Does reading the SAT preparation books made for earlier SAT exams help for the new ones (the ones starting from 2016)? (From Quora)

The math is the same for pre-2016 and 2016-and-later “new” SAT books. with the exception of right-triangle trigonometry and imaginary and complex numbers. The books I used before and after 2016 didn’t bother to write very many new math problems for the chapters on subjects common to the new and old SAT (i.e., everything but right-triangle trig and imaginary/complex numbers). They did come up with many new problems for the practice tests, and those problems are a bit different from old SAT problems. But you can learn these problems by doing similar ones from the College Board’s website (don’t bother to buy THEIR books - the same tests are available for free download from their website, and their review chapters aren’t that great) or from Khan Academy.


Alec G-Man is correct, to some extent, in that old (or new) ACT books would work better for SAT prep than old SAT books, because the new SAT practically copied the ACT wholesale - the new SAT writing section is basically the ACT English (as some SAT prep tutors commented in the documentary “The Test,” the ACT people (American College Testing) should seriously consider suing the College Board for copyright infringement. And older SAT grammar/usage/vocabulary “sentence correction” problems would still be good practice for the writing/English portion of the SAT or ACT.


However, the SAT math questions are more “trick question”-like than most ACT questions, so I’d be more inclined to use old SAT math books than ACT ones to study for the new math SAT. I also really like most test prep books’ coverage of the tips and tricks for countering common SAT tricks and for guessing (which they’re not going to give you on the College Board site or Khan Academy’s videos, as far as I can tell - it’d be like the California Highway Patrol telling people where the freeway speed traps are).
I’d say you can use the old review books for the math and general practice, but you really should try a post-2016 review book for additional practice and better explanations than the College Board’s answer explanations. Khan Academy is great, but Barron’s SAT is really great for learning the tricks to SAT taking, as are books from Kaplan, Princeton Review, etc. Why don’t you see if you can look at a post-2016 SAT book at your public library, or post on FreeCycle, Rooster, or Craigslist to ask for one? I’m sure at least a few people near you have such a book to give away.


Best of luck,
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John
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