General

Someone already said but take Elite. They will drill that stuff into you. I would take the SATs once before though to see where you're at.

#wingit

I did, got 2k, not too shabby

[quote=dopeazn]SAT classes are the biggest waste of money. Tryhard Asian kids take it because their parents think they're dumb. Convince your parents to reconsider. You should be fine self studying for such an easy test. A lot of people I knew didn't study at all and got 2000+ easily. Some dumb kids took classes for it and still got 1400-1600. If you were destined to be stupid, the class won't help you. If you're competent, you don't need the class.[/quote]

I'm Asian, I find this untrue (though I could be one of the rare ones). I got such an embarrassing score on the PSAT. (And I can imagine what's going to happen on the SAT)

But there are still some things that are wrong (and right).
1. You can't just say you're destined to be stupid. Sure you may not be top of the class, but with enough effort, anyone should be able to hit above 1800+.
2. You must have gifted friends because people don't get 2000+ easy without knowing their stuff correctly. Even if those people are gifted, the SAT is based on logic and reasoning (basically tricks) and you just have to be smart to see it. So your friends are either in advanced math courses and English honors classes or bs.
3. Self studying is right. However, you must have the materials in order to study such as the SAT book from CollegePrep or any other similar book. In addition, some past SAT tests could help you (as well as the PSAT if you took it.) But these books are hella expensive and you're going to use it for a couple of years and throw it away. (Note: This doesn't guarantee a better score, so it may not work.)

I took an SAT prep class and it actually didn't help. I was in a class with many people and half the time I couldn't hear them, and the rest of the time, it was all common knowledge or I never studied that before. At the end, I still got the same score I got on the PSAT. I was very depressed (and I did make a thread on Basil here because I was worried.)

Now, I have a private Chem tutor who apparently also has SAT prep. I can say for sure that I'm better than before, but not so good that I get all the questions correct.

But you may not be so lucky. I recommend asking others around you or your counselor for some good SAT prep classes. They're a lot around, but you need to find a good, affordable one. (There's one near me that's extremely good, but it's hella expensive. That leads to one answer: no.)

SAT classes are the biggest waste of money. Tryhard Asian kids take it because their parents think they're dumb. Convince your parents to reconsider. You should be fine self studying for such an easy test. A lot of people I knew didn't study at all and got 2000+ easily. Some dumb kids took classes for it and still got 1400-1600. If you were destined to be stupid, the class won't help you. If you're competent, you don't need the class.

I've never taken classes, but private tutors are probably more efficient.

Keep in mind that all the resources you need for a high score are available online, if you have the willpower to not be distracted.

Also, from what I've seen, and from personal experience, most score increase comes from practicing. My friends took a bunch of classes, and from what I understood, it was just mostly practice problems, with the teacher explaining how to do the ones he got wrong. I bought a book of practice tests from the library for like $2.50, and got the same thing.

Honestly, if you understand all the concepts in the test (take a practice test, look at the answers, and for all the ones you got wrong, you can tell why you got it wrong, and you understand how to do it correctly after reading the explanation), just take more practice tests, cause a class is not going to help you much at that point. Otherwise, a class will be helpful.

Elite
[url=http://www.eliteprep.com/]i went here and it helped kinda[/url]

No one would know the best place to take an SAT prep course if they don't live in the bay area...just find out from your friends which are the most popular. As for tutor vs taking a course, if you're more independent go with taking a course & vice versa. Usually I dislike taking courses because all the other "lesser intelligent" people take up the time

For your last question, that really depends on the quality of the tutor and the course. Typically I would imagine a one-on-one tutor would be best, though likely extremely expensive, as they'll be able to focus a lot more of their attention on solely you.
As for your other questions, I have no idea. Personally I would prefer self-study, since the internet is chock-full of SAT/test prep!

I never took SAT, but I took the equivalent of it in my home country. Private tutor is really the best if you know what you are doing/what you want. I took public courses and they weren't that helpful (not denying that they have benefits, but not worth it). My tutor was awesome, he threw at me 100-150 math questions to be completed in a day and by the time I took the exam, I was super-saiyan-asian-math mad person.
I don't know what else is there in the SAT aside from math. If there is English/literature, I would recommend to only focus on vocabs that appeared in previous exams. However, if you are below average in reading, then you should focus on english.

I don't study, I just pass.