Testing, Testing, Testing.

The two-hour long Advanced Placement Microeconomics exam was the last standardized test I took as a high school student. I still remember feeling triumphant and relieved when the proctor collected our booklets. I was done. I had survived the College Board's onslaught of SATs, APs and SAT IIs. I had weathered 17 tests that consumed over 50 hours, and I was finally free to start anew as a college freshman. Good-bye, standardized testing; hello, Harvard.

Now that I'm heading into my senior year of college, I look back on my youthful naïveté with a little confusion. What exactly was I expecting to be so different in college?

My 12th-grade self would probably be disappointed that college students still obsess about standardized tests. Graduate and professional school applications require exams, and good students begin preparing far in advance. I have friends who took the MCAT(Medical College Admission Test) after working through prep books and taking Kaplan courses, and my roommate recently completed the Graduate Record Examination so he can apply to a doctoral program in physics. My plan to become an attorney led me to the LSAT (Law School Admission Test).

It is high school all over again. Even in ninth grade, ambitious students were talking about someday going to Stanford or Harvard or Yale. By junior year, college was everything. We worried so much because everyone knew how tough it was to get into the big-name colleges.

With so much pressure, we sought help from test prep books and study guides. Friends who did not know the name of the Supreme Court chief justice knew the names of all the book publishers: Kaplan, Princeton Review, Barron's, Peterson's, Arco, Cliffs Notes, Spark Notes, Schaum's. Test prep books helped us prepare for standardized tests and study guides clarified difficult schoolwork in subjects like English literature and math. From those books, I learned the strategies and did the practice problems. They familiarized me with the exams and gave me confidence. So when it came time to prepare for the LSAT, I logged onto Amazon.com and sought out my old friends.

No. 2 Pencils: Turning to Test Prep

Old might actually be an understatement. I have been using test prep books since sixth grade. My pre-algebra teacher had handed out information about a program that recognized youths who did well on the SAT.

My curiosity was piqued. I was young and did not lack for confidence. I was writing a Hardy Boys—inspired novel; I was taking pre-algebra with the seventh graders. How hard could the SAT be? My parents drove me to the public library, where I raided the test prep section. I borrowed an impossible number of books on a two-week loan—verbal and math workbooks from Barron's, Gruber's monstrous tome and volumes by Kaplan, Peterson's and Arco.

I followed the instructions in Peterson's and took the short diagnostic test in the book's opening pages. The baffling problems were an hour-long reality check. I started over, methodically learning words and concepts. I had my parents buy a Barron's book and I slowly worked through the tear-out flash cards. I read through the other prep books, starting with Kaplan and ending with Gruber's.

The major publishers followed an almost identical template. Review sections outlined the important mathematical rules and properties—the Pythagorean theorem, complementary angles, the quadratic formula. The books offered vocabulary lists of differing lengths and various strategies for the reading passages. Practice exams made up the balance.

The Kaplan, Arco and Peterson's books were similar in content and level of difficulty. But that was a good thing. Three books meant three times the practice.

Since I was in no hurry to actually take the SAT back then, I could focus on understanding the many laws and properties, and then using that knowledge to answer the problems. I skipped the Princeton Review book, with its bold promise to help me "crack the SAT" using inefficient techniques like "plug and chug," which never seemed to work for the most difficult questions.

I also had plenty of time to work through simulated tests and familiarize myself with the exam format and the types of questions. There are only so many variations that the test-makers at Educational Testing Service can make on angles or algebra. After a lot of practice, some problems started looking similar, with Bill and Joe mowing a lawn instead of Sue and Jill mending a fence. The bountiful practice was undoubtedly the most helpful facet of test prep books. The College Board, which administers the SAT, generously spread the wealth with the publication of its 10 Real SATs series.

Learning the Material: Study Guides

Before I could answer the questions, though, I had to learn the material. Test prep books are about review, not teaching. As the result of a mixup, I had been placed in trigonometry instead of geometry in ninth grade and never learned about perimeters, pentagons or proofs. On a teacher's recommendation, I checked out a geometry book published by Schaum's and learned what I needed for the SAT.

I continued to use study guides in high school as supplements to my tougher classes. After some early struggles with physics, I picked up the relevant title in REA's Problem Solvers series. The book teemed with examples and step-by-step solutions, but the problem scenarios were sometimes dated and the authors did not indicate what concepts were the most important. REA was clearly shooting for an older audience more acquainted with physics than I was.

I later discovered that the review sections in advanced placement prep books could often fill the study guide void. The Barron's series was excellent, and my AP teachers sometimes assigned problems out of those books. The concept explanations in the Barron's calculus cleared up some of my confusion, and the American government volume was comprehensive enough that I ended up taking the test without attending an AP class. However, when high schools offer decent AP courses, students probably don't need prep books. Perhaps that's why there's an underwhelming number of tomes for some subjects. Several companies publish titles for calculus and U.S. history, but good luck finding more than one book on world history or environmental science.

Where to Go? College Guides

While high school students confront an absurd number of standardized tests in hopes of getting into a prominent college, exams are only part of the process. Students still have to decide where they want to go. It is easy to pick a big-name school, but choosing the right liberal arts or regional college is trickier. Why Williams instead of Haverford or Amherst, or Golden Gate University or Antioch?

Around 15 million students will return to college or start as freshmen this fall, and out of those newcomers, some will have already visited their college and others during high school. While I agree that such hands-on experience is unique and informative, I chose the more cost-effective method of staying at home and browsing the college guides by Fiske and the Princeton Review. Both books provided fairly detailed profiles of the universities, including demographic statistics, historical overviews and assessments of academic and student life. I consulted two guides because they approached the colleges from different angles. I found that Fiske focused more on the facts, while Princeton Review incorporates student reactions and opinions into the writeups. I had heard so many stories of college misery from my older friends that everything mattered as I whittled down my application list. In this, as in every other step of my academic career, I figured the more information from the more sources, the better.