23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
excellent practice, October 4, 2005
This review is from: Cracking the NEW SAT, 2006 (College Test Prep) (Paperback)
Princeton Review challenges the ETS (the test's creator) party line on prepping and coaching. By studying patterns in the ETS answer choices and question sequences, Princeton Review came up with what it calls the Joe Blog approach. At its core, Joe Blog says that on easy questions, go for the obvious answer that Joe Blog (a hypothetical Joe-Average) would guess; on the hard ones, avoid the "obvious answers, because they are "tricks" to fool Joe Blog. Even for top scorers, the Joe Blog techniques could add points by increasing the odds of successfully making educated guesses on the toughest questions. Moreover, the Princeton Review writers do provide excellent practice beyond the Joe Blog approach. They seem to have studied the content of the test better than most authors. If there is one flaw, it is that the explanations to the practice questions need a lot of work.
While not perfectfor everyone, this book is still an important and helpful resource. I do recommend this book overall.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sorry i don't like to crack my SAT's, i like to ACE them., September 4, 2006
This review is from: Cracking the NEW SAT, 2006 (College Test Prep) (Paperback)
Cracking the NEW SAT, 2006 edition written by the princeton review, is an excellent standard approach to the SAT. The stratagies included in this book are promised to raise your score. But this book lacks review, especially on the math section. another positive part of this book is it's practice exams, which are very similar to the real SAT's. the reason i don't reccommend this book is because of it's practice questions. you recieve great stratagies but not enough practice questions to reinforce the skills you learned so you just sit there dum founded. no explanations are provided for the practice drills, so you don't know what your doing wrong and where you're going wrong with the skills you've just learned. Instead of using this book for the SAt it would be better advisable to ust it for the PSAT. if you are really serious about acing the SAT's and want to invest some money in to it. I would reccommend buying McGraw-Hill's SAT I 2nd edition. this book provides great stratagies and practice to reinforce the skills and provides excellent practice test. another book you might want to consider buying is Gruber's New SAt this book provides tough questions but it put's you in the right state of mind for the SAT. after you are done with these two books. you might consider buying Barron's SAT 2400 because after your done with the standard approach with these books. Barron's 2400 will put you up to the test. This is what happened after i used these books. my current score: 600 critical reading, 720 math, and 550 writing. for a total of 1870. but after using these book i recived 670 critical reading 800 math, and 690 writing for a total of 2160, trust me these are all the books you need trust me! good luck!
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Get the newer edition, though not much has changed, July 16, 2006
This review is from: Cracking the NEW SAT, 2006 (College Test Prep) (Paperback)
Please note that there is a newer version of this book available: Cracking the SAT, 2007 edition. Not much has changed between these two editions, but its probably best to have the newer edition, if you have the option of purchasing either edition.
This book as well as more than 20 other SAT prep books are reviewed and ranked on CEEAE dot org. Every book review has a direct link to its page on Amazon, so you can read the reviews, view the rankings and then return to Amazon to purchase your selections.
The following is an abridged review from CEEAE dot org:
This is the standard anti-SAT book. This book seems primarily designed to demystify and understand the SAT. The vast majority of the text focuses on how to approach test questions and effective strategies. It also has probably the best set of strategies for the typical student. Other books may have better strategies for advanced students (Kaplan SAT 2400 or Barron's 2400), but they lack practice tests. The math, vocabulary, and grammar reviews are concise and effective.
This book has 7 practice exams, but only 3 of them are in the book, the other 4 are on the accompanying CD-ROM. The tests are extremely accurate. In fact, only The Official SAT Study Guide has more accurate exams. However, The Official SAT Study Guide does not have explanations for their practice exams, only the answers. This book does have explanations to every question. Also, the tests in this book contain an equating section, but those in The Official SAT Study Guide do not. Hence, some have concluded that the tests in this book are preferable to those in The Official SAT Study Guide.
This book, however, is not without its flaws. The first is that it overuses the "Joe Bloggs" method. This method is worthwhile, but many students have found themselves confused when they take the actual exam and try to apply this method to the questions on the exam. Another issue is that we definitely disagree with some of the strategies in this book. For example, this book tells the student to not read the passage. We could not disagree with strategy more. No one other than the Princeton Review recommends this strategy and for good reason, it doesn't work. Without going into too much detail, the student must read the passage and suggesting otherwise is a sure prescription for a disastrous Critical Reading score, trust me I have seen it happen time and again.
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