Customer Reviews

Cracking the SSAT & ISEE, 2009 Edition (Private Test Preparation)

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Cracking the SSAT & ISEE, 2009 Edition (Private Test Prep)

My thirteen year old daughter had only one month to prepare for the SSAT. She looked at several guides and purchased Kaplan's and Princeton Review's Cracking the SSAT (link above).

The Kaplan guide was somewhat helpful in preparing her to take the SSAT but she found the explanations in the Princeton Review guide much clearer and more thorough. Also, the PR guide helped her to compare her scores on the practice tests with results from the actual tests whereas the Kaplan did not. She ended up using only the PR guide one hour a day for just over a month and brought up her SSAT score from 78th percentile to 99th percentile overall. It was especially helpful in math (her weakest subject) where she went from below the 50th percentile to the 89th percentile on the actual test. Thank you Princeton Review!

I purchased several editions of Princeton Reviews 2001, 2003, 2005 & 2007 and the content/test questions for the ISEE portion are exactly the same.
I called Princeton Review and they pushed me off to Random House their publisher. Random house admitted that they only changed the cover because the test has not changed, yet they consider the books updated each year. If you are looking for additional questions for your child, do not buy any multiple Princeton Reviews. Try a different company.

I am a tutor for the SSAT and ISEE, and I have worked with this book for many years. Overall, I would say it's the best book out there -- and I have worked with all of them. The PR book excels in its vocabulary & word roots review, and it also has information that other books don't, such as charts for every grade level that help you figure out how many questions you can skip depending on what percentile you're aiming for. In general, this is the book I recommend for my students (after the official SSAT and ISEE review books, of course), if they're only going to buy one prep book.

The only exception to that is if I have a student whose weakest subject is math. In that case, I'll often recommend the Kaplan book instead. It's not that the PR has poor math coverage. It's adequate, but the Kaplan prep book is better in math and has more math practice problems. However, unless your student has a perfect vocabulary and always aces verbal test sections, the PR book will definitely help.

In the end, the vast majority of my students end up buying both books, and we use them both.

Note: the Princeton Review, like most (all?) test prep books out there, comes out with new editions every year. The editions don't change much from year to year, but they generally evolve slightly with additional practice problems or improved review material. I'm sure PR sells more books this way because people don't want to get the "old" version of a book, but it also means their Amazon reviews start fresh each year. For a book like this -- a book that's excellent overall -- the clean slate is a disadvantage. If you aren't convinced by the reviews of this edition, go back and read the reviews for the past couple of years -- they will more than likely still be true for the latest edition.

We bought the Peterson, Kaplan and Barrons books in addition to this and found this to be the best in terms of organization of materials and ease of use.

If your student is rushing to take the exam, or has many months to prepare, this book is for you.

this was just what my daughter expected, she is going to a private high school and needed an additional study tool

I brought this for my 9yr old daughter to prepare her for the ISEE, and also, so she wouldnt get a sense of what the test might look like. It was good help for home, but i think a school offering would be better. Not sorry i purchased it.

My son used it and got a decent score for his ISEE test. You will be happy with the purchase if you don't keep a high expectation