Barrons blunders

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jheidenr

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Am I just stupid, or did anyone else notice several mistakes on the Barrons science exam questions? I just finished "Model Examination A" and have found at least 4 questions that definitely have mistakes in the questions or the answers (26, 55, 57, 60...and who know how many more?). I am not impressed. If you are thinking of getting this book...DON'T!
 
Yep, you're not crazy, Barron's has made more mistakes than Pres. Bush (maybe I best not go there). I had a moment of panic after calculating my scores before I checked which answers I got wrong. Some of the strategies in the book are helpful but don't take the tests too seriously.
 
A friend of mine and I both had copies of the Barron's book, and we decided to sit down on a Saturday and take a mock full-length test together. We did the same test out of each book.

When we scored our tests, we didn't do very well. However, once we started checking what we missed, we realized that there were answers in the key that were just blatantly wrong.

What's even more absurd - our answer keys were different! Some of the answers in my answer key were completely different from his. The answers weren't necessarily changed to correct answers, either. We figured that one of our books was a revision of the other, but couldn't find evidence of this anywhere in the book.

The Barron's book is useful for its advice on PAT methods, and for the PAT practice since its examples are fairly difficult (although I wouldn't trust the answers given). It is also helpful for its application advice, and for some of its other test-taking advice.

Other than that, in my opinion, the book is crap. Don't waste your time with it. The biology section simply goes into WAY too much depth. Focus on everything Kaplan's got to offer and you'll be spending your time much more efficiently.
 
I was just about to post about the same thing! I took Model Exam A for the Natural Sciences ended up with a Bio-17, GChem-17, OChem-15, TS-17....I thought I did much better then that! Going through the answer key showed it was crap though, an example is question 35

During Transcription:

(Their answer): Information from nucleic acids is moved to proteins

Umm I picked: RNA molecules are formed from DNA templates by a process not unlike DNA replication.

Yea this test scared the sh** outta me when i graded it, but thankfully I'm not the only one who thought it was wrong.
 
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