Customer Reviews

Cracking the SSAT & ISEE, 2010 Edition (Private Test Preparation)

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

 

 

I am a tutor and I have many students each year who need to take the SSAT and the ISEE. Once my students have acquired each test's official book (Preparing & Applying for the SSAT and What to Expect on the ISEE, both of which are currently available only from the websites administered by the test-makers themselves), this book is the book I recommend first for my students -- followed closely by the Kaplan book.

In fact, as I say in the book review episode of my SSAT and ISEE podcast, the PR and Kaplan books are really the *only* books worth using outside of the official books. All the other publishers get something seriously wrong, but these books get almost everything right. For the Princeton Review in particular, the breakdown is as follows:

Pros:
- Spectacular vocab and word roots practice
- Great practice with hard synonyms & analogies
- Good balance of "lessons" and practice with actual test problems

Cons:
- The math sections are complete, but not as thorough as with Kaplan (but Kaplan's vocab work isn't as good)
- No single student will be able to use more than one practice test in this book (same for Kaplan)

The reason for that last point is that the SSAT has a lower and upper level (2 tests), and the ISEE has a lower, middle, and upper level (3 tests). So the fact that there are five practice tests in this book (and most prep books) really means that there's only one test per level. And any given student is only going to take the test at one level, so at most there is one practice test per student per test. Yes, that's not ideal, and it's part of why I gave this book four stars, but it's also the standard, and it's not really a reason not to buy this book, because this book is so good otherwise, and apart from the official books mentioned above, which you should already be buying anyway, you won't do better anywhere.

One of the unfortunate side effects of companies like The Princeton Review releasing new versions of their test prep books every year is that they reset their reviews on websites like Amazon.

In fact, these books change little from version to version, which is as it should be. The tests they prepare students for undergo only a subtle evolution from year to year, so the reviews from the 2008 version are just as relevant now (to the 2010 version) as they were then. So if you want to read more reviews of this book, read reviews from previous years.

Happy testing!
-Brooke (abacuslearning.com)

The material in this book is rather thin (for such a thick book) since it covers two tests, each of which comes in 2-3 levels, covering four grades (4th - 8th). So, by the time you've pruned it to the level and test your child will be taking, there's not a whole lot there. For a fifth-grader, it's just one sample test and perhaps a hundred pages of study material that can be done a dozen+ pages at a sitting.

Mostly it's just a quick overview plus the usual tips'n'tricks for gaming the exams.

Rather irritating, however, is the fact that there's no errata sheet online. If you find, as we did, a non-obvious error in a problem, you can literally spend an hour trying to figure out if there was some trick there that your child should have known.

Overall, probably useful but not compelling.

I'd rate this a zero if I had the choice.

I recently purchased this test book for my daughter through Amazon. It contains only a SINGLE SSAT test for the upper level exam (but hides that fact by claiming two tests on the cover).

Some of the answers seem suspect. And on page 385 it contains two answers marked "C" for question #7.

Another question (page 387) which asks why ancient people raised flax. Two separate paragraphs state BOTH cloth and oil as the primary reason but Princeton's correct answer says otherwise forcing the student to choose only one.

The book does not appear to be well vetted. All aspects of the book's instruction are now suspect and my contain errors. If there's a refund, I'm sending the book back.

We've ordered books from other services and I'll review them as we go through the tests, but won't be using Princeton Review books for high school exams (or later - college exam prep) if the results are as poor as this book.

This book was a colossal waste of money.

I bought this book for my 13 year old to study for ISEE test. She just started 2 days ago and found already 3 mistakes with the math answers for the questions. It really doesn't give much confidence in the teaching material if one needs to question every answer for its validity.

I bought this book for my cousin and he quite enjoyed it.

The book offers good practice on the verbal section especially.

However, it could do with some more Upper level SSAT tests.