Customer Reviews

Barron's SAT Subject Test Math Level 2, 8th Edition

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I'm surprised at this kind of quality from Barron's.

Other reviewers have probably already said what I'm going to say- but no matter, it will give you a second opinion to verify the poor quality of this book.

First mistake: the answer sheets for every practice exam only include 4 answer bubbles for each question (there should be 5 answer bubbles, and it got annoying after a while). But this is only a minor mistake...

Second mistake: the answer key is sometimes wrong (I encountered this problem maybe once or twice each test). What's worse- when the answers are explained, the answer is still wrong! The explanation will have the wrong answer choice (like C instead of A), but the solution will be for the correct answer. This was frustrating sometimes and gives you a permanent mistrust of all of their answers and solutions.

The review section is still decent- a lot of concepts are adequately summarized. But all in all, if you can help it, don't go for this book. Choose a competitor's. I liked Kaplan (the difficulty of the practice exams more closely modeled the real thing). And of course the official College Board study guide is a good book for assessment and accurately predicting your score. I gave this book two stars because I don't think you should buy it when there are so many decent competitors out there.

I am an SAT Math Level 2 tutor, and I have been working with this test for over 10 years. This Barron's book is absolutely the worst Math Level 2 book that I have ever seen. The questions in this book are (a) significantly more difficult than those on the actual exam, and (b) nothing at all like those on the actual exam.

On this test, matrix questions are considered difficult, and uniformly appear at the end of the exam. In the Barron's practice tests, matrix questions appear very early in the test amongst the easy questions. On the real test, polar coordinate questions are pretty straightforward, and yet still considered difficult by the test makers. The Barron's book puts extremely difficult polar coordinate questions very early in the test.

The subjects covered, the difficulty, the sorts of tasks, and the wording are absolutely nothing like the actual test. Did the Barron's author even bother examining the actual test? I think not. While it might be cool to see if you can do the math in this book, it will in no way help you prepare for the test. I highly recommend never even opening this book.

This book is puzzling. Two authors, each with an M.A. (though I don't know in what), can't seem to take the time or effort to get things right. Frankly, they should be embarrassed by this mess. On the practice tests, there are problems with no correct answers, problems with multiple correct answers, and problems with errors galore. Here are some specific examples of errors, from the minor to the egregious.

Page 311, problem 18: The problem asks for the ratio of p to q if 4.05^p = 5.25^q but fails to state that p and q cannot be zero. (This is a mathematical error but not spectacularly important to students preparing for the test.)

Page 311, problem 20: We're told that cos(67) = tan(x) and asked to find x. The actual number of solutions is infinite.

Page 309, problem 8: Two points in the second quadrant have coordinates (x,y) and (y,cy). But how can that be since the first y must be positive and the second negative? This is a serious error.

Page 312, problem 24: The problem involves a deck of playing cards. Playing cards are not proper for the real test. This is a moderately important error since it might lead students to believe (falsely) that they must understand a deck of cards.

Page 317, problem 50: The problem asks for arcsin(cos(100)) but requires you to change from degrees to radians in the middle of the problem. Why mathematical point is there in that nonsense? Students who learn Barron's tomfoolery such as changes from degrees to radians in the middle of a problem are not preparing for the real exam; they are preparing for Barron's exams.

I've chosen only a few pages close together to give an idea of how many errors there are. The book really is, I believe, awful preparation for the actual Subject Test and does not convey the feel of the real test. There seems to be little or no effort, for example, to put questions in order of difficulty, and there seems to be little effort to use the types of questions that the actual test uses.

I give this two stars, though, because parts of it can be useful. I would not, however, recommend the book for a student who plans to go it alone. I also would especially not recommend it to a student who becomes discouraged by the difficulty of the Barron's tests. There are certainly better guides out there.

I totally disagree with everyone here. This is the one I used for SAT math level 2, and I got 800 on the test. I have to say that if I had not used this book, I would have only gotten about 700 or even lower on the test. What helped me to bring up my score is this book. Most questions in the book are definitely harder than those on the real test, but the book has the same level of hard questions appeared on the real test. If you want to shoot for 750+ on the test, you should choose this one; otherwise, use Princeton review or something else.

Don't buy this book, it's not worth your money. I suggest you buy Princeton Review instead. Like someone before me said, it is obvious that the people who published this book didn't take any time to look over it or they would've found numerous mistakes. No "e" choices for any of the answer choices? That was already kind of annoying, but the numerous printing and mistakes made in explanations makes me wonder if they printed a draft instead of the final copy. For instance, they left out the ^'s in one question, which confused me for quite a while. I found at least 3 instances when the answer was just plain wrong. What really pissed me off, though, was that one question asked you to calculate the area of the triangles in a graph shown above the questions--yet they began the explanation with "To calculate the area of the rectangles in under the graph..." It would've been somewhat forgivable as a typing mistake, but when I looked at my friend's book (the 2007 or I think 7th edition) I found that the exact same question was in her book, with the exact same mistake in their explanation. A new edition is supposed to correct old errors and improve, but they obviously just reprinted it for more money!
Another thing is that this test is WAY harder than the real exam. I was NEVER able to finish a test in the alotted time. My friend got an 800 on the real test but she said when she took Barron's exam, she got 8 questions wrong (definitely not an 800). They're supposed to give you a sense of what the real test is like and help you review for it, but they just stressed me out for the real exam because I was afraid I'd fail.
This book is definitely not worth your money. Don't buy it, send a message to Barron's that if they want customers, they need to fix up their product.

When you hear Barron's, you think you're getting a good deal. Helpful tips and understandable explanations, right?

Well, this book DOES NOT live up to the standard. I found numerous mistakes throughout the book that I might as well just mark it up with my red pen. The answers and explanations don't match in some questions not to mention that the explanations are spotty; they don't go step by step to tell you how they got their answer. While I know the tests are created to be harder than the real test to make the real test seem easy, some of the problems are ridiculous! My precalc teacher couldn't even solve some of them, and he's one the best precalc teachers in the country.

If you really want to know what the test is like, buy Princeton Review. It's more accurate, more understandable, and has a lot less mistakes.

I guess the other two reviewers didn't really use the book yet. There are so many obvious errors in the book. They aren't little spelling errors. For instance, the questions and the answer explainations don't match. There are 5 answer choices (a-e), but the answer sheet has only 4 circles (a-d). It almost like the people who made this book didn't review it at all!!!!! I just started the book the other day. I doubt that the less of the book will also have a bunch of errors in it. I'm kindly give the book 2 stars because it review through topics that you need to know. Honestly, it is NOT worth your money.

I bought this book about a month and a half before taking the math SAT IIs thinking that I would have plenty of time to review. I was wrong.

This book contains tons of useless information that wasn't even on the test. Not worth using unless you have an abundance of time, something that very few juniors do. Instead I recommend the Sparknotes practice tests, either from the book or their website (which offers the tests and answer keys for free!). I used Sparknotes instead and got a 740 on the test.

This book is filled with mistakes on almost any page. Unless you have already mastered Pre-Cal material, this book could really screw you over in your test preparation. Had I not already been familiar with a majority of the topics, I may not have caught all of the mistakes I did.

If you are taking this Subject Test, and you need a good review for it, please do not purchase Barron's. I made that mistake, and I wish you wouldn't do the same.

This book is really good for practice, but I don't recommend this book for common student.It is too hard.