've seen almost all of them), but the Direct Hits Family is the best. The list is based upon the actual SAT Test. The list is manageable. 1000 words, 3500 words, 5000 words?! Really? If you know that many words you need to work for Merriam-Webster. Time would be better spent reading. It is so well organized. The 5th edition shows welcome changes from the earlier editions. The explanations require less reading, sentences rather than passages. The Latin/Greek roots are interspersed throughout the books and connected with the relevant words. Direct Hits does a fantastic job in bring up previous words in new lessons; this serves as functional review. There are less sentence completion review exercises than in the earlier versions, but if you know how to use the blog posts it more than makes up for it.Heck, if you're already in college but find the reading "soo hard" get both volumes and get educated son. It's not gonna get eazier.In conclusion, I recommend Direct Hits for tutors, self-studying SAT students or anyone who wants to get a vocabulary foundation for college level. Remember, it is a start not a panacea, but it's probably the best start out there.

I read about the Direct Hits series on College Confidential where people gave them glowing reviews. Figuring the books weren't that expensive, I decided to see for myself. I have a number of PSAT/SAT vocab prep resources, but these are definitely my favorite. I like reading stories that reinforce word meanings instead of just rote memory / notecard / fill-in-the-blank style vocabulary books. In addition, I was pleased to see that a good number of these words consistently appear in the SAT Blue Book and in old PSAT's I found online. I expect that rigorous study of these words will really be a boon to anyone who puts the time in and studies them.The Toughest Words Vocab book has a good selection of the esoteric words that appear on these tests, and it even has a section of exercises in the back of the book to reinforce word mastery. Definitely a "direct hit", if you ask me!

When my daughter was getting ready for the SAT her older brother and I had a blast taking two facing pages and adding our own notes to the entries. I'd prop it up by her lunch on the kitchen table and she read it while she ate breakfast. It was a fun few months and became a neat little joke/communication among us three.Memorizing word lists isn't a terribly efficient way to prep, I don't think, the best thing to do is read often from a young age, IMO. But this was a good use of time and we made it fun.FWIW she did better on the ACT which is less vocab-heavy.

People who read a lot will know most of these words, so my daughter wasn't impressed with this book. If you're not into reading, then this book will probably help.

This is the first list of SAT vocab that I can say is actually useful to someone trying to get in the 700-800 range for the Critical Reading Portion of the SAT. I've seen many other lists (i.e. Princeton Review) and they usually are words that may be considered difficult to some, but are definitely common. I usually recognize every word. When I took the PSAT and SAT for the first time, there were many words which I wouldn't have even known were words. This book has those words. A decent amount of words in this book are ones that I have never seen before. I even saw words that I remembered not knowing from when I took the sat. I got a 630 on my first CR with half of my points deducted from just sentence completion. This book will hopefully get me above a 700 on CR. I will report back.

As a junior, I needed to be prepared for AP tests especially in English Language and for the SAT.Direct Hits did not fail me. Thanks to their fun method of teaching vocab through relevant stories, it was a breeze learning the words.And these words aren't only relevant for the SAT(which I scored a 680 on Critical Reading on my first try). I've read other nonfiction books such as Into the Wild and I was delighted seeing vocab I've learned from this book.To anyone wanting to brush up their vocabulary for the SAT, AP test, or just anything in general, this book is a worthy purchase.By the way, I want to include that I first read the CORE VOCABULARY Direct Hits. Don't forget to buy that one too!

If you have scrolled through any of the forums of College Confidential (a great website to help prepare for SAT, lots of strategies and etc.) it is obvious that Direct Hits is the winner. I previously recommended Word Smart series, but I change my mind seeing this one. Best one out there. (P.S. don't be dumb and do stupid stuff like Baron's 3500, real waste of time. See CC for more information)

Most invaluable part of this book is the vocab, not the short anecdote it provides. You can easily find the vocab on quizlet. Make your own sentence with the vocab will help you memorize better than reading these long paragraphs. DOn't get me wrong, some of them are actually pretty interesting. But most of them are just long and redundant in my opinion. T raditional VOcab + Sentence is the way to go