Customer Reviews

Cracking the NEW SAT, 2006 (College Test Prep)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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!

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.

Overall this book provides very good strategies for people who would rather study themselves than take a course. Joe Blog is an asset, and understanding him really helped me to root out wrong answers to alot of questions. However, the practice tests contained a few flaws and I felt some of the questions were unlike those on the actual SAT. Definetly a solid prep book, but consider the collegeboard one for better tests (although this book does provide explanations to all its questions unlike the collegeboard book).

Critiques of the scores from the first administrations of 'New SAT' must have warranted some of the updates I found in the 2006 version of this book. This manual has a slightly different format than the 2005 version, but contains 'meatier' content and some updated and refined techniques. The spin is a bit different in some sections, so readers will need to 're-frame' their appraoch to some of the question types. This is an effective preparation tool.

I purchased the Princeton Review book, "Cracking the NEW SAT" after completing my PSATs in October or November. My PSAT scores came back as around 650-720 per section; certainly not bad, but I wasn't comfortable with the real SAT.

I started using the Princeton Review book about five weeks before the June 3rd SAT. The language in the book is simple, and easy to understand for a student of almost any level. The concepts and strategies are basic and easy to comprehend; the book seems tailored for the "average" student. The downside of this is, at times, I felt like I was reading a book for idiots - the same tips and ideas are often repeated and restated.

The book contains three unofficial practice tests which are accurate of the real SAT. I would recommend purchasing additional, authentic practice tests from Collegeboard.

When I took the test, I didn't use all the concepts or "tricks" presented in the book for EVERY single question. More than anything, this book offered a thorough familiarization with the test. There were NO surprises on test day. I knew what exactly what to expect, and when to expect it. I feel this book could use more information for solving trickier math problems (especially geometry related) and better essay tips and examples. The essay section was arguably the most void of content in the entire book.

In any case, after completing the book from cover to cover, I took the test (my first time) on June 3rd, and scored a 2350. (CR 800, Writing 800, Math 750). That's an overall score improvement of over 300 points from my fall PSAT.

These are not as good as the questions found in the College Board's Official Study Guide for the New SAT. I found this book helpful, but the College Board book (which I used with SAT Math Cognition) is much more helpful.

This book gave me a false sense of hope. Not that I didn't achieve my projected score, but this book isn't really meant for anyone trying to score in the 700s.

On the PSAT I scored - Critical Reading: 68, Math: 66, Writing: 72

On the SAT I scored - Critical Reading: 690, Math: 680, Writing: 740

The problem was that in feeling as though I understood everything in this book I actually thought that I would earn scores of 750 or higher in each section.

During the test I had no time to employ many of the strategies that this book taught, and instead was scrambling to finish with a few seconds to spare (breathing is somewhat necessary). And the celebrated "Joe Bloggs" technique was, if anywhere, far in the back of my mind.

Overall, I would say my score increase of 208 on the PSAT to 2110 on the SAT was only the likely and predicted result of having eight months of schooling in between each test.

The book is easy to read, and has lots of really good tricks. Recommended if you don't take a class and just study on your own.

I think this book gives at least 70% solid foundation of what we need to know about SAT. The book is good and gives a lot of clear examples and techniques. I especially liked the way they tease Joe Blogg in the book. Joe Blogg was used to represent an "Average" student making silly mistakes and stuff. This book will teach us how to avoid those silly mistakes.

It covers an array of required basics and I definitely recommend you to buy this book. After that, you might want to try looking for another book, which features harder lessons or strategies.